The last thing Conor Glass could have imaged when he returned home to Derry after five years playing with Hawthorn in the Australian Football League was that he’d soon be considering Croke Park a sort of old familiar ground, with club and county.
Still only 25, the towering midfielder left for Australia in 2016, and after five seasons and 21 AFL appearances for Hawthorn, Glass returned home in September 2020, at which point Derry football was at something of an all-time low, and his club Glen had never won a Derry title.
Fortunes soon turned, however. Derry last summer won the Ulster football title for the first time in 24 years, then playing twice in Croke Park; beating Clare in the All-Ireland quarter-final, before losing to Galway in the semi-final.
In the meantime Glen also won a first Derry club football title in 2021, backing that up again this season, before progressing through Ulster to last Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park against Galway champions Moycullen. A win there means they return to Croke Park for the final showdown against Kilmacud Crokes on Sunday week.
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For Glass, however, it’s not an entirely unexpected journey, his underage success leaving some lasting hints that someday Croke Park might well be that old familiar ground it’s becoming.
“Growing up, through schools football and underage, we were always competing at the highest level,” he says. “Obviously with Glen with the Ulster minors and that sort of thing, it was getting that team through. So we had full belief, I had full belief, and it was just about getting that monkey off our back and getting the first one and I had full confidence that we would reach this level.
“It’s something pretty special. Look, we said at the start of the year that we needed to look at Derry. As cliched as that sounds, you only can look at the tournament you are in. You wouldn’t look at an All-Ireland at the start of the year.
“We knew the capabilities we had and if we bring our performances on the day we could put it up to any other team in Ireland. So we have shown that now, and we have one more to go.”
“I also thought Croke Park would suit us a bit better [on Sunday], we felt like we had the legs. But it is a credit to them [Moycullen], they pushed us the whole way. Thankfully, we had that lead going into the final few minutes.”
Team effort
Like Rory Gallagher’s influence on Derry, Malachy O’Rourke has unquestionably influenced Glen.
“It’s a hard one to describe, how he goes about his business,” says Glass. “He kind of lets us do our thing, likes to take a backseat, but he picks his moments of when to say things and either wind us up or calm us down. Him and Ryan [Porter] work very well together.
“Ryan is one of the best, not only managers, in the country. He’s got us that we are competing at the highest level now and we have shown that. They bounce off each other and get everyone to buy in.
“We have that versatility as a team and have a running joke that we have 14 forwards. Having that flexibility of having lads going up the pitch and not getting nosebleeds when they get up there, having the calmness to take a score, is a weapon to have on your side.
“I think I just get a bit of joy out of it. I am not told to do it, it’s just the dog in me. I like to get back and put the team first, anything I can do to get the ball turned over and then I try to get up there and attack as well. I just keep going until I get the ball. Those lads do it night after night on the training pitch and I guess they brought it to Croke Park.”
