Eimear Ryan: Why the need to treat Lee Keegan and Aidan O’Shea so differently?

Keegan’s brilliance is often leveraged against O’Shea, which feels both unfair and beside the point

Wed, 15 Sep, 2021 - 18:16

Last Saturday evening, both Lee Keegan and Aidan O’Shea were trending. Twitter is a naturally polarising environment, and people only tend to trend for positive or negative reasons.

To see that a beloved elderly celebrity trending is to panic, for a moment, that they’ve gone and died. (A relief, then, to see that they’re just appearing on Celebrity Masterchef or have finally been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.)

So it was for Keegan and O’Shea, who seem to have found themselves hero and villain in the wake of Mayo’s latest All-Ireland loss; two sides of the same tragic coin. Keegan was warmly praised for his performance on Saturday, and there were some truly gorgeous photos doing the rounds: one by Ray MacManus, of an emotional Keegan carrying his daughter Líle on the pitch after the game; another by James Crombie, of Keegan crouching and sharing a few words with Peter Harte, with Harte’s daughter Ava, in a tiny Tyrone jersey, between them on the grass.

O’Shea, meanwhile, was being torn asunder. Little went right for him in the second half of the game, and a jeery online contingent was taking a little bit too much pleasure in that fact.

Both Keegan and O’Shea are landmark players of the era; both have been around for all six lost All-Irelands of the last decade. They have soldiered together for many years, and must find the comparisons extremely tiresome — in particular O’Shea, who has somehow found himself as the face of Mayo’s horrible run of luck, a lightning rod for jibes and criticism.

Like most people outside of Dublin, I love watching Keegan. He’s somehow both a crowd-pleaser and a players’ player, one who you’d imagine would be on many a manager’s wish list if transfers were a thing. His leadership and attitude were rightly praised over the weekend, from the way he almost closed down Conor McKenna for Tyrone’s second goal, to his crucial point 30 seconds later.

But Keegan’s brilliance is often leveraged against O’Shea, which feels both unfair and beside the point. Keegan’s outrageous tally of 2-4 from defence in seven finals is often pointedly compared with the scoring record of O’Shea, who has yet to score in an All-Ireland decider. Too much is made of this, I think: they are different types of footballers. O’Shea is first and foremost a distributor, as well as a breaker and winner of ball; a bustling, driving player. If his name doesn’t always appear on the scoresheet, he makes up for it in assists and frees won.

The two seem, at least from this distance, to be temperamentally different, which plays into the dichotomy as well. Keegan is a loveable bowsie, with a crafty streak (see: the GPS incident), and plays with a kind of abandon. O’Shea comes across as serious and introverted, at least on the pitch — always striving to do the right thing. It’s notable — and even interesting — that he has never played a starring role in an All-Ireland final, but he is always busy, committed, involved.

If you are one of a team’s more recognisable players, there is always more scrutiny on you. Call it the Joe Canning Effect — if you’re not excelling in every match, there is a proportion of supporters and spectators who will take it almost personally. O’Shea is also frequently unlucky: both with the quality of ball that’s delivered into him, which varies wildly; and with refereeing decisions, maybe in part due to his stature. At one point in the first half on Saturday, he was fouled multiple times by surrounding Tyrone players, pulled to the ground and stepped on. The ref and a linesman had a clear view of it, but it was somehow still a free out.

It was a match full of complicated emotions. Tyrone played smart, focused, skilful football and thoroughly earned their fourth All-Ireland title. It was hard not to be delighted for this young team, while at the same time regretting the fact that catharsis for Mayo — and by extension, the rest of us — is delayed once again. More crowd shots of Mayo supporters with their hands to their faces, another photoset of spent Mayo players looking quietly devastated. Curses are only real to the extent that they can affect you psychologically, which is to say, very real indeed.

WHILE watching last Sunday’s camogie final between Galway and Cork, I had the strangest feeling. It took me a while to put my finger on it. The game itself was an exciting, skilful, pacy contest, so I was thrilled with all that, but emotionally, there was the absence of something. What was it? Oh, frustration.

It was such a joy to watch an unfettered top-level camogie match, one that wasn’t complicated by odd refereeing decisions or interrupted constantly by the whistle. The game was frantic, aggressive and competitive, but not dirty — none of the off-the-ball incidents that were a factor in both semi-finals.

And maybe most refreshing of all, there were no frees for ‘charging’, that most baffling of rules, in which a canny defender can win a free simply by colliding with a forward in full flight. The adjustments to the rulebook are proving to be a success; it was physical, it was fair, and it was let flow.

For me, it was all the more gratifying that a female ref presided over the game. I’ve been as guilty as anyone for buying into the idea that female refs are somehow ‘more finicky’ than their male counterparts. (There is a bit of internalised misogyny involved here — I’ve also experienced my share of dodgy male refs, but tend not to tar them all with the same brush.)

With her performance on the day, Liz Dempsey smashed that myth. Last weekend’s excellent standards — both in hurling and in refereeing terms — bodes well for camogie’s future.