The Dublin hurlers’ early Championship exit presented Dessie Farrell with an opportunity to call Eoghan O’Donnell into his football squad and the rangy Whitehall Colmcille man has agreed to come on board.
What’s probably most surprising is the timing, with the footballers’ Championship campaign well up and running, but there is a connection between O’Donnell and the Dublin manager given that Farrell was part of Mattie Kenny’s hurling backroom team in 2019.
To the casual observer, O’Donnell’s acquisition might be seen as an effort to beef up Farrell’s defensive options with the likes of Jonny Cooper and Mick Fitzsimons pushing on and Davy Byrne set to miss the rest of the season with a knee injury.
But O’Donnell, one of the best full-backs in hurling, actually plays mainly at full-forward for the Whitehall Colmcille footballers, albeit he did line out at wing-back for the Dublin minor footballers.
And with Dublin having posted a mammoth 7-68 in their three Championship games so far, their attack is hardly crying out for reinforcements on the face of things at least.
“I love playing for Whitehall at the end of the year, it's such a release,” said O’Donnell on his football exploits earlier this year. “I try my hand as a very makeshift forward for the club so it's a completely different experience. You're not chasing someone around for 70 minutes. You can actually try to play some sort of exciting style.”
Last October, he reflected on how he was about to play his first game of club football in over a year, saying: “The skills might be a bit rusty but it will be a bit of craic. I play full-forward, opposite end of the pitch!
“So my shooting skills leave a lot to be desired but you can be effective in just trying to get the ball and cause a bit of havoc.”
More than anything, O’Donnell’s acquisition is a reflection on how the footballers’ strength in depth is not nearly what it used to be, something that has been apparent going back to the latter end of Jim Gavin’s reign, as evidenced by Diarmuid Connolly’s 11th hour recall in 2019 to bolster the five-in-a-row bid.
O’Donnell may offer something different off the bench, the sort of presence that they’ve been lacking since Eoghan O’Gara was in his pomp.
Of course, having been dropped into the football panel at the height of the season, O’Donnell will do well to force his way into the matchday 26 and there’s no guarantee that he will make a sufficient impact to earn any game time this summer but Farrell is likely taking a longer-term view here too.
Giving O’Donnell a taste of it now may tempt the 26-year-old to shun the hurlers, who are becoming increasingly stagnant, and throw in his lot with the footballers next year.
He wouldn’t be the first to tread that path.
Tomás Brady
O’Donnell linking up with the footballers closely mirrors that of Tomas Brady, a hurling full-back who was used up front by Jim Gavin.
Brady won a historic League title with the hurlers in 2011 but ruptured a cruciate ligament later that year and quit Anthony Daly’s panel for the footballers ahead of the 2013 season, Gavin’s first at the helm.
“Tomás would like to have a go at football and feels if he doesn’t do it now, he’ll never do it,” said Daly at the time. “I was awful disappointed but wished him the best.”
He added: “Look, you’ve the glamour of football and the crowds. Even when we won the League and got to the Leinster final we weren’t getting that. Young lads will be swayed by that.”
He suffered another cruciate injury in 2013, however, and it was the 2014 Leinster semi-final against Wexford before he made his Championship debut off the bench.
Brady only made three subsequent Championship appearances, all as a substitute, and withdrew from the squad after the 2016 campaign having not featured at all in that year’s Championship.
The Na Fianna man departed with three All-Ireland medals but never returned to play for the hurlers.
Mark Schutte
Having declined to rejoin the Dublin hurling panel after Cuala’s All-Ireland club success in 2017, Schutte was added to the senior football squad shortly afterwards.
He and Gavin had history, with Schutte playing at wing-forward on his under-21 side that won the All-Ireland in 2012, a team that also contained talented dual players like Ciaran Kilkenny and Emmet O Conghaile, though neither of those ever answered the call to join the senior hurling panel, along with others such as Cormac Costello and Eric Lowndes who had promising underage hurling careers.
Schutte quickly made his Championship debut off the bench against Carlow but didn’t feature in the rest of that year’s campaign.
He only made one subsequent Championship appearance, as a sub in a runaway victory over Roscommon in a relatively meaningless round robin game in 2018 and, after winning two All-Ireland medals, linked up with the hurlers again in 2019.
Conal Keaney
Dublin’s best and most celebrated dual player of the modern era, by a reasonable distance.
Keaney broke into the hurling team first at senior level in 2001, making his Championship debut at 18 and, while he combined both codes in 2004, he committed exclusively to the footballers from 2005 on, winning five Leinster titles.
But with the hurlers starting to make waves and Keaney having lost his starting place on the football team, he switched codes again ahead of the 2011 season and had an immediate impact and return as Dublin won their first League title since 1939.
The footballers finally won that elusive All-Ireland later that year, however, a success that Keaney would surely have played some role in had he stuck around.
He did win a coveted Leinster hurling title in 2013 though and, after retiring in 2016, enjoyed an Indian summer under Pat Gilroy and Mattie Kenny after making an unexpected comeback in 2018. He retired for good in April of last year.
Shane Ryan
Like Keaney, Ryan combined both codes for Dublin in the early 2000s when the practice was more tolerable but he eventually concentrated solely on football and became a key member of the team, particularly under Paul Caffrey as he formed an effective midfield partnership with Ciaran Whelan.
After winning an All Star in 2008, he lost his starting place under Caffrey’s successor Pat Gilroy in 2009 and decided to join up with the hurlers at the end of that year having not played for them since 2001.
Ryan was 31 at that stage, however, and while he came off the bench in Dublin’s famous League final win over Kilkenny in 2011, his hurling career never really took off second time around.
He retired in May 2012 Championship, citing a persistent back injury.
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