Sheehan in awe of Darran’s flick

BRYAN SHEEHAN had seen Darran O’Sullivan try it before.

On team holidays in the USA, the Caribbean and the Far East down the years, the Kerry boys have always packed a few O’Neill’s and indulged in a bit of football of the association variety and O’Sullivan would usually try to empty his box of tricks.

This was different, though. This was Croke Park, not a far flung beach on the other side of the Atlantic.

A keen Manchester United fan, O’Sullivan pulled off the kind of finish yesterday that Sky Sports News would play on the loop for a week when he swung his right instep at Sheehan’s misplaced handpass and flicked it to the Limerick net.

Brian Scanlon’s reaction said it all. The Limerick goalkeeper stood with both hands on his head and mouth open, gaping at the spot where O’Sullivan had just performed his contortionist’s trick but unable to process the catalogue of events that had led to the strike.

He wasn’t alone. Sections of the crowd were sure the ball had been deflected in and it wasn’t until the replay on the two giant TV screens at either end of the ground that the ‘oooh’ of appreciation was heard.

“What a finish. What a finish,” said Sheehan. “I was cursing myself, to be honest. It was a desperate ball but when I saw the flick... He could have been very unlucky, it could have hit someone’s knee and not gone in at all but it was spectacular. He was coming at such speed that he had the awareness just to flick it as it was a bad pass.”

O’Sullivan’s goal wasn’t just a moment of individual brilliance, it was the cherry on top of a team move that found its origins from a free in Kerry’s right corner-back slot and purposefully tracked the length of the pitch.

That Sheehan’s fingerprints should have been on it was appropriate, even if his final pass was less than perfect.

The St Mary’s man said last week that he was no replacement for Darragh Ó Sé but he played as if determined to prove himself wrong. Effective in the air, he offers Kerry offensive skills that aren’t overstocked in most midfield units but he brushed aside any attempts to dwell on an individual performance that earned him the man of the match award in many departments. Yesterday, and the summer in general, is all about redemption for Kerry as a collective after their shock exit to Down at this stage last year.

Sheehan admitted yesterday that the memory of it had sharpened their appetite.

He said: “The hunger is there with all of us this year. We were very disappointed after what happened last year and that was the key driving force for us coming here, how disappointed we were going home. That was 12 months ago today. It’s only one hurdle jumped now. We have another two to go.”

The question is: how prepared are they to overcome them? Kerry have played four championship games now and won three of them by an average of just under 12 points. Their Munster final defeat of Cork stands alone as a competitive contest. Kerry needed Limerick to push them yesterday. They didn’t. Now they look ahead to a date with a Mayo side that has chiselled out very different, but progressively more impressive, wins against London, Galway, Roscommon and Mayo.

“We probably didn’t prepare right for the quarter-final last year and we knew Limerick were coming off the back of three competitive games,” said Sheehan, “especially the one against Wexford where they were down by a couple of points. So the key thing for us was to get up to maximum intensity and once we got up to that we knew that we could play with Limerick. Things went our way.”