Conor McKenna returns to Australia from Ireland mature and ready to make his time in the AFL count

Even when Conor McKenna left Essendon’s Queensland’s hub late in the 2020 season, quitting Australian football to follow his Gaelic dreams back in Ireland, he maintained there was a chance he’d back in Australia within a few years.

There was an itch to scratch at home. McKenna headed to his county Tyrone, aiming to win the All-Ireland championship. He did so within a year, making the call to return to fulfil unfinished business in Australia easier.

AFL clubs had continued to keep tabs on McKenna, and with good reason. A daring half-back with pace to burn, he’d finished fourth in Essendon’s best and fairest in 2019, a year in which the Bombers made the finals. As early as late 2021 he was being linked with Geelong.

When he properly turned his mind to a comeback for 2023, the Cats and Bombers, along with Port Adelaide, St Kilda and the Brisbane Lions all had interest in adding the Irishman to their respective lists.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” McKenna says.

A major consideration was heading to a city suitable for his girlfriend Amy. But perhaps more than anything, McKenna wanted to give himself the best chance to join an exclusive club.

“I only played two finals for Essendon, so my main goal was I wanted to come back to a team that was going to be competing at the highest level.

“I was lucky enough to go home and win the All-Ireland back home, which was amazing.

“I’ve done what I wanted to do back home and now I can come back and try to win a premiership. Tadhg Kennelly’s the only player to win a premiership and an All-Ireland.”

The other factor was Daniher. McKenna had a maverick streak at the Bombers but there was no denying his popularity among teammates. Daniher was one of his pals at the Dons, but was among the post-2020 exodus from The Hangar, heading to the Lions as a free agent.

The key forward had kept in touch with McKenna, with his words of encouragement helping sway the defender.

“I talked to Joey since I’d been home on and off, just bits and pieces,” McKenna says.

“He’d say, ‘You’d love it up here, it’s very chilled out and relaxed compared to Melbourne’.”

Escaping the AFL bubble in Victoria was a well-documented reason for the notoriously media-averse Daniher’s move to the Lions.

But McKenna might be better qualified than anyone to speak about the microscopic level of attention an AFL player can receive down south.

A few months before he decided to depart, McKenna became front-page news when he was the first AFL player to test positive for Covid-19, forcing the rescheduling of a match between the Dons and Melbourne. There is still debate as to how and whether McKenna actually contracted the virus, with mixed results in the days after the initial positive muddying the waters.

In any case, McKenna – who was sanctioned for breaching the league’s return to play protocols for visiting the house of his former Australian host family – became the subject of extreme public interest. The way in which his situation was covered and handled left a bitter taste.

“At that time no one knew what Covid-19 was,” McKenna says.

“It felt like you had murdered someone when you got Covid.

“People didn’t know how to react, and they were probably panicking more than anything.

“The media I thought were more worried about the game than [that] I had a disease. It came ahead of my health, which was the only thing that annoyed me.”

Ultimately though, McKenna’s decision to return to Ireland before the end of that season had less to do with what transpired around the Demons game and more with how he had struggled to deal with the hub, falling out of the Bombers’ flagging side in the final year of John Worsfold’s tenure as coach.

“It was a tough year for everyone that year. The hubs, I thought I would love them and when I got there I wasn’t enjoying it. And I was already kind of wanting to go home.

“I just wasn’t loving life over here.”

McKenna had been making semi-regular trips back to the Emerald Isle during his final couple of years at the Bombers, missing a match in 2019 to attend his brother’s wedding and then briefly heading back on the eve of the doomed 2020 campaign.

It poses the question as to whether he will again be darting home intermittently, yet McKenna is adamant that things are different this time around.

“I’ve matured a bit,” McKenna says.

“I’ll not be going home during the season.

“For the first time I’ve ever been here, I’m not worried how long it’s going to be. Whether it’s two years and I go home, or whether it’s five years, it doesn’t really bother me.

“It’s the first time I’ve been in Australia and not been in a rush home. Probably for my first six years I was. I feel a bit more comfortable here.”

McKenna is only contracted for a season at the Lions, but says he is aiming to earn an extension. He hasn’t ruled out playing for Tyrone during the off-season, but that would be a secondary consideration.

“Come the end of the season in terms of Gaelic, it’ll probably just be something I’ll talk to the club about. But I haven’t got that far.”

During his gap years, McKenna engaged in another sporting passion: horse racing, and with some success too. It is something he wants to keep pursuing Down Under.

“I went home and wasn’t really sure what to do,” McKenna adds.

“I was working them and racing them, and loved it. It’s a real passion of mine.

“I’m definitely going to stay involved. I actually met a trainer [last week], Robert Heathcote, just to get the ball rolling and do a bit of work experience with him.

“I won the All-Ireland back home and it was an unbelievable feeling but owning a horse and winning my first ever race back home, I don’t think it’s a feeling that I’m ever going to have again.”

It is with the Sherrin however that he is primarily occupied in Brisbane. And McKenna, who turns 27 later this month, is optimistic he will be able to have an impact.

“It came back a bit quicker than I thought it would, so it’s not been the worst transition. I hadn’t kicked a ball in two-and-a-half years. I was a bit nervous about coming back.

“Against Sydney [in a match simulation] in the first 10 minutes it just felt like everything was going at a million miles an hour, and the ball was going over my head. But after that I felt like I fitted in well enough.

“I definitely think I can back to my best, and better. That’s the goal. I suppose it’s a bit of an unknown. Most people think 26 to 29 are your peak years or your prime years. In my head I think I can get back to my best, otherwise I wouldn’t have come back.”

He’s made a solid early impression. Co-captain and Brownlow Medallist Lachie Neale may grapple with McKenna’s accent, but he likes what he sees on the field.

“He’s been good. Very hard to understand,” Neale says.

“He’s been great. He’s very fast. He’s actually a lot better kicker than I thought he was as well. Some of his kicks are unbelievable. He pulls them off the line so well. He can break the game open with his kicking and his speed. And his voice out on the field has been something that I didn’t expect from him.”

For McKenna, among the most challenging readjustments was positional. He flirted with time as a forward in his final year at the Bombers, and played there in Gaelic football. But it was in the position where he played predominantly in his time at the Dons that he is starting his second AFL life.

“For me I always just presumed if I came back it would be as a half-back, just because that’s where I played my best football,” McKenna says.