Confident McMahon grateful for second chance

By Brendan O’Brien

Saturday, March 06, 2010

ALL things being equal, Dublin’s Philip McMahon will walk onto the pitch in Castlebar tomorrow and find himself marking a certain Aidan O’Shea, one of the hottest properties in the country.

The Breaffy full-forward first came to the attentions of the wider world in 2008 when he led the line for a Mayo minor team that reached the All-Ireland final and he started to mix it with the big boys at the senior grade last year.

He hasn’t hit full throttle so far this season but O’Shea still represents a daunting prospect for any full-back, especially one like McMahon with such limited inter-county experience.

Or so you would think.

"You have to treat them with respect," says the Ballymun Kickhams defender of forwards in general, lest his words be construed as some sort of slap down in O’Shea’s direction. "You have to be respectful of whoever you’re marking.

"But I wouldn’t be going out being afraid of the fellas I’m marking. That’s not saying I’m vain. It’s just saying I respect the player I mark but I am going out to do my own job not to worry about his game.

"You don’t look at them as a better player than anybody else. You just take them all at a certain standard and you try and implement your own game on whoever you mark."

McMahon’s is a brand of self-confidence that has survived having being dropped from the Dublin panel by Pat Gilroy last term in the manager’s first season in charge.

His first big break with the county side came in the O’Byrne Cup under Paul Caffrey two seasons back and he did well enough to hang around for the league and pick up ten minutes against Louth at the start of the summer. Then, nothing.

Though he had dreamed of playing for his county growing up, his main focus and first love had always been Ballymun and the Kickhams and he immersed himself in the club during his time in the wilderness.

"It was a blow but it was down to my own performance and it made me stronger as a player to go back and think ‘what do I have to improve’, what was I doing wrong, and that’s what needs to be done as a player.

"You need to keep improving, looking at what you can do year in, year out, so I went back and looked at my own performances and tried to improve as much as I could."

A wing-back when he first got the nod from Caffrey, Ballymun and Dublin legend Paddy Christie converted McMahon into a full-back and his old county manager gave him another leg-up by picking him for the Leinster interpro side.

That meant a lot.

"Definitely. You’re playing Ulster, against Stephen O’Neill, Michael Murphy. You’re coming up against the top players in the country so it was good to get a game in before I got a call down to the Dublin team."

His upsurge in fortunes has crossed over into the college football scene as well. He was one of half a dozen Dubliners who helped DCU defeat UCC in the Sigerson Cup final last week. He started at corner-back in the decider but it is in the number three jersey where he sees himself in the years to come, a position which Dublin have struggled to fill year on year in the recent past.

McMahon hopes to hold on for some time. "It’s a tough position. Once you make one slip up or your man gets in behind you it could be the end of the game so it’s a very important position to any team. You’re there more to do a job on the man you’re marking. That’s the game that suits me so that’s why I like it. I’m just there to play in whatever position he puts me in though. Once I have a jersey, that’s the main thing."

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, March 06, 2010