O’Sullivan on ‘verge of hitting the wall’
What happened last Sunday week hit him hard. His assessment of how he is feeling is a brutal one: “Low. Very bad, actually.”
He went out for a few beers the night of the defeat to Dublin but hasn’t darkened the door of a pub since. Last weekend, he got ready for a night out only to think twice about it.
“You just wouldn’t be in the form for going out. You just want to keep to yourself and you’re busy so you’re trying to keep your mind off it.”
He lined out for Glenbeigh-Glencar last Saturday but the least said about that the better: “To say I was poor would be an understatement. I was cat. I just can’t get my motivation at the moment.
“I’ve to get myself up for a couple of club games now in the next couple of weeks for the junior championship and try and get myself right.
“I’ve a few injuries that need sorting at the end of the year. I don’t look forward to operations but I’m looking forward to saying goodbye to football for a few months because it takes a while to recover from these things and the fact we got caught in the last few minutes by the Dubs again makes it that bit harder.”
As soon as the club’s interests finish, he’ll be on the operation table to sort a hip injury that has tightened his back and hamstring since last Christmas.
He’s had injections into both to help him throughout the year but they had been losing their strength in recent weeks.
“Everything is a challenge, especially in the mornings when you tighten up. But once you get that done, all the little niggles that come with it will go.”
It’ll likely mean two months on the sidelines but, he says, there’s no harm in that.
“I’m on the verge of hitting the wall this year but a couple or three weeks away from ball and I’d be mad for road. I’d be very optimistic for Kerry next year but at the moment I don’t want to talk about football.”
He will, if you push him, though. Last week, his tweet about an early morning encounter with a Kerry supporter in Farranfore airport was so popular it trended in Ireland.
The exchange left him angry. Coming just days after another last-gasp reverse to Dublin, the wounds were still raw.
“I was up since 5.30 or 6, I was getting a flight to Dublin around seven o’clock. I saw him watching me. I went to the opposite side of the waiting room, I was reading something as I was going up to do an exam and he came over to me.
“There was no badness in him but he wanted to give me his ‘such and such should have been brought on’, ‘we should have done this’ and ‘we shouldn’t have done that’.
“At that hour of the morning, I didn’t want to talk to myself never mind someone else.”
It’s a game he hasn’t watched back — “and I don’t think I’ll even bring myself to watch it anytime soon”.
It’s because Kerry came so close. Because history repeated itself. Because they didn’t carry it over the line.
“One fella said to me we just ran out of legs at the end of the game, but we didn’t. Literally, a kick-out came down, it broke to a Dublin fella and if he got a point it was no worries but because it was a goal it was bound to give them a burst of energy and sap ours. That’s all it was. That score was the difference and yet they ended up seven-point winners. It definitely wasn’t a seven-point game and everybody knows that. Everybody knows it was just a kick-out dropped and fell off fellas’ fingers.”
Right up to the 69th minute, Kerry were breathing on Dublin necks as much as they were breathing on theirs. It flew in the face of their narrow characterisation as a first-half team.
“I could understand why they were doing it because in our first big game of the year we beat Tyrone and it was our first half that won it for us. Cork first half, Cavan first half... they were the games people were looking at.
“But there was nothing being said about the professionalism and ruthlessness that we showed against Tipperary and Waterford but, look it, we knew ourselves we weren’t just a first-half team.
“We were trying not to pay attention to that but it does seep in and when people are saying it to you constantly... we knew the work we had done. The set-up this year was brilliant, I have to say. Cian O’Neill is very good at what he does and Eamonn [Fitzmaurice] is. Diarmuid Murphy used to take the goalies off, Mikey [Sheehy] gave the forwards chats about different bits and pieces. It was a great set-up. We knew we trained well.”
O’Sullivan will probably go to Croke Park tomorrow week and take in the final. The offer is there anyway and it’s a game that intrigues if for nothing other than scoping out who Kerry will be chasing next year.
“It won’t be easy [watching it] but you can’t be crying over it. You eventually have to get over it and these things are supposed to make you stronger when you lose and you’re supposed to learn from them.
“We’ve gone a good few years without winning so you just have to watch it and get over it and whoever wins it they’re the team you’ll have to beat next year.”
And a winner? “I just think from midfield back Mayo have been very strong but from midfield forward Dublin have been very strong. With the way [Stephen] Cluxton is, he can take the midfield out of it and that takes out Aidan and Seamie [O’Shea] who have been playing great.
“People go on about Mayo being a different team but they’re not, they just have all this hurt bottled up, which is dangerous. The Dublin panel though is very strong and I’d tip Dublin to do it because they have fellas there who have won it before. Sometimes that makes a massive difference.”
The months ahead might see that difference Kerry possess shrivel as older players give careful consideration to retirement.
“When people talk about the older lads they don’t know what they’ve been doing in training every day. If fellas retire they’ll go down as some of the greatest to have played the game, I feel. If they don’t they still have a lot to offer Kerry, I believe.
“They’ve a good few months to think about it but I think the bulk of this team will stay.”
O’Sullivan will. Just after he gives his mind and body a timely reboot.
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