There is a crossroads in the career of every Irish AFL recruit, and for Conor Nash it came in 2021.
It was almost five years since the Meath man had first agreed to join Hawthorn and three since his AFL debut. Having made five appearances in the 2018 season, he jumped to 14 in 2019 but plummeted to two in 2020, the Covid-interupted campaign.
By the end of that year he needed a shoulder operation and at the outset of the 2021 season he was playing for the second team, coached by Sam Mitchell, who recognised that Nash needed a change of direction if his career was to catch fire. So he suggested moving him from half-forward into midfield.
“I said, ‘Well I’m going to have to give that a shot’ and within the first few games, two games, in midfield I was like, ‘Yep, I much prefer this, this suits me’,” Nash explains. “It was a new lease of life and that’s what’s kept me here since really.”
He broke back into the first team that year, at the end of which Mitchell took over as first team coach, and has been ever-present over the past three seasons, with last Friday’s opener against Sydney Swans taking him to 99 appearances. He’ll hit the century against Essendon at the MCG tomorrow morning Irish time (8.40am).
When he reached 50 appearances back in 2022, Nash said at the time that it was “nothing special”, pointing to 100 games as the real landmark.
“When I got over the hump of becoming a bit more established a few years ago, it’s one I would have always had my eye on from afar and one that I would have been, ‘Yeah, that’d be really nice’. I suppose just a real sense of achievement and to be able to hang your hat on it.”
Reaching the 100 also opens up the father-son rule, meaning that if Nash has a son one day, Hawthorn will effectively have first refusal on him. Now settled in Melbourne with his Australian girlfriend, Grace, Nash loves the lifestyle down under and it looks as though he’ll stay long-term.
And yet, it could have been so different. Nash is close friends with Conor Glass, who left Hawthorn in 2020 and resumed Gaelic football seamlessly with Glen and Derry, winning multiple honours.
“It could well have been me (returning home). There’s definitely been hairy times in my career, even from that point at the end of 2020, still playing half-forward, needed a shoulder op and yet the club just went ahead with me, for whatever reasons I don’t know.
“I was able to find a bit of a niche and a new position and kind of a new coach that saw me differently. That was the biggest help to me. I don’t know. I think it’s just a bit of luck.
“I don’t think it was anything to do with Glass’s skill of the game. He had far more skills than me in terms of with the footy so yeah, just a bit of luck, I don’t know.
“I was happy for him because that was his decision, ‘I want to go home now and I’ve done my bit here’. It wasn’t turning for him and I only wanted the best things for him and that’s what’s happened so he’s done well, even in life. I think within the first few months he opened up a cafe and built a house and obviously he’s engaged now to Niamh so he’s going well.”
Tomorrow, Nash will become just the seventh player recruited from Gaelic football to reach 100 AFL appearances, though his proficiency at the game arguably owes as much to his rugby background. What sets him apart from other Irish recruits is that a professional sporting career was available to him here in Ireland having played for international rugby at underage level and with the Leinster academy holding a spot for him.
Had he not gone to Australia, that’s the route that he would have chosen rather than Simonstown Gaels, with whom he won two county titles, and Meath.
“Had I stayed it would have been rugby. I came back to that it was just going to be an adventure. I was looking initially that AFL, I could come back after two years and still be 20 years of age and rugby had said that to me as well when I was going, ‘If you come back after a couple of years we’ll keep tabs’ and in fairness they did.
“I chatted to a couple of guys there in the Leinster set up for a bit but as the years went on that ship kind of sailed.
“I definitely have a serious grá for rugby and would have played a good bit of representative rugby with Ciaran Frawley and just seeing him playing there with Ireland, I watched him playing internationals when I was back in October/November so that was a great sense of enjoyment and happiness out of the whole thing and watching the rugby but definitely no regrets.”
Amid interest from other clubs, Nash signed a five-year deal with Hawthorn last July that will take him up to the age of 31 and he fully intends to see out that contract, though he has a hankering to play for Meath at senior level and the team’s recent progress under Robbie Brennan hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“I want to be here playing AFL as long as possible, until they tell me, ‘That’s it, your time is done’. I know I have this fancy that I would play for Meath one day again, but who knows?
“I’m definitely locked in till then and we’ll take it from there but very much, my life is here in Australia now but, as I said, I would love to play for Meath again one day. I never have played at the top level so that’s probably an itch that I would like to scratch at some stage.”
That’s a long way off though. This week, he submitted his application for Australian citizenship. His father, Tony, has been out since Christmas and will be there for the game tomorrow, when Nash will run through a personalised banner to mark his 100th appearance, while the club have also produced a highlights reel.
“I’m looking forward to it, it’ll be a good night. I suppose the fact that we’re playing Essendon, it’s such a big rivalry, Hawthorn-Essendon, there’ll be at least 85,000 people there at the MCG. It doesn’t really get much bigger so I can’t wait.”
He doesn’t envisage chasing down Zach Tuohy’s appearance record for an Irish player (289), but emulating the Laois man by winning a Premiership is the burning ambition.
“That’s the only one. For me, that would be the only one, to win a Premiership and hopefully if you got one the burning desire would be there to go again but yeah, very much so. The games thing, it’s not something I have in mind, getting a certain number of games, it’s just playing first team football and getting a Premiership, that would really bond you to a lot of guys here. It’s the be all and end all really.”
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