AFL legend Nathan Buckley has attached a “buyer beware” warning to Conor McKenna as he prepares to return to Australia.
The Tyrone All-Ireland winner quit Essendon two years ago after battling homesickness for a number of years but now apparently wants to try his hand at Australian rules football once again, with Geelong, Brisbane and Port Adelaide reported to be interested in signing him up.
Former Collingwood coach Buckley, who captained Australia against Ireland in the International Rules series in 1999 and won the Brownlow Medal as AFL player of the year in 2003, questioned whether McKenna will be in it for the long haul this time around having returned to Ireland previously.
He told SEN Breakfast: “They decide that they’re going to come over for a couple of years and they do get homesick and then they want to get home because they can play a professional sport over there.
“There is a little bit of picking and choosing that happens – it would be buyer beware for me.
“If Conor McKenna has been here and then gone home and then wants to come back out again, there’s a little bit of in and out that happens with the Irish boys.”
Buckley worked with Mark Keane and Marty Clarke at Collingwood, both of whom returned to Ireland though Clarke did rejoin the club, albeit his second stint was unsuccessful as he was diagnosed with Addison’s disease.
Buckley added: “Marty Clarke went back but he was actually going through health issues at the time that he needed to get home for, so there are mitigating circumstances in all of these, so I’m not putting a broad brush across.
“But obviously Jimmy Stynes, Sean Wight … this was a new life that they were coming out for, and they made their life in Australia.
“I still think the world’s a bit smaller and there is a little bit of over and back and I’d want to ask those questions of anyone you were going to recruit from Ireland going forward.”
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