It’s October 5th, 2019, a date that they’ll both remember long after the peak of their sporting lives has faded. The pitfalls and heartbreak of the road to a professional life in English football have become almost a cliché. Ciara Mageean is eight years older than Connolly but they have a similar background; an ordinary Irish childhood suffused in sport. But the odd one, the blazing exception or the outlier, will go on and emerge in the way Ciara Mageean and Aaron Connolly did, long before their glittering day in the muddled murky year of 2019. The earnest debates about where athletes like Mageean and footballers like Connolly can “go from here” will largely miss the point.

Source: The Irish Times December 27, 2019 07:30 UTC