Paul Conroy has become the oldest outfield player to win a Footballer of the Year award.
The Galway midfielder, one of three nominees who went out to the 2024 inter-county playing pool to vote, beat Armagh’s Barry McCambridge and his Galway colleague John Maher.
As expected, Shane O’Donnell has been voted Hurler of the Year by his peers, capping a remarkable three years for him, while his Banner colleague Adam Hogan has been crowned Young Hurler of the Year, the second successive year that award has gone to Clare following Mark Rodgers in 2023.
Oisín Conaty is Young Footballer of the Year, open to inter-county players under 22, after a superb debut season that saw him score 0-13.
His injection of pace added another dimension to Armagh’s counter-attacking game and his 0-3 in the All-Ireland Final earned him the man of the match award.
At 35, Conroy is a year older than Mayo’s Andy Moran when he won the PwC award in 2017 and Colm O’Rourke when he was Texaco winner in 1991.
Dublin captain Stephen Cluxton won the 2019 PwC award aged 37 while Offaly’s Martin Furlong was 36 winning the Texaco award in 1982.
Meath’s Martin O’Connell in 1996 and Kerry’s Mick O’Dwyer in 1969 were 33 when they were crowned Texaco winners in those years. Kevin Heffernan did win the 1974 Texaco award but as a manager.
Conroy scored 2-16 in the Championship and while there was an element of fortune about his goal against Donegal, some of his points from distance were of the highest quality. His three in the All-Ireland Final were spectacular, mirroring what he did against Derry in the group stage.
He is the first Galway winner of the PwC award since Declan Meehan in 2001, the same year that Conroy’s current manager Pádraic Joyce won the Texaco award.
“It probably took me a bit longer than I expected to get an All-Star, but it is great to get one. And Footballer of the Year too is something very special. We’re very lucky that we’ve such a strong team at the moment, your team-mates get you this far really,” said Conroy.
O’Donnell scored 2-14 in the 2024 Championship but contributed so much more than that with assists for goals scored by Aidan McCarthy on the opening day against Limerick and again in the All-Ireland Final, while also teeing up a Rodgers goal against Cork.
It was on O’Donnell’s prompt that Clare got back into the All-Ireland Final after a rocky start, while he caused the Tipperary and Waterford defences endless trouble in the Munster round-robin.
He is the first Clare winner since Tony Kelly in 2013. And after overcoming a severe concussion in 2021 that may well have brought his hurling career to an end, O’Donnell has enjoyed a brilliant renaissance.
“It wasn’t a moment of being, ‘I can still win Player of the Year, I have to go back, I can still win an All-Ireland’,” he recalled of his concussion episode.
“It was purely I needed to go back for my own physical well-being and health. I needed to go back, to know I wasn’t afraid of hurling or being on the pitch. It wasn’t any grander than that, it was a really narrow scope.
“I need to play hurling again or I will never be what I was before or I will always be marred by this event.”
The 30 year-old Éire Óg clubman holds a PhD in microbiology and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard University in the US.
Hogan had some of the hardest man-marking roles during the season but stuck to them diligently and was particularly good when Clare got to Croke Park. He is Clare’s first Young Hurler of the Year since Kelly in 2013, when the Ballyea man swept both awards.