“What improvements do you want to make for 2018, Aidan?”
“An All-Ireland medal would be nice. That’d be a good improvement.”
It’s not one of those warm laughs, he has. Infectious. It’s clear that September 18 still haunts Aidan O’Shea, the year before too and every other year that Mayo have come close. He’s desperate for one Celtic Cross. Just one.
In a media event promoting Coca-Cola’s designated driver campaign for over Christmas, O’Shea is sitting beside Paul Flynn. Flynn has five All-Ireland medals to his name but for the same time and effort, O’Shea has none to show. It’s just not fair sometimes.
Aidan O'Shea had his priorities right after All-Ireland defeat https://t.co/YN8igOAHNH
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 18, 2017
If there was ever a year that the Breaffy man could look back on and say ‘F*ck that’, it’s 2017. It was a year that was unfair to O’Shea and unfair to Mayo.
It went as it always went. Mayo were disappointing in the league and flirted with relegation. It’s something that happens year on year, it’s a consequence of half the panel studying and living up in Dublin:
“Earlier in the year, it’s split. We’ve one group in Dublin depending on how many boys are in college in Dublin. Right up until the end of the league [it’s like that], [then] we come together until the end of the championship,” O’Shea says.
“It’ll be different this year as the championship starts earlier so you’ve only three or four weeks from the league to the championship. The league is always a different one for us because we’re not training collectively together.”
O’Shea cuts the shit about how it impacts the on-field performances of Mayo, he doesn’t mince his words when saying that he believes that the team are always going to struggle when they don’t train together:
“The more boys are playing together during the summer, it’s a lot easier to go out and play as a group together.
“When you’re split on a Tuesday night in Mayo and a Wednesday night in Dublin it’s obviously not ideal. It’s not something we can get over, it’s the logistics of the whole thing living out in the west.
“It’s something we have to live with. On average, you’re talking 10 or 12 lads in Dublin and the rest would be at home. It’s something we’ve always had to contend with and unless someone starts piling jobs into Mayo I don’t think anything will change any time soon.”
Mayo nearly made a league final after all the criticism about them. A drubbing at the hands of Dublin meant they were written off but they came back. They always do.
Then the build-up to championship came around and O’Shea found himself in the headlines. This time it was for taking selfies.
"Where are these mouthpieces now who were kicking Aidan O'Shea?" | SportsJOE.ie https://t.co/QqEInj9jOe
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) July 25, 2017
After a challenge match against Meath, Bernard Flynn said that O’Shea had ditched his teammates to pose for pictures and sign autographs for fans:
“At the very end of the match the Mayo players got round in a circle and O’Shea had finished the match with the 15 that had finished. There were 15, 20 kids around and he signed autographs,” Flynn said.
It was something that had been blown completely out of proportion. O’Shea cleared things up later in the year that he’d already completed his warm down and was simply giving back to the fans:
“It was just stupid. I don’t know why it got so much traction but it did. It became kind of like wildfire then at that time,” O’Shea says.
Between ‘selfie-gate’ and everything else that was being written about O’Shea and Mayo, it was time to switch off social media.
“I was like, ‘There’s no need to engage in this,’” notes O’Shea “I just turned it off because it was a different stupid story coming out every day. I just turned it off. It was probably my first year doing that because usually, things aren’t that crazy. It’s something I didn’t engage in and maybe it did me a bit of good. But it’s not a big deal really.
“It’s not that I’d be reading it. I can decide on what I want to follow on social media but you see some of the stuff being retweeted from people and some of the stuff was just crazy earlier in the year. It was just stupid stuff so I said I’m better off. Instead of turning on my phone and seeing 40 notifications on Twitter, I was like I don’t need to see them so I just turn it off.”
"THIS is Aidan O'Shea: the one we've heard stories about, the one we'll hear myths of one day…"https://t.co/jrXbGYygZR
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) July 8, 2017
The one word that the 27-year-old kept reiterating was ‘stupid’, and he was right too. It was being made out in some circles that he was almost a diva-like primadonna causing Mayo to fall short every year.
Common sense prevailed with most. Conán Doherty of SportsJOE wrote at the time that it was nonsense. So too did SportsJOE’s Jack O’Toole, formerly of the Irish Independent.
But the headlines had O’Shea been seen to be ignoring fans would have been umpteen times worse but there is no fear of the three-time All-Star taking his fans for granted.
“I don’t think it should change in the 21st century than it did 30 years ago, it’s the same thing so I’ll always be obliging with my time where possible and so will most Gaelic footballers. I haven’t seen it any different in any other county. I don’t know what the big deal was about.”
It was a storm in a teacup that eventually blew over, O’Shea got on with it and had a stellar year but not one he was entirely happy with.
“It was a frustrating year because I missed most of the league because I rolled my ankle. I had a groin issue coming into the Sligo game and then losing to Galway was a disaster.
“I had no time to really think about it and I just needed to get back on the pitch and try to contribute as best I could. Nice to get an All-Star at the end of the year, but we pitted ourselves well coming down the stretch against Kerry and Dublin.
“We struggled right through the summer in games that we should have been winning a little bit more comfortably.
“That’s my third All-Star but I’ve no All-Ireland medals and that’s the real goal. Nice to win an All-Star but overall a disappointing year.”
Enough is enough https://t.co/rTIooHX419
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) November 29, 2017
It’s funny. When you talk to the Dublin players about All-Stars they say the same thing. Fortunately for them, they’ve been on the better side of it. It’s all about winning the All-Ireland first and then whatever comes after is a bonus. Aidan O’Shea and his Mayo team have plenty of All-Stars between them, they have the team that would have won multiple All-Irelands in any other era but they just keep coming up agonisingly short and a consolation is all they can seek solace in.
What makes Mayo so captivating is exactly that, they keep you interested. Watching Dublin or Kerry rack up cricket scores isn’t entertaining to the neutral. It probably isn’t even entertaining to their own fans at this point but Mayo do things the hard way. They struggled along throughout the summer and had everyone hooked for every bounce of the ball.
But why was it they were struggling against the Derrys and Corks of the world? Nobody really knows and it baffled just about everyone including the players.
“We just left teams back in the game, conceded bad goals and we were probably figuring ourselves out a little bit as well,” O’Shea openly admits when asked for his honest opinion.
“Players coming back from injury, we’d boys suspended in certain games. It’s hard to understand why we can’t maintain the level we maybe do against a Dublin or Kerry. Maybe it’s a mental thing, I’m not quite sure.”
The year ended in heartbreak. It’s a feeling that the camp is far too familiar with by now. But to go hand in hand with his All-Star, O’Shea was also appointed the captain for the International Rules Series and it quite clearly meant a lot to him.
“It was a very nice honour to be asked in the first place and then people were saying to me that it’s great to be captain. And I was saying it would be even better if we won the thing.
“I was a bit disappointed I didn’t get to bring the Cormac McAnallen trophy back here. I was delighted to be asked by Joe (Kernan) and it’s something I’ll always remember.”
But now it’s about looking forward to 2018. After a long, hard season Aidan O’Shea takes a well-deserved break.
“I haven’t really thought about 2018 season right now,” O’Shea admits “I’m going to take a break, enjoy Christmas. I’m as motivated and looking forward to next year as much as ever. While I’m fit and able to play you’ve got to enjoy and embrace it. So I’m just looking forward to it.”
The Breaffy man will be back, Mayo will be back and maybe, just maybe, next year will be their year.
