Paul Mannion of Dublin after the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Dublin and Kerry at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
By John Harrington
Paul Mannion made his decision to return to the Dublin panel for the 2023 season after watching his former team-mates lose to Kerry in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.
The Kilmacud Crokes man had stepped away from the team after the 2020 All-Ireland win content with his lot and with no real desire to pull on a Dublin jersey again.
But successive All-Ireland semi-final defeats in 2021 and 2022 ultimately persuaded him that it was his duty to return and see could he help get the team to top of the mountain again.
“If things went differently in the last couple of years and they’d have been winning, I don’t think I’d be here,” says Mannion.
“I was happy enough to have had my time, and the main thing for me was that Dublin were in a good place. When I stepped away we were, and as I said if we continued that success I don’t think I would have come back.
“But it was just difficult to watch on really over the last couple of years. Last year I was away in Boston and I met a couple of lads who’d been asking me to come back and I just still wasn’t in the headspace or the right frame of mind to be going back in, and then seeing them lose to Kerry was tough.
“The year before I was down in Killarney watching that Mayo game in a pub in Killarney and there was Mayo fans everywhere, and that was hectic.
“So, again, yeah, after a couple of tough defeats like that I decided that I couldn’t keep watching on in good conscience really, so I just said I’d come back and just try and help in any way I can, big or small.”
Paul Mannion shoots a late point to give Dublin the lead in the All-Ireland SFC Final against Kerry.
Mannion ultimately played a huge role in Dublin’s All-Ireland Final win, scoring five points in a man of the match performance.
The season ended with the ultimate high, but he doesn’t mind admitting it was a struggle earlier in the year as he tried to build his body back up after two serious injuries.
“Yeah, it was tough, it was definitely probably tougher than I’d anticipated, definitely on the fitness front,” he says.
“The injuries took a toll, knee surgery back in January last year and then the ankle in October, and I was way off the pace fitness-wise for a lot of the earlier ones this year in particular.
“It just took a lot of time to get that back up, the lads had done a serious pre-season from November or December or whenever it was they started training and obviously I had the ankle injury.
“Then we went on the run with Crokes that took us to the end of January so it took a long, long time to get the fitness back up to where the rest of the team was, and the way we play the game now demands so much of you, so it was taxing and it was difficult at times.”
Paul Mannion of Dublin with the Sam Maguire cup during the homecoming celebrations of the Dublin All-Ireland Football Champions at Smithfield Square in Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Last Sunday’s All-Ireland win was Mannion’s seventh, and not surprisingly the most satisfying of all so far.
“Yeah, there was something about it. Just chatting to lads, a lot of lads felt that one was the sweetest of them all and I don’t know, maybe it’s just because there was….let’s be honest, in many respects we were written off at the start of the year and probably rightly so with the way we’d been playing in some of the league matches and over the last couple of years.
“But one thing that struck me when I got back this year was that that hunger and desire to get back was still there and you never know what’s going on behind the scenes.
“They are tight-lipped at the best of times, but even me having been part of the team, I didn’t know what was going on for the last couple of years, but it certainly wasn’t a lack of effort or desire to go and win another.
“But very early doors you could see that in lads, that they were determined to right the wrongs I guess of the last couple of years and to really go and perform the way we know we can.”
So, will Mannion be making himself available to Dublin for selection again in 2024 or was this comeback a one year only thing?
“I don’t know, I’m not even thinking about that now to be honest,” he says.
“We’ll enjoy these few days and I’ll go back in for the club championship, which I’m really looking forward to because it has been great with Crokes for the last couple of years.
“But I’ll see where things are at for the next few months and for the older lads like Clucko and Jamesie, I don’t know if they are like ‘yeah, I’m sticking around,’ but it would be hard to say no to them again, so we’ll see.”
