AS THE CAMERAS panned around for an arresting image just as the Mayo team were coming out to join Galway for the second half of Sunday’s Allianz league final, it settled on one man.
Aidan O’Shea.
Of course it did. The cameras and photo lenses follow him around, moths drawn to a flame. For eleven full seconds, the lens lingered. Almost indecently.
Monday morning, and the front page of the Irish Examiner sports section, the front page of the Irish Independent, and the cover of the Irish Times all feature the Breaffy man.
While there’s been an unhealthy obsession with O’Shea for years, even these coincidences stand out. A team can be embodied by certain figures, but this focus detracts from the actual assessment around what he is as a footballer by this stage, 32 years old.
By half time in the league final, he had already compiled a handsome contribution. He had four kickpasses, four hand passes, and had been fouled for three scoreable frees.
After catching the throw-in, he played a neat kickpass to James Carr in the first play of the game.
Two minutes later he carried the ball and kicked to favour Ryan O’Donoghue’s run, as he was bundled over and goalkeeper Colm Reape scored the resultant free.
Wind the tape on another two minutes and he plays a ball over the top to O’Donoghue heading towards the goal. While O’Donoghue’s options are closed down, O’Shea again helps out in the recycling of the ball before James Carr takes his point.
Just after ten minutes, he dropped deep to help out the defence, carried the ball 30 metres while Johnny Heaney was reluctant to commit and get rolled. O’Shea kicked to O’Donoghue who claimed and converted a mark.
Just as time is running out in the first half, O’Shea won a scoreable free that Reape hoisted over.
From the 0-7 accrued in the first half, O’Shea was involved in 0-4 of it.
2023 is a long, long way from the 2009 in which O’Shea made his championship debut against New York.
While the headline figure will always be the six All-Ireland finals he has lost, it took him ten years before he won his first Allianz league title in 2019.
But here’s a good one. From that team that beat Kerry in the final, 19 players were used in that game. O’Shea, along with Matthew Ruane, Diarmuid O’Connor, James Carr and Paddy Durcan are the only ones left, while Cillian O’Connor is nursing a knee injury.
In the popular imagination, O’Shea has become the Mayo crusade in flesh and bone. The delight in which his detractors derive from Mayo losing is a curious phenomenon and he is showered with scorn in these moments.
Never was that more prevalent than the aftermath of the 2021 final when they lost to Tyrone. That day, Ronan McNamee executed a block on O’Shea that prevented his first score in an All-Ireland final.
Mayo’s inability to seal the deal that day after doing the heavy lifting in beating Dublin in the semi-final, led to a whispering campaign that even the Mayo public were turning their back on him and their team.
That hard-nosed attitude could never last long. But before the public were ready to publicly reconcile after a trial separation, Kevin McStay had his say in his Irish Times column.
‘Look at Aidan O’Shea,’ he wrote.
“Nobody but nobody can agree where Mayo should play him and what his best position is, yet he has been playing for over a decade. Maybe Mayo have done O’Shea a disservice here.
“Has his role ever been clarified for him? Or has he been asked to be all things for too many Mayo teams down the years?
“His game has suffered because of that. This was true on Saturday. Aidan had a very decent start. I felt he was one of the top three Mayo players at half-time.”
After a solid defence of O’Shea’s general contribution and a vivid expression of some of the personalised nature of the sneering, McStay shared an anecdote.
“Here’s a story. O’Shea lost his fifth final on Saturday, December 19th, 2020. He didn’t score. Dublin won with no undue fuss,’ he explained.
“On Monday, January 18th 2021 a friend of mine had a meeting with a sports consultant in the Sism gym in Castlebar. It is run by a member of the Mayo backroom team.
“It was a wet damp old morning and as he went into the office, my friend spotted O’Shea doing a weights session. He had started back the week before. People don’t see that side of it. He has been doing this for a decade. Up to recently, Aidan O’Shea hadn’t missed a game for Mayo in 10 years.”
Kind words from McStay can only take someone so far. It had been said that O’Shea hadn’t the gas in the tank for a full game anymore.
But in extra-time yesterday, he was still there, winning aerial balls to set up a Michael Plunkett effort that fell short. In the 52nd minute he was fouled, Ryan O’Donoghue pointed. A minute later he kicked the delivery that O’Donoghue claimed as a mark and converted.
And as the seconds ticked away, the TG4 camera focused on Kevin McStay getting word down the line that the contest was over.
Only to switch to O’Shea then going to his knees in delight for his second national title, after pouring himself into a career that is in its’ fifteenth season.
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