O’Shaughnessy fights his corner

WHEN Stephen O’Shaughnessy runs out onto the Croke Park pitch on Sunday he may be a little more enthusiastic than his team-mates.

The Dublin corner-back was close to missing the Leinster SFC final after dislocating his shoulder against Wexford, a close call that may help him appreciate Sunday all the more.

Come the throw-in on Sunday it’ll be almost exactly four weeks to the minute since his season, brimful of promise and potential, took a hammer-blow.

There were barely ten minutes on the clock when the young defender challenged Matty Forde for a breaking ball that ended with him prone on the turf and clutching his shoulder.

He knew what it was immediately. Dislocated shoulder injuries are nothing new to the 23-year old. Three years ago the same joint popped out four times and kept him out of the U21 side’s Leinster and All-Ireland finals that year, making this year’s setback all the more frustrating.

“It’s massively frustrating to get an injury like that with it being my first season to be getting on, starting against Longford and the Meath game going well enough,” he said.

His return is a boost; the pessimistic early indications were that he might just make it back for the All-Ireland quarter-finals, assuming Dublin could get that far. With Paul Caffrey keeping faith with many of Tommy Lyons’ old footsoldiers, O’Shaughnessy was the one real newcomer to shove his way into the reckoning.

If most of us had been taken aback by his ability to take to championship football like a duck to water, the man himself wasn’t.

“The league campaign had a lot to with it. Paul Caffrey started me in all the games and I learned a lot in that. I had some good days and some bad days yet he still stuck with me. He showed real faith in me.

“Come the Longford game I was ready to step up. Getting over the first game is the biggest step because you can be very nervous, especially in the first half. The Meath game I felt very comfortable. I really enjoyed it.”

The new manager’s loyalty has been the solid foundation this team has needed. After the last two seasons of delayed and disguised team selections, where everyone was left fearing their head was for the chop, Caffrey’s no-nonsense style has been like a blast of fresh air.

“Another example is that people were calling for Mossie Quinn to be dropped after the Meath game after he missed a few points.

They started him again against Wexford and he delivered with ten points. Paul shows faith in the players. A lot of guys have put in a lot of effort this past year and obviously a lot of people don’t see what goes on in training.

“Paul does.

“He sees what players are doing and he has rewarded players by sticking with them.”

At the time of Caffrey’s appointment, the worry was that he would be considered damaged goods by the players because of his role as selector in the previous regime. That theory has been debunked long ago with the panel reacting to the new boss straight away.

Training is more competitive, with players disappointed with not making the starting 15 doubling their efforts rather than halving them as a result.

“With the new management coming in, the incentive is always there for lads to prove themselves again. It showed in the league where we won a couple of tight games that Dublin maybe wouldn’t have won before.

“A little bit of luck comes into it as well.

“There were a couple of games in the league that maybe we shouldn’t have won, but we had the luck and that’s given us the confidence to go on from there.”