IRELAND’S International Rules captain Aidan O’Shea admits that last month’s All-Ireland final defeat by Dublin was the hardest to take of all the heartbreaks he’s suffered in a Mayo jersey.
The one-point loss to Jim Gavin’s three-in-a-row champions was his fourth reverse in a decider, as it was for many of his team-mates. Three of them have come at the hands of Dublin, and all three by that very same one-point margin.
Speaking yesterday at the announcement of the Ireland panel that he will skipper in the two-test series in Australia next month, O’Shea felt upon watching the game back on tape that it was their best performance in a final but that they “lost control” of a game that they looked to have won.
“I think so, it has probably been the hardest one. When it’s fresher it’s probably harder as well. Yeah, it’s harder because when you look at the game…
“I watched the game back with my brother. He said ‘ah f*** it, we did that’. I was like, ‘but Seamie, we’re doing f***ing so many things well here.’
“When you lose a game by a point you’re analysing every single play. That’s a one-point loss.
“I’m sure Dublin made loads of mistakes, have places they would improve, but they won the game by a point so they don’t have to reflect on those things.
“That’s the tough part of it. You’re looking at every little inch that you could have done better, could have improved. You look back on the game and think we played really well, just came up against a team that were better than us. Just lost control of the game in the last five or six minutes where I felt we were in control for long stretches. Just let it slip.”
As for the controversial dying minutes of the game, when Dublin held a number of Mayo defenders down on the final kick-out to prevent a short restart, there were no complaints from the Breaffy man.
“I didn’t really pay any heed to it in the game. It was what it was. There was the kick-out, they got the ball back and we didn’t,” he said.
“I wasn’t thinking this was unfair or anything like that – that’s just what they ought to do and it worked.
“I don’t know what the rules are – if there was a foul in play then should the free be taken where the foul was committed and then obviously we don’t have a kick-out but a free. I’m not sure.
“Look, they were trying to stop us kicking short no more than any other kick-out all day. They went a little further and dragged boys to the ground and stuff. It’s just smart.
“They stopped us from getting the ball, they kept it for the rest of the game, they won the game.
“We get the ball in our hands and the reality is we would get an opportunity to score or win a free like last year, Cillian in the drawn game.
“It was a great score but because the ball was in our hands there was always the opportunity we were going to get that chance whereas they didn’t allow it this time.”
It was a strange season for Mayo and O’Shea would win awards for understatement.
Routinely written off following a slow start to the championship, one that almost saw them gone on more than one occasion, they recovered to play some sparkling football in Croke Park.
“Typical us really. It makes ye look like fools – ye tell us we’re not going to win anything and all of a sudden we turn around and play well again,” he smiles.
“We’re never going to hammer a team by 20 points for some reason, like Dublin do in Leinster. We just don’t do that. We always seem to keep teams in it.
“Realistically, we could have lost to Derry. James Kielt was standing over that free, I thought, ‘That’s our season dusted’ because I’ve seen him kick points from some yardage. I thought that was our season gone there. Thankfully, we dug that one out.
“When we got to Croke Park we got a bit of a scare here from Roscommon.
“Then we got our s*** together for a longer period of time against Roscommon, just started playing a bit of good ball again.”
For two weeks after, he became the most talked about player in the country when Stephen Rochford moved him to full-back to dilute the aerial threat of Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy. The views on it were so widely contrasting that being definitive is near impossible.
O’Shea himself? Happy enough.
“I thought, for us, both days it worked in terms of what our objective was out of it,” he said.
“We conceded two bad goals, nothing to do with me playing full-back, the first day.
“You take them out and we win the game comfortably. And we took them out the second day and we won comfortably.
“There was a clamour, I think more so from Kerry, to take me out of
full-back than there was anywhere else, and I thought that was quite noted in the fact that I think they would have been happy to see me moved out of full-back because it maybe would have helped their game plan.
“That was fine; we were very comfortable with the first day. I know people thought it didn’t work – we were comfortable with how it worked, the objective worked, and the second day the same thing happened. So we were quite happy with it.”
He’s well used to being the centre of attention, even if it means being a lightning rod for the team, as it’s put to him.
“If I’ve to be the lightning rod then that’s fine,” he said.
“We have an array of players. Jason Doherty’s had one of the best summers of a half-forward all year, and I don’t think half the country has spoken about him, I think it’s amazing.
“We’ve got some brilliant, brilliant footballers that maybe people don’t give enough dues to.
“If I’ve to take the flak for some of it when we lose a game, fine … it ain’t going to make me up or down.
“If it means that the group don’t get as much hassle over it then fine, I’m well used to it at this stage.”
