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Code breaker: Conor McHugh.

code breakers

‘It’s all mindset upstairs’ – McHugh’s Dublin hurling rise after four football All-Irelands

From the periphery of the Dublin football panel to a key defender for Niall Ó Ceallacháin’s hurlers.

6.01am, 5 Jul 2025

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AT ONE STAGE of Dublin’s win over Limerick last month, Conor McHugh found himself tracking Cian Lynch.

Two players with nine All-Ireland medals between them. Five for Lynch, four for McHugh.

Yet it was only McHugh’s fifth start for the Dublin hurlers in the championship and just his eighth appearance for them overall, crammed into a period of just over three months. The four All-Ireland medals were all won playing football.

At 31, and freshly married since February, the Na Fianna man’s inter-county hurling career is only just lifting off.

A penny for Eoghan O’Donnell’s thoughts on it all. This time last year, O’Donnell was the established Dublin hurling full-back and, apparently, the very first name on the team sheet come matchdays.

O’Donnell started every single championship game in 2024 and provided one of the standout moments of last June’s All-Ireland quarter-final loss to Cork, denying Patrick Horgan a goal early in that game with a terrific block.

Dublin ended up losing that one by five points, but only after a late rally, and, despite the relatively close scoreline, looked like a team stuck in quicksand, making very little championship progress year on year.

O’Donnell opted out and joined the footballers, teaming up with Davy Keogh, another former inter-county hurler who played as recently as 2023.

O’Donnell started Dublin’s first five football league games this year too but made just one championship appearance when the summer rolled around, playing 10 minutes against Armagh.

McHugh, meanwhile, has stepped into his shoes and filled them comfortably, helping to propel the county to within 70 minutes of a first All-Ireland hurling final since 1961.

McHugh in action against Limerick in the All-Ireland quarter-final.James Crombie / INPHO

James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO

Which is an incredible thing when you consider that he presented as a scoring forward for years as part of the Dublin football set-up and that, depending on who you listen to, it didn’t quite work out for him partly because the same Herculean effort and work-rate that others were putting in close to goal wasn’t there.

That’s a harsh take, admittedly, though it was always going to require a maxed out effort from McHugh to shove his way near that golden era team.

Even as an All-Ireland minor winner in 2012, and as the U21 Player of the Year in 2014, he was still up against it just to get game time in the company he was keeping.

Take 2017, for example. McHugh started that year by scoring the late goal that secured victory for Dublin in the annual Dubs Stars challenge on 1 January, finishing with 2-4 in total. The main Dublin squad were jetting away for the team holiday the same day so were excused. Opportunity knocked.

Mossy Quinn scored 3-5 for the Dubs Stars the same day and, afterwards, chatted about the McHugh situation.

“Conor has been around the fringes, he’s an excellent player,” said Quinn. “You see it in the club championship with Na Fianna, he shows flashes of it. But it’s probably the hardest line to get into for the past couple of years and I think you can see that with the quality of guys on the fringes.”

If Quinn, previously a lethal poacher for Dublin himself, sounded decidedly lukewarm about McHugh’s chances, he could be excused. The competition for forward places that season was off the charts and while McHugh started four of Dublin’s league games in 2017, returning 1-7, he was only required for a brief cameo as a sub in their Leinster opener against Carlow.

He didn’t make the 26 for that September’s All-Ireland final against Mayo and when Jim Gavin needed impact subs in that game, he brought on Paul Flynn, Diarmuid Connolly, Kevin McManamon, Bernard Brogan, Niall Scully and Cormac Costello. In any other county, McHugh would have been a first-team regular. In Dublin, at that time, he wasn’t even able to make the top 26.

In action for the Dublin footballers in 2020.Bryan Keane / INPHO

Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO

Current Dublin manager Niall Ó Ceallacháin referenced McHugh’s predicament last month immediately after the Limerick game.

“He could have played nine or 10 years for Dublin, there’s no question about that, and you know why that didn’t happen,” said Ó Ceallacháin.

McHugh himself has referenced that period of his career.

“Even trying to get on to the B team for the internal games was actually hard,” he told the Smaller Fish podcast. “The A team was Connolly, Kilkenny, Flynn (in the half-forwards), the inside line was Costello, Collie Basquel, Dean Rock, Berno, it was just incredible.”

Ultimately, McHugh began to lose faith.

“That confidence kind of dwindled a little bit and I started doubting myself, looking around all the players that were ahead of me, and trying to break in, and I kind of went into a bit of a spiral from there and I never really got it back,” he said.

If he has any regrets, it’s that he didn’t walk away, redouble his efforts with the club, and return rejuvenated to give it another shot further down the line. But walking away from a six-in-a-row team is easier said than done.

Dessie Farrell’s arrival as manager for 2020 was positive on the face of things, given they are clubmates. But McHugh’s Dublin football career ended in 2021 after seven seasons in blue. He made 20 appearances in all, across the National League and championship campaigns, the last of which was as a sub in garbage time of a league semi-final against Donegal in 2021.

There was no final that year, due to the pandemic, so Dublin shared the league title with Kerry. Did McHugh even get a medal? Would it have meant much if he did?

And that was how an inter-county career that promised so much ended. Until another Na Fianna man, Ó Ceallacháin, revived it last winter.