Rory O'Carroll(1989–)

Rory O'Carroll was born at Crumlin in south-central Dublin on the eleventh of May 1989, son of a Crumlin family of long Dublin Gaelic-football tradition. He was raised in the Crumlin-and-Kilmacud Stillorgan area of south-east Dublin, was schooled at the Holy Cross National School and at St Benildus College in Kilmacud, and took up Gaelic football and hurling with Kilmacud Crokes GAA Club from five. He played underage hurling and football for Kilmacud Crokes through every age grade, broke into the Kilmacud Crokes senior football team at sixteen in 2005, and was selected for the Dublin minor team in 2007 in his eighteenth year.

He made his senior debut for Dublin at full-back against Westmeath in the Leinster Senior Football Championship on the eleventh of June 2010 in his twenty-first year, was retained at full-back through Dublin's 2010 Leinster-winning season under manager Pat Gilroy, and held the full-back position as the foundation single defender of the Dublin team for the next six seasons. His central role was as the marking full-back charged with the man-marking of the opposing team's principal scoring full-forward across the championship campaigns: he marked Stephen O'Neill of Tyrone, Bernard Brogan would-be opponent Andrew Murnin of Armagh, the Cork full-forwards through the Munster-Connacht tier, the Mayo full-forwards Cillian and Aidan O'Shea, and the Kerry full-forward attacks under Eamonn Fitzmaurice.

His All-Ireland senior medal-winning years were 2011, 2013 and 2015, all three in the central position of full-back. The 2011 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final at Croke Park on the eighteenth of September 2011 against Kerry was the first Dublin Sam Maguire Cup win for sixteen years, since 1995; O'Carroll marked Tomás Ó Sé and held Kerry's full-forward line to two points from open play in the second half. The 2013 final on the twenty-second of September 2013 against Mayo at Croke Park, the 2014 Leinster Senior Football Championship win, and the 2015 All-Ireland final replay against Kerry on the second of October 2015 (the All-Ireland title decided after a drawn-final), all sat on the foundation of his marking full-back work. He was awarded the GAA All-Star Award at full-back in 2013 in his twenty-fourth year, the highest individual recognition in the Gaelic football year.

He took a career break from intercounty Gaelic football in November 2015 in his twenty-sixth year to take a teaching-and-coaching job in New Zealand, played senior club rugby for the Marist senior rugby club at Auckland through the 2016 and 2017 New Zealand winter seasons, returned to Dublin at the close of 2017, was added back to the Dublin senior football panel in February 2018, played as a substitute in the 2018 Leinster Senior Football Championship, and ended his intercounty career in 2019. He continued as full-back for Kilmacud Crokes through the late 2010s and 2020s, won the Dublin Senior Football Championship with Kilmacud Crokes in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and won the AIB All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship with Kilmacud Crokes in 2009 and again on the seventeenth of March 2023. The Carroll name in modern Irish sport carries the weight of the three All-Ireland senior medals and the central single full-back position of the foundation period of the modern Dublin dynasty.