Four clubs, three leagues, two countries - and all in one “crazy, crazy” year. For Mark Connolly, this past week has been an antidote to the madness of the previous 12 months.
His wife Rosa and two young children Ora (7) and Rohan (3) flew into Derry Airport earlier this week to complete the Connolly family move from Scotland to Ireland.
They’ve bought a house in the city and the kids have already had their first day in their new school. Ora - who was born in and had lived her life up to this point in Scotland - can’t wait to start playing Gaelic football.
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For Derry City’s Clones-born defender Connolly (30), it’s a dream come true to move lock and stock back to Ireland. His Scottish wife took a little convincing but he got there.
This week he met them at the airport. Yesterday, as we spoke, he had just finished the school run.
The welcome humdrum of everyday life after a crazy year.
“The kids, the wake-up calls, going to school and picking them up, sports days, training, missing all that for the past eight months has been difficult,” said Connolly, who spent the first half of the year on-loan from Dundee United to Dundalk.
“Moving away last January, I had an idea in my head that I’d like to move back to Ireland and luckily enough I got the chance to come back and play for Dundalk for six months, which was amazing.
“That gave me the appetite to want to move back full-time.
“But my wife and the kids, the decision to bring them all back, it was genuinely, after all the years being away from Ireland, the toughest one I’ve had to make.
“It’s been tough. My job is playing football and that’s it. A lot of people don’t see life away from football and it has been difficult at times.
“It’s been especially hard for my wife, who was over in Scotland with our two kids by herself and there have been a few tough days.
“But she has been amazing. She is a strong woman. She has kept things going over there and she has let me get on with my work over here.
“It’s been going well and now it’s a thing of them moving over, and I just feel more at ease now.
“I’m just picking the kids up from school, I’m waking up a lot earlier in the morning again, the lie-ins are gone, but I wouldn’t change it, I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.”
Monaghan-man Connolly left home for Wolves as a teenager. A promising Ireland underage defender, he was snapped up by Bolton for €1.2m in 2009.
From there he had loan spells at St Johnstone and Macclesfield, before a permanent move was agreed with Crawley Town.
He went to Kilmarnock and Dundee United, his last full-time outfit before last summer’s move to Derry City.
“I actually played for four teams in the past year, with Dundee United, on-loan at Dunfermline, on-loan at Dundalk and now at Derry,” said Connolly.
“So it’s been a crazy, crazy year, to say the least, adjusting to different systems and meeting different players.
“It’s actually nice to finally be settled at a great club and to know where I am going to be for the next good few years.”
He can now focus on some of the everyday things that people in less transient jobs take for granted, such as sussing out the local sports clubs for his sports-mad kids.
“There’s a local Gaelic club that they’ll be joining - Steelstown, I think it is,” said Connolly.
“The kids have never played Gaelic before, they’ve only just watched it with me. So they’ll be straight in.
“Then we’ll figure out where’s local for them to join in terms of football.
“Even at the school they are all playing soccer and Gaelic. My little girl was buzzing - ‘All the girls were playing Gaelic today, it looks so cool’.”
As for the decision to move to Derry, Connolly explained: “My wife Rosa had a big say on what was happening with the next move and rightly so.
“She is sacrificing a lot as she is moving away from Scotland where she’s from, and that’s not easy.
“So Rosa had a big say on where we were going to be next and we felt Derry was the right place for us, and so far it’s been outstanding.
“The people here have been incredible. Genuinely they’ve been so welcoming. Anything we’ve needed has been done. It has taken my breath away at times.
“I’ll be honest, the last time I was in Derry was when I played for and captained the Ireland Development Squad in the Foyle Cup. That was a long, long time ago.
“When I knew I was coming here, I couldn’t tell you the amount of people who told me that Derry was a beautiful place, full of fantastic people.
“They are 100 percent right, there’s a genuine warmth, there are good people here.
“The chairman and the manager sorting out schooling, going out of their way to help and make things as easy as could be.
“Things like that really mattered, especially to my wife. We feel like we have made the right decision.”
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