Conor Mortimer has com­pared Kobe McDon­ald to Kerry super­star David Clif­ford in terms of his value to Mayo.

The former player and All-Star who remains Mayo’s second highest cham­pi­on­ship scorer behind Cil­lian O’Con­nor said the impact of McDon­ald – who lines out in tomor­row’s All-Ire­land foot­ball semi-final against Louth before he takes up an AFL con­tract with St Kilda – in his debut senior sea­son makes the immin­ent loss sting.

‘Of course it does because you’re los­ing one of your play­ers that you would poten­tially build a team around for a period of time. You could be talk­ing about him in the same con­text as David Clif­ford in the likes of Kerry.

‘He’s your reg­u­lar, he’s your go-to, your guar­an­teed five or six points a game and you’re guar­an­teed to win more games than you’re going to lose, provided he’s fit and he’s play­ing.

‘But on the flip­side of that, I’ve trav­elled and I’ve exper­i­enced life abroad in dif­fer­ent coun­tries and I can only say from an unselfish point of view that any­one who gets the oppor­tun­ity to do it, if they want to make a liv­ing at it, well and good. To see the world and live that life­style, it’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent life­style to what Gaelic foot­ballers live here in terms of fin­an­cially, fam­ily-wise, all that kind of stuff. It’s very, very hard.’

Oisín Mul­lin is another top foot­baller who Mayo lost to the AFL and who is really mak­ing an impact Down Under. Mor­timer doesn’t begrudge any player though who has the lure of a pro­fes­sional con­tract dangled in front of him.

‘To get that oppor­tun­ity abroad, it’s obvi­ously dis­ap­point­ing from a Mayo per­spect­ive. It’s no dif­fer­ent to a young fella sign­ing for Aston Villa or Liv­er­pool or who­ever it is in the Premier League as a pro­fes­sional sports­man.

‘He’s always been a strong, stand-out player and he’s been given the oppor­tun­ity this year as he was only doing his Leav­ing Cert. I sup­pose he’s been picked to play on the biggest stage and the biggest thing for me is the fact that he’s per­form­ing reg­u­larly and per­form­ing well.’

Mor­timer, who was speak­ing to mark AIB’s 11th year in sup­port­ing the GAA All-Ire­land senior foot­ball cham­pi­on­ship, fea­tured in the All-Ire­land final defeats of 2004 and 2006 to Kerry and fin­ished as the cham­pi­on­ship’s top scorer that lat­ter year. He shared a dress­ing room in his day with Kobe’s father, Ciarán, who played with a sim­ilar skil­ful flour­ish.

As to when he thought Kobe might be a spe­cial, he smiles: ‘The day he was born prob­ably, to be quite hon­est. I think very, very early. Before he was even kick­ing ball. You’d have had an idea that if he has an interest in foot­ball, this is the dir­ec­tion he’ll go. There was no ques­tion, know­ing his dad and the way he was about the game.

‘But I think from under-12, under-14, there was big scor­ing in games: kick­ing 45s at 13, 14 years of age, he just had a lot of dif­fer­ent attrib­utes that young people without that spe­cial tal­ent, shall we say, don’t have. And he’s car­ried it on to senior.’

Mor­timer accepts that the demands of the mod­ern game impact on the choice young play­ers make when offered the chance to take up an AFL con­tract. ‘If you want to be the best foot­baller you can be, it’s very dif­fi­cult to be doing a nine-to-five job.

And any young fella that’s going away, that’s part of the reas­on­ing. They go and they train in the morn­ing, they have the after­noon off, they might train in the even­ing and then they relax, and they get well paid for it.

‘So fair play to him for tak­ing the oppor­tun­ity. ‘Obvi­ously he’ll be a huge loss to Mayo, but what a way it could be to send him off by poten­tially get­ting to an All-Ire­land final.’