Tears, bonfires and the Cats who spent 60 hours in Ireland: How Mark O’Connor reached his holy grail
Mark O’Connor won a premiership with Geelong in 2022, but the AFL title was not the only one he craved.
The holy grail, as he describes it, was winning Gaelic football’s Kerry Senior Football Championship for his hometown team of Dingle.
In late October last year, he achieved it – ending a 77-year drought for Dingle.
“Winning the county was like [reaching] our holy grail. We had failed so many times,” O’Connor said.
Dingle had followed that victory up with a win on the buzzer in December in the Munster club senior football championship to qualify for the All-Ireland senior club championship semi-final.
O’Connor played in both drought-breaking victories, replicating the feat his grandfather Denis achieved in 1948. His father John watched Mark’s victories from the stands, holding Denis’ medals for good luck.
O’Connor had left town not expecting to return for Christmas or to play again in the All-Ireland title run. Locals hoped he might change his mind, but didn’t expect he would.
But as O’Connor trained pre-Christmas back in Geelong, his body felt great, and his mind began to wander back to Ireland.
“I’ll never ever have this moment again,” he thought.
By Christmas Eve, with the Cats’ blessing, he was back in Dingle.
His first stop was the famous O’Flaherty’s Bar on Bridge Street, for his family’s traditional pre-Christmas catch-up with friends. But a glance at wide smiles and flowing beer inside showed him a trip to the Dingle church with his mum for the 6pm Christmas service would be more advisable.
He had only told a few players and officials of his plans, so when he walked in, heads turned. The congregation began to mumble in surprise. Club chairman Seán Ó Súilleabháin, who was at the pub, was later told they said to each other, “He’s back!”
“I got a bit of that once mass was over,” O’Connor admits. “People flocked over a bit … it was awesome actually, really nice.”
It was a sign of just how important these matches were to the locals; this wasn’t hit and giggle. Opposition analysis and planning meetings were part of the build-up, just as they are at the Cats. “It’s so serious,” O’Connor said.
His love for Geelong and his teammates there was fierce, but these moments with friends he’d grown up with hit different.
“There is no doubt why you do it. It is the family. It’s the community, it’s the friendships, it’s growing up with everyone,” O’Connor said.
“There’s no money. There are no transfers. You’re not trying to build this powerhouse team, like clocking players from all over the place. There’s no doubt why everyone’s there and committing to it. There’s just something different about that. It definitely contains a spiritual element, and I wouldn’t [say I am] very spiritual at all.”
His aunty Mary encouraged him to visit the local cemetery after Dingle won the county championship to visit the grave of his grandfather Denis, who played in that winning team in the ’40s.
“I was hit with emotion because so many people had gone back and laid Dingle flags on the graves of people that were involved in any way. All the graves had red and white [Dingle’s colours] all over [them]. I had not been to the graveyard in years. I was like … there was just like a connection with people I did not even know who were going through the same thing from 80 years ago,” he said.
Instead of the usual AFL pre-season training, O’Connor had spent his time before Christmas training solo on Mondays, then travelling with Dingle teammates an hour out of town to find a decent pitch with lights. He did the weekly captain’s run – the optional Friday training session – before his match at the weekend. Able to collect his GPS data, and confident in the expertise of local strength and conditioning expert Shane O’Rourke, the Cats trusted O’Connor and monitored his progress.
“[It’s] more fun when there’s a ball involved, and you’re not running by yourself in the sticks somewhere,” O’Connor said.
All the while in Geelong, an idea was firming in the minds of O’Connor’s Cats teammates Mark Blicavs and Jack Henry. They had visited Dingle before and flirted with the idea of dropping in again that off-season while travelling, but had decided against it.
They aimed to be there for the semi-final but didn’t make any plans because it seemed unlikely that O’Connor would play. Instead, Blicavs tuned into Dingle’s dramatic semi-final win at Toby Conway’s house alongside another Irish recruit, Cillian Burke, who had teed up a live broadcast through his GAA connection.
As soon as the celebrations started, the premiership utility knew he wanted to be there for the final. Henry was to join him, and when Patrick Dangerfield heard about the idea he wanted to go too – his title as captain also allowing the Cats to show Dingle what O’Connor meant to them.
Blicavs rang Chris Scott with his plan. They would miss one training session. They would be in Ireland for about 60 hours. They would fork out big dollars, themselves, to fly business class so they could sleep on the way there and back.
