INJURY may have curtailed his involvement with Tyrone before their Ulster Championship success back in July, but that hasn’t stopped Richie Donnelly having a starring role in two videos that have taken the internet by storm.
Footage of a charity ‘crossbar challenge’ at county training was the usual succession of groan-inducing wides and near misses before the Trillick ace stepped up. Rather than using the traditional method and kicking from his hands, Donnelly opted for a spectacular rabona that ate up the yards towards the goal frame before catching the underside of the bar.
Cue pandemonium, as the talented forward found himself buried beneath the bodies of excited team-mates: “I remember saying before that I was going to do a rabona - I don’t think anybody believed me, but I just went for it,” he recalled.
“When it happened, the video man, Eamonn, said he didn’t get my bit. I was gutted but, thankfully, he was only joking.”
In recent weeks, a video has been doing the rounds on social media showing Dublin star Diarmuid Connolly launching an O’Neill's size five over the River Liffey as part of the Peil Star series. Earlier this year, Peil Star, which aims to showcase the skills of Gaelic football on the street, filmed an Ulster version in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter that featured Donnelly, his house-mates Kieran Hughes (Monaghan) and Ryan McHugh (Donegal) and Antrim midfielder Niall McKeever.
As well as performing some of the basic skills of the game, including solos and overhead catches, the four Ulster University students can also be seen attempting to land a ball in a wheelie bin from 25 metres. Donnelly reluctantly admits he wasn’t the star of the show this time around, with the talented Hughes doing the business on camera.
“Ah, Hughesy’s pretty handy with a football now. He knows he’s good at it too, that’s the thing,” said the 2010 All-Ireland minor champion.
“We did a bin shot and Hughesy got it twice. I hit the rim once or twice, but that was about it. We’ve decided the wind suited Hughesy's left foot on the day.”
Although the video, which has amassed over 100,000 hits between Facebook and YouTube, was “a bit of craic”, Donnelly believes it highlights that Gaelic football is about more than just who has the bigger men: “You see a lot of people saying that there’s too much focus on the physical side as opposed to the skill set, but I think the skill set, at the minute, is at the highest level it has ever been at," he added.
“You see a lot of the county teams, even at club level, the skill levels are actually very good. Most games, when it comes down to winning or losing, is down to the skill set. Generally now, most players will look after themselves and be physically right anyway. I know from my own club that the physical work isn’t too extreme, a lot of it is based around skill sets and real game situation stuff. The focus is switching and it’s becoming more balanced now.”
When he was growing up, Donnelly and brother Mattie - also a key member of Mickey Harte’s Red Hand select - used to spend countless hours honing their skills. And in an age when young people have plenty of other distractions to take them away from sport, he feels anything that encourages honing the skills of the game is to be welcomed.
“We spent all day, every day with a football in our hands and, then, it was away to training. It was non-stop - any chance we got, it was football, football,” he said.
“You see a lot of young ones playing the Xbox in the evenings instead of practising. It’s important to address that because you can see it having an impact on underage football. We’re lucky in Trillick because there’s very much a football culture. All the wee ones would be out and, on the likes of a Monday evening driving home, you’d see about 20 of them down at the pitch kicking a ball about of their own accord.
“We should be encouraging that any time we can.”
