Geelong premiership player Mark O’Connor reaches 100 game milestone
As he prepares to join an exclusive list of Irish players to make 100 AFL appearances, Mark O’Connor has revealed why he initially thought he would only be in Geelong for six months.
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When he first arrived in Geelong in late 2016, Mark O’Connor was planning on a short stay.
The teen turned up in Australia with wobbly knees and wasn’t sold on the idea of the cutthroat world of professional sport.
Having come from Ireland, where Gaelic football remains an amateur pursuit, O’Connor didn’t see a long-term future in his new country, in fact he was keen to pick up some pointers about his body and take his knowledge back to his home county of Kerry.
Almost seven years on from his arrival, the defender turned midfielder is set to become just the sixth Irishman to reach 100 AFL games, when he faces Port Adelaide on Thursday night.
“I certainly had a shorter term view on the whole thing and initially,” he said.
“I thought the opportunity when I came out was that (short term) because my knees hadn’t been too good and hadn’t been for a few years and I was just 19 at that stage.
“You always hear of Australia as a sports science and physiotherapy capital of the world, so I was keen to experience that and get my knees right and get a pre-season done because you hear at home that it is one of the hardest things you can do.
“I thought there was a lot to be gained certainly by coming out in the short term but the initial thoughts were certainly to go back and gain what I could from maybe six months to a year and then go back to play with Kerry.”
While O’Connor wasn’t sure, Chris Scott was.
The Cats coach has spoken to hundreds of eager teens hoping to impress Geelong recruiters over his years but the youngster from Kerry stood out.
It would only take a few pre-seasons for O’Connor to make an impact – he was in Geelong’s leadership group by the summer of 2020.
“As an 18-year-old, (O’Connor) was the most together young person I have ever spoken to in an interview situation and he has just improved since then,” Scott said.
“Every Irishman that I am aware of that has come out and had success, they tend to be really well together people and Mark has been that for us for sure.
“Mark is a leader in our team and he was that after 50 games, much less 100.”
O’Connor said the interview was “pretty easy” with the Cats and the impressive youngster was already out of home and at university when the Cats came calling.
Even if he was unsure during his first hot summer in Australia, O’Connor wasn’t interested in wasting any time.
He spent hours on a walking bike before flying out to get as fit as he could without testing his knees before his first pre-season and at times tried to push back on Cats staff when they wanted to pull him out of drills after he hit his GPS markers.
Pretty quickly, O’Connor’s fears about teammates climbing over each other to make it in a professional sport were washed away when he got to know his mates wearing the hoops and a close bond with his host family convinced him there was a future in Australia.
He quickly impressed the coaches and only played four VFL games before making an AFL debut in round 8, 2017 against Essendon.
“I was pretty switched on, I wasn’t mucking about when I was training and I was pretty professional with my approach even at home when playing Gaelic football,” he said.
“I kind of knew what I wanted when I was home and I knew what was to be gained from coming out here too.”
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for O’Connor, he lost some passion for the game midway through 2022, with the sharp thinker left questioning how important 36 blokes chasing a leather ball around a field really is.
But he found his fire as the Cats marched towards a premiership, with the defender and his good mate Zach Tuohy joining Sydney great Tadhg Kennelly as the only Irishmen with AFL premiership medals.
O’Connor is contracted until the end of next season, but even now he is not thinking too far ahead with how long he will be in Geelong.
Despite twice going home to play his native game – once with and once without club permission – O’Connor still has a hunger to pick up the round ball again.
“I suppose you can never be fully sure but I am definitely more settled than I was,’ he said.
“I still have a lot of growth in me, which is exciting.
“I do have a strong connection back home. All my family is there and it’s a tight-knit community and I still have some Gaelic aspirations there. Hopefully I can play until I am 34 and feeling good, that would be ideal, but it is just hard to know.”
Originally published as Geelong premiership player Mark O’Connor reaches 100 game milestone
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