Aidan O’Connor, the star of ‘26

AIDAN O’Connor is one of the standout performers of 2026 for Limerick. Although attached to the panel for the past few seasons (2023 – present), it’s only been in the last while that the young Ballybrown ace has grabbed headlines He finished the National League, of which Limerick emerged champions for a 15th time, with a tremendous haul of 1-63. So far in the Championship arena, O’Connor has chipped in with a brilliant 3-31, including a fine 2-7 in the record-beating defeat of All-Ireland Champions Tipp at the Gaelic Grounds a fortnight ago. Earlier in the year after the home league win against Cork, Limerick manager John Kiely explained the emergence of O’Connor onto centre-stage. “In sport, it takes a long time to build confidence,” he said. “He’s worked so hard over the last number of years to put himself in the frame to get on the pitch.  Now that he’s taken the opportunity, when we gave him the funds a number of weeks ago, you couldn’t budge him off them.” “His accuracy has been unerring and he’s just in a very comfortable place. His confidence is high. He’s got to keep driving it on. He knows there’s a man behind him waiting to pick them up if he drops them for a couple of seconds, so that’s a great piece for us to have.” Across 30 fixtures, O’Connor has scored a whopping 5-144. He featured in the Munster Championship winning Limerick minor team of 2019, and afterwards spent three consecutive seasons with the U20s – collecting a provincial medal in 2022 – at the end of which he was named Munster Player of the Year. O’Connor has starred in back-to-back Fitzgibbon Cup wins with University of Limerick. The post Aidan O’Connor, the star of ‘26 appeared first on Limerick Post.