by Paddy Hickey

Dublin hurling ace Conal Keaney says that he has not decided if he will play on at inter-county level for yet another year.

Now aged 38, the Ballyboden St Enda’s clubman featured for Mattie Kenny’s side in last year’s championship campaign, coming on as a sub for Ryan McBride in the All-Ireland qualifiers’ defeat by Cork, at Semple Stadium, on November 7, in the wake of missing the Leinster semi-final loss to Kilkenny a week earlier.

“I haven’t yet decided what I will do regarding playing with Dublin this year,” explained Keaney, who has won a Leinster Championship medal and a National League award during his outstanding career with the Dublin hurlers.

“With the Covid situation, everything is up in the air at the moment, and to be honest I haven’t yet given any thought to my inter-county future.

“Obviously, because of all the uncertainty, the GAA haven’t yet been able to announce a fixture list for this year’s league and championship campaign, and I will probably delay making a decision on whether I will continue playing on with Dublin until the whole situation has been clarified, whenever that will be,” added Keaney, who will be 39 in September.

Just a few weeks ago, the Dublin legend said if someone had told him some years back that he’d still playing inter-county hurling at the age of 38, he would have laughed at them.

But the fact that he has not ruled out the possibility of soldiering on at the top level for yet another campaign means that he could well be part of manager Kenny’s plans for yet another campaign.

After initially breaking onto the senior inter-county scene back in 2001, the dual ace lined out with the Dublin hurlers from 2001 to 2003.

But in 2004 he parted company with the hurlers and decided to link up with the Sky Blue footballers and succeeded in winning five Leinster medals under the watch of team bosses Paul ‘Pillar’ Caffrey and Pat Gilroy until he reverted to the inter-county hurling scene at the start of the 2011 campaign.

Due to his outstanding form for the Dublin footballers in 2005, Keaney was selected for the Ireland team for that year’s International Rules series of games in Australia, but he had to withdraw from the trip because of an ankle injury,

Since 2011, Keaney has confined himself to the stick code at the top level, and received tangible reward with the winning of the National League title in 2011 and the Leinster Championship in 2013.

An additional honour picked up by the Ballyboden man, who runs a cycle-hire business near Heuston Station, is an All-Ireland under-21 football medal won in 2003.

And at club level, Keaney has also made a telling impact, capturing five Dublin hurling titles, two county football awards, one Leinster football title and one All-Ireland football success.

 

 

Tweet

Most Read Stories