Dublin GAA icon Diarmuid Connolly charged with pub assault

The six-time All-Ireland winner potentially faces up to one year behind bars if convicted of the two charges arising out the alleged assaults in Santry on New Year’s Eve in 2022 going into 2023.

Connolly (36), with an address at Collinswood in Beaumont, is charged with assaulting Stephen Grimes and Stephen Kiely at Shantalla Road in Santry just over a year ago.

He appeared before Dublin District Court on January 3rd charged with the two Section 2 assaults and the case was back before the courts again this week for mention. His defence requested any CCTV footage of the incident be made available to his legal team.

He was remanded on continuing bail to appear again on April 4th.

He has not yet indicated how he will plead.

People convicted of Section 2 assaults can face up to six months in prison for each offence.

The incident is alleged to have happened in the hours leading up to the midnight celebrations to ring in 2023.

Connolly had a stellar GAA career winning six All Ireland football championships, 10 Leinster titles and four league titles with Dublin along with two All Star Awards.

He had his controversies on the pitch and was given a 12 week ban in 2017 for pushing a linesman during Dublin’s Leinster quarter final match against Carlow that year.

He returned to action later that year with a brief appearance in Dublin’s All Ireland semi-final against Tyrone before making a massive impact in the final against Mayo by coming off the bench in the second half and scoring a point before winning a free kick which led to the winning point from Dublin in injury time.

He retired from intercounty football in 2018 and travelled to Boston for a summer where he played with Donegal Boston.

He made a surprise return to the Dublin team in 2019 after being asked to return by manager Jim Gavin and won another All-Ireland medal.

“I had sat down with my family, a couple of my close friends, the management team and a lot of the guys on the team and made the decision to come back for a couple of months. But I knew that that’s all it was,” he said in an interview last year.

“There’s a lot of miles on the clock. And also, I wanted to pursue other angles, other parts of my life as well, and a lot of that took a hit by playing for Dublin for so long. The time and effort that you put into it, I don’t think I had the fire anymore either.

“I think that kind of died out a little bit and when that happens, in my opinion, if that happens to a player, you kind of have to take a step back. When I came back in ’19, I wasn’t the same player I was in ’17 or ’16 or the years previous.

“I was the one driving the standards. I was the one doing the extra stuff. I was the one getting up early in the morning, but I wasn’t doing that. And it’s not a mindset thing, it’s something that changed, do you know that sort of way? I saw the bigger picture and, yeah, I’d enough of it at that stage.”

As well as winning the All Ireland with his county, Connolly helped his local club St Vincent’s win the All-Ireland club football championship on two occasions.

He was back playing hurling with St Vincent’s last year but didn’t return to football.

Off the pitch Connolly has worked in sales for various companies and is also a director of two of his own companies.

Last year, he launched a company which makes various products for dogs.

In another interview last year, Connolly described himself as a private person who didn’t like media attention.

“I'm a private person," he said. "Sport is sport, it's a hobby at the end of the day. I try to keep my private stuff private. Mostly, that's been respected. Sometimes it hasn't been. And that pisses me off, to be honest with you. If someone did step out of line like that, they just wouldn't get access again. That's how it works.

“I’m a private person. I'm not mad about the media stuff. I think it has a place obviously but it wasn't really for me. Some lads really thrive on it but it never really interested me all that much."