ONE OF THE most intriguing aspects of last month’s All-Ireland semi-final clashes between Mayo and Kerry was the Connacht’s side’s decision to drop Aidan O’Shea deep into defence to perform a man-marking job on Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy.
The towering duo, who have both also excelled at basketball, battled it out over both encounters at Croke Park but it was O’Shea who eventually had the last laugh.
In the dying seconds of Mayo’s victory in the replay, Donaghy was shown a red card by referee David Gough for striking O’Shea, as Kerry missed out on a place in this Sunday’s All-Ireland senior football final against Dublin.
Writing in a blog for AIB, Donaghy — who’s backing the Dubs to win “by an inch” this weekend — reflected on his entertaining duel with his Mayo rival.
He said: “Myself and Aidan O’Shea may have been seen smiling away to one another, but the reality was far from that. We were in each other’s faces throughout both games, real physical stuff and when one of us won a ball, we weren’t long in letting the other man know about it.
“Very little of what was said could be printed here but, if you’d recorded it, I’d say RTÉ or even Sky would pay a nice few bob to get a half-hour long show out of it.
“The first day I’d been half-expecting O’Shea to mark me at some stage, but not from the get-go. In the 2014 semi-finals, a couple of high balls worked out for me and really cost Mayo, so I thought what might happen was that if they got a lead, they could throw one of their big men back late on to ensure they weren’t caught again.
“It was good to see that the other team was willing to sacrifice an important player to come back and scrap with me. Early on that first day I got my hand on a bit of ball and was able to lay it off, but I was struck by the reaction of the Mayo crowd the time O’Shea won a big ball.
“Stephen O’Brien sent in a high delivery and I wanted to get up for it, but I felt one hand on my shoulder and O’Shea got his fist to the ball. He then came out with it, and the roar from the Mayo supporters was the very same as if two goals had gone in.
“I learned a lesson from that. From then on, I knew that I had to starve Mayo of that boost so I brought him on a bit of a tour of Croke Park. You can’t give the opposition any sort of juice, you have to find a way around it.”
Regarding his dismissal in the replay, Donaghy said: “In my book, I had a chapter on how you can’t be the reactor in sport, you must be the aggressor. Aidan was the aggressor, and fair play to him, Mayo will need that in spades [on] Sunday.
“I reacted to the dark arts and ended up getting sent off and losing the game. Other than that, it was as enjoyable a season as I’ve had in over 13 years playing with Kerry.”
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