O’Sullivan thrilled to be back in Kerry’s thoughts

He was the man who came in at the expense of Kieran Donaghy but Darran O’Sullivan admits he wouldn’t have made the Kerry team had he not recently moved back to the county.

The 27-year-old is currently studying marketing in DIT where he won a Sigerson Cup medal earlier this year.

After finishing his exams in May, O’Sullivan returned home for the summer where he has been able to stake a real claim for a starting spot under Eamonn Fitzmaurice.

Up until then, he knew he was playing catch-up. “The first two games (against Tipperary and Waterford), I knew coming down that I wasn’t going to be on the team.

“As hard as it is to take, I had no leg to stand on in terms of arguing. Eamonn told me and I said it straight out, ‘That’s grand, I want my place back for the Munster final’ so I just put my head down and luckily enough he stuck his neck out and took his chance playing me and it’s worked out so far.”

O’Sullivan says he and his team-mates feel they are in good shape even if they have room for improvement after a second-half fade out against Cork on Sunday.

“At times we moved the ball well but there’s a lot of stuff we have to work on yet. We’re not going to get carried away. It was a win, it’s a Munster championship and it’s a medal in the pocket and another big game to come.

“We’re in good nick. We’re after three home games which you don’t get too often. The first two were fairly comfortable and this (last) one was a right battle.

“We were hoping to have six games this year, we’ve three of them done. We’re in Croke Park where we wanted to be.”

The four-week gap isn’t ideal for O’Sullivan but a county championship game this weekend will shorten the break to their All-Ireland quarter-final.

They won’t know the identity of their opponents until days prior to the game but he’s not overly concerned about that.

“Ah, it doesn’t bother me. At this stage, you have to worry about yourselves. I think a lot of teams are worrying about the opposition too much and trying to stop them. We’re going to try and work on our own game for the next three weeks or so and in the week leading up to the game you’ll focus in and try and zone in on a few of their things but at least it gives us time to work on ourselves.

More decisiveness by O’Sullivan could have spared Kerry a nervy finish when a pass to either side of him would have set up a team-mate with a goal chance.

He’s glad there are facets of the game his team must work on prior to their trip to Croke Park on the August Bank Holiday weekend.

“We were happy with how we played, especially in the first half. When we move the ball quick like that it’s a good game to play as a forward. There was great movement among the forwards and we were just popping (passes) and keeping it simple. To be honest, we could have put on another couple of scores but left them behind. The first shot of the game, I had an awful miss, to be honest. Maybe adrenaline or whatever, I just rushed it. There’s something good about finding mistakes after a win, you’ve more to work on.”