Luke Keaney

A slightly different profile, taken from the Irish Daily Mirror article by Pat Nolan 21 FEB 2025

Ex-Donegal star still asking 'what might have been?' after five hip surgeries ended GAA career

It was eight years ago this week that Keaney’s football career ended, having been told by an orthopaedic surgeon that he had the hips of a 70-year-old

A meeting of Galway and Donegal brings together two important strands of Luke Keaney’s identity. He’s from Donegal town though his mother, Deirdre, is a Galway native and her father, Tom ‘Pook’ Dillon, won an All-Ireland in 1956. Keaney harboured an ambition of winning Sam Maguire himself and standing alongside his grandfather with the trophy and while he died in 2019, that ambition had already long been parked by then.

It was eight years ago this week that Keaney’s football career ended as he underwent the first of five surgeries having been told by orthopaedic surgeon Professor Damian Griffin in Coventry that he had the hips of a 70-year-old. He has arthritis in both joints and there will be further hip replacements later in life as a result of being overloaded with various club, college and county teams as his Donegal career began to take flight. He was close to the panel in 2012, when they won the All-Ireland, and won an Ulster medal in 2014 but, having spent 2015 in America before returning to the squad, the trouble with his hips started to become intolerable, eventually bringing him to Prof Griffin’s door and a grim prognosis.

After two years of rehab, at 26 Keaney sought out other sporting avenues, with rowing emerging as an option. Though a late starter, he made considerable progress having joined Donegal Bay and then Commercial Rowing Club in Dublin, representing Ireland in various world and European events, largely in coastal rowing. But there was always going to be a glass ceiling and in 2023 he felt he had hit it.“With rowing, it’s such a technical sport and I came to it late,” he explains. “Fitness and strength will get you so far.

“We went to the World Championships in Italy for the coastal and we were racing guys from New Zealand that had won gold medals, they had just come out of the Olympic set up, so the standard was extremely high but I knew from the point of view that I was 31 that I never was going to get selected for LA (2028 Olympics).

”After being out cycling with his mother around a year ago, he decided that it was a sport that could give him a renewed focus. Like rowing, it doesn’t put any force through the hips so there would be no compromising his health. He joined the Orwell Wheelers CC in Dublin and appointed Cormac McCann as his coach. There are upcoming races in Mayo and Kerry which he plans to take part in with a view to being selected for the prestigious Rás Tailteann in May. “If I got through the Rás, you’d obviously love to try and see what it’s like to race on the continent but it’s really just to see how this year goes and then if it goes well and you actually get on you might try to dip your feet into it. “But the other thing is, I’ll be 33, I’m living with my girlfriend, Grainne, you have to look at is the risk worth the reward when you’re trying to work and save for a house and all that there. ”Rowing and, latterly, cycling was and is fulfilling, but the void left when football was taken from his life could never be adequately filled.“I was brought up in the team environment. The big thing that I would really miss is your friends and your teammates. Ryan McHugh, I would have been at his wedding there, Hugh [McFadden] and Eoghan Ban [Gallagher] I would have lived with them. “Eoin McHugh, I’d be all pally with them, Paddy McBrearty, they’re your best friends that you’ve known since you were 15 so you miss the team environment and playing with them and going to war for your club and your parish and obviously representing Donegal. “You never can replicate that in terms of the buzz and the crowds and the feeling you get and the sense of pride that you’re representing your family. “I suppose rowing, rubbing shoulders with international athletes and guys that had won world medals was cool but you always knew that you were never on an equal playing field. With cycling now, at the minute, I suppose it’s the closest I felt in terms of buzz but you can’t replicate something that you’ve grown up wanting and wishing to do. “To be truthful I still struggle going to Donegal games and watching it because there’s still part of that even though you’re competing in cycling, there’s still part of you thinking that you could do a job and it’s equally hard from a club standpoint.”

Still, he’s learned to live with the disappointment and appreciates that life has sent him in other directions. For example, he wouldn’t have set up his own company, GID Industrial Europe Ltd, if he was still playing for Donegal, while his experience has become a very useful case study in medical circles.“I think I’ve learned an awful lot about myself and kind of moved on. I think it’s funny, my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 and at the time I was still coming to terms with the anger and the frustration of ‘why me?’ But the thing is, when you have a family member or someone that you know hit with a life-threatening illness and you see that, it brings it

back to reality.“You’ve made peace with that and you’ve moved on - but then there’s always the question of what could have been.”