One of the most celebrated footballers currently operating who has never won an All-Star, Galway's man for many ages is arguably - at 35 - in the form of his life, writes Conor Neville.
It was way back in the summer of 2008 when a 19-year old Paul Conroy came off the bench to score the effective winning point in his first Connacht final against Mayo.
Conroy collected his sixth Connacht medal this summer, a fairly typical haul for a Galway footballer of his longevity. A teenage Conroy came on stream with a six-point tally against Roscommon on his championship debut. The previous year, he'd captained Galway's minors to their first All-Ireland in 21 years after a win over Derry .
Galway's current manager played his final game in a second round qualifier loss to Antrim in 2012, an inauspicious farewell on a par with Jack O'Shea's 20 years earlier. The following spring, he scored 0-03 in a vital win over Armagh, which ultimately prevented Galway from tipping into Division 3. Conroy - the same as now, the same as always - chipped in with a couple of big points from distance, raiding forward to land the lead score after Tom Flynn's goal.
"It was just a really wet day and two of us kind of slid in," Conroy recalled later on."His knees hit my shins, unfortunately for me. It could easily have been him, like." He gave an absurd exhibition of long range point-kicking against Roscommon in Croke Park in 2022 - the slight caveat being that it was a de facto exhibition game, aka the Division 2 final. He scored 0-07 from play that day, a tally which might have been doubled under the current experimental rules.
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