“‘Scotty’ being Scotty, he was all for it. He celebrates that stuff and backs us to be professional, act like adults, and do what is best for us and our footy,” Blicavs said. Cats footy manager Andrew Mackie also immediately recognised this was a moment that showed life was bigger than football.
So Blicavs, Henry and Dangerfield joined former teammates Zach Tuohy and Cam Guthrie – who had spent the week in Dingle with O’Connor – at the Hogan Stand Bar in Dublin on game day.
The entire town of Dingle (literally), a five-hour trip away, was also at the bar for a pint or two before walking to the famous Croke Park where the Sunday afternoon final was being played against St Brigid’s.
Word got around that the team bus would be passing the bar, so Dingle fans lined the street to cheer their lads on the way to the game.
“It was like a winning parade already. They were all cheering and as the bus went past everyone from Dingle were hugging and in tears. [O’Connor] said so many of the players on the bus were crying with emotion. Seeing that before the game we were like, ‘Wow, this means so much to the town’,” Blicavs said.
On that bus was Gavin Curran, Dingle’s goalkeeper, who had flown from Australia for the semi-final, then back to be alongside his pregnant wife, and then back to Ireland for the final. The baby had been due to arrive on January 8 but was running a bit late. Curran hesitated, but his Aussie partner Claire had spent plenty of time in Dingle. She knew the town. She told him he should play.
“Her family were like, ‘Is he seriously thinking about going home? There are 1000 people in the crowd. It can’t be that important’. But I think she understood because she had lived in Dingle,” O’Connor said.
“Gavin’s family are mad about football. It was so hard for Gavin because he was trying to do the right thing by so many people, and he’s just getting pulled apart. I think once she gave the understanding and the support, he was happy.”
Other options in goal were limited. It was either O’Connor’s brother David, who had not played for years, or an 18-year-old who was not ready. Curran was needed.
Blicavs had never seen O’Connor so pumped on the ground before the game. He was aggressively spitting out Gatorade and throwing the bottle away as the warm-up occurred.
“He is going to get red-carded here. He is going to throw a punch,” Blicavs thought.
“You could just see what it meant to him.”
The five Cats were part of the 25,000 spectators at the final. They sat near the O’Connor family, which includes another brother, John, and felt the rare experience of being a fan, desperate for a win without any control over the result. Meanwhile, more than a dozen Geelong teammates and football department staff gathered at the club to watch the game live at 2am.
“It was emotional seeing the lads next to my family as well. For every single game, I do try and look up and just see the family for a bit of a kick; it was definitely an extra kick this time,” O’Connor said.
The game was an extra-time thriller, an O’Connor point and desperate goal-saving smother among the major highlights. The miracle happened. Dingle were All-Ireland club champions.
“It was pretty magic,” Blicavs said. He looked down and saw O’Connor’s brother with his head in his hands, crying. After a minute, he looked up and told Blicavs, “This is the best day of my life”.
O’Connor wanted his Cats teammates in the rooms and beckoned for them to join him. They were reluctant to insert themselves in his moment, but he persisted. As they edged their way to the fence, they could hear applause.
“It was quite funny. Dingle supporters were almost clapping and cheering us and saying how grateful they were and, ‘Thank you so much to Geelong for letting Mark play – we could not have won it without him’,” Blicavs said.
The celebrations began at the Croke Park hotel, then to Dublin’s Copperface Jacks where Curran told Blicavs at 2.30am he was on his way to catch a plane back to Australia. His baby boy Óigí had been born hours before the game. Curran had only told a couple of teammates the news before the match, to minimise the potential for distraction.
Blicavs, courtesy of what he considered an unnecessary wake-up call from Dangerfield, made it to the plane to head back to Australia while O’Connor went back to Dingle via the Boar’s Head, a traditional drinking spot in Dublin for winning teams from Kerry.
On the drive back to Dingle, the team stopped at local clubs who had lit bonfires as a show of support for their Kerry compatriots, the bonfire being an ancient ritual signifying solidarity and celebration.
Dingle, a tourist town where many of the locals, including O’Connor, still speak the Irish language as well as English, held a local gathering before the celebrations continued at many of the 50 watering holes in town.
Then O’Connor headed home to prepare for another season at Geelong. Somehow, his desire to hit the track was stronger than normal.
“The risk was that if we lost I would be seriously upset, losing the granny out here [in Australia] and then losing again a couple of months later,” O’Connor said.
Instead, he says, it was the easiest return flight of his life, and Geelong and Dingle are now properly entwined.
“I just can’t believe the amount I have gained from coming out here and being here for 10 years,” he said. “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”