HE'S NO ORDINARY JOE

HE may have only pierced the wider public consciousness this summer, but Joe O'Connor has been hiding in plain sight.

- BY PAT NOLAN

After all, he is an All-Ireland-winning captain, albeit largely as a bit-part player in 2022 as he came off the bench in four games, including in injury time in the final, but still lifted the Sam Maguire with Seán O'Shea.

At that stage, David Moran, Jack Barry, Diarmuid O'Connor, Adrian Spillane and Barry Dan O'Sullivan were all ahead of him in the midfield pecking order, with O'Connor favoured more in a halfback or half-forward role.

Last year he started each of seven of Kerry's Championship games alongside his namesake Diarmuid in the middle but was replaced in all bar one of them and appeared very much the junior partner. Midfield was still identified as a problem area for Kerry and, until recent months at least, O'Connor wasn't identified as part of the solution.

But his emergence as a Kerry player of real substance has come at a time when the need could hardly have been greater.

Diarmuid O'Connor has had ongoing problems with his shoulder and O'Sullivan's season was ended by a cruciate ligament rupture.

Amid all of that, their much maligned midfield has emerged as a strength rather than a weakness, and much of that is down to O'Connor, with the 26-year-old a nailed-on All Star.

Former Kerry star Marc Ó Sé is on the teaching staff at Tralee CBS, where he first came across O'Connor, who comes from a rugby household.

"He was very much of a rugby background," says Ó Sé.

"Would have focused on his physical strength, strength and conditioning, and would have worked really hard at that.

"He was in with Munster Rugby growing up and then obviously changed, worked really hard with Austin Stacks then and won a county Championship and I think since then there's the grá for the football."

His brother, James, was a bright prospect in rugby before a pair of cruciate injuries effectively put paid to his ambitions.