After 10 years of graft, he started in an Ulster final and won his second Anglo-Celt medal
Karl O’Connell turned 38 in late September. His story is a remarkable one in many ways. With no interest in Gaelic football, he didn’t play the game until he was 17 years of age, but would go on to have a stellar career in the jerseys of Monaghan and Tyholland.
The place he would arrive at wasn’t easy got to though: “It’s just trying to understand that it’s very hard to solo going at the speed I could go,” he says. “There were balls flying up in the air, balls left behind, balls going to the side.”
Ten years of graft later he started for Monaghan in an Ulster final and won his second Anglo-Celt medal after being a non-playing sub two years earlier and doing well coming off the bench in the 2014 decider defeat by Donegal.
Two years later (2017) he made his Ireland debut, at 29 years of age. He won an All Star the following season (2018) at 30. There can’t be too many players who started out so late and rose to similar or greater heights.
O’Connell arrived in Monaghan Town in the mid 90s as a kid from Dublin’s South Inner City, with father Joseph and mother Patricia. He was ready to hurl, but found it wasn’t a thing in that neck of the woods.
“I remember a hurler coming into school,” he says. “The school helped to get the hurl, the sliotar, the helmet and it came down in the car with us to Monaghan. You couldn’t have taken it off me. I used to puck against the wall for a couple of hours, for ages, but as soon as I got to Monaghan it just disappeared. I never ventured down (to play hurling).
“I was seven. Probably a bit of shyness. I didn’t want to approach it (football). It was probably soccer for me that I enjoyed a bit more.”
O’Connell’s older brother Ciaran, who would go on to run for Ireland was part of the local Glaslough Harriers Athletic Club. Karl followed him down. He found he was quick, the fastest man ever recorded at Monaghan’s Cloghan GAA Centre of Excellence, according to Farney boss Gabriel Bannigan in O’Connell’s retirement statement.
This pace led him into rugby where he honed his evasive skills on the wing and relished the physical aspect of the sport. After having “no interest initially” and “brushing it off,” his close friend from the Harriers, Ronan McNally, tempted him out to Tyholland where he played minor. There, Ronan’s father, Owen and Dwayne McCarey put in some hard yards with him.
Soon he was heading into the club’s senior ranks where former Monaghan star Declan Loughman was another big influence. Loughman painted a picture where O’Connell could move on into the Monaghan senior squad, but “I was green. I brushed it off.”
“I just tagged along as the younger brother to Glaslough,” he says. “I found myself really enjoying it – not to the same level Ciaran did. I didn’t have the commitment he did. As much as it was great, it’s a lonely commitment compared to a team.
“That’s where I met my core friends, which led me down to Gaelic. What I learned from it, the coaching, was very hard got.
“It was a big benefit. It opened up the idea that, ‘I am actually quick here.’ It led to rugby.
“I enjoyed taking on people one to one, being that evasive person and the physical part of it I particularly enjoyed. Was it planned the way it went? Definitely not.”
Monaghan manager Bannigan called a few weeks back. O’Connell was set to go for another year. But work pulled Bannigan away in the middle of the call. Then O’Connell missed his follow-up call. He took it as a sign. He said he’d try out the three club championship games on the trot to see how his body felt. By game two he was feeling things in his body, thinking, ‘This was tough.’
“Ten minutes from half-time of the third game a lot of the team felt it, but I was flagging and for the first time in my life, it was nearly non-existent and there was just stuff I couldn’t do.
“I got half way through the second half and I was thinking ‘Yeah, the decision was made.’ It was tough at the end but the decision was easy because I felt I gave everything I could to give it another go.
“From a physical point of view the game is going to get faster. You are going to be covering more distance. It will be a lot on the body. It gave me that reassurance that I am thinking the right thing and making the right decision.
“The family life (with wife Antoinette, 4 year old twins Indie and Theo and Mila, 2) was starting to get busy. It was only fair to take a step back and enjoy the luxury of family and let Antoinette progress with her own career.”
O’Connell is thankful he only had one bad injury and that the Monaghan physio team got him back from it. Halfway through 2024 he ripped a muscle off his adductor, suffered intense bleeding and then severe swelling that didn’t come right for over six months.
“Lying in bed I could feel the swelling rushing down to the other side (of his leg),” he says. “Nearly every second day I wasn’t fit to walk. Getting into the car and out of the car was a problem. Lifting Mila, our youngest, who was very, very light – just a baby – was nearly taking me over to the one side.
“That explosiveness, power around the core felt like it was non-existent. It was really difficult pain that wasn’t nice.”
In Monaghan no man is left behind. Darren Hughes went to 38. Conor McManus went to 37. Fellas regularly go on to 34 and 35. The big days for that group were a first Ulster title in 25 years, back in 2013 under Malachy O’Rourke. And following it up two years later with the same management, a day O’Connell says was the biggest of his career, alongside representing Ireland.
In 2018 after drawing with Kerry in the Super 8s and defeating Kildare and Galway, O’Connell felt they were primed to deliver, but their nemesis, Tyrone, edged them out again, in the All-Ireland semi-final.
“You want to go on further,” says O’Connell, who works for John Paul Construction as an Internal Recruiter. I have no shame in saying an All-Ireland was always top of our list once we got that consistent. Unfortunately we didn’t get there. It’s something myself and other panel members have to go on with.
“There were days we left behind. We were never complacent type of players. Some games, Ulster semi-finals there was maybe a bit of fear of being complacent that got into our heads instead of embracing this, saying ‘Right, we are favourites for a reason – let’s go.’
“It’s a lot easier said than done. If we embraced it, it could have been a different outcome maybe. Two (All-Ireland) quarter-finals we came up against the best Dublin team ever.
“2018 was the one we should have got over the line (against Tyrone). We just didn’t. I am a great believer in the cycle of players. We had our cycle. We got a lot of consistency. The near misses. The winning.
“It was a great year. There were stages in the game we should have been an awful lot better and we just couldn’t. To this day it annoys me. Even saying it. I know it’s easier said than done. Until we get a big scalp there (Croke Park) it might be just a wee bit tough to get to that level.”
O’Connell is happy with his lot though: “Everyone wanted to win the maximum, which was an All-Ireland,” he says of that group. The next best thing, and I am nearly sure I could speak for the lads that just finished up – I feel like we are leaving the jersey in a good place.
“We have always grasped it and took it on the chin that there’s always going to be doubts about Monaghan every year, 100 percent.
“It was just something that came with it. It was something we always brushed to the side and got on with things. I think the team is in a good place.”
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