Sheehan: Aussies hurting and will bounce back next year

International Rules series debuts don’t come much sweeter and Ciarán Sheehan says the Irish public should be proud of their team’s record-breaking achievements.

One of the best performers overthe two tests, the Éire Óg manpicked off 14 points (four oversand two behinds) in Cavan and Dublin.

“It was a privilege to wear the jersey and it showed out there what Gaelic football is all about,” said the 22-year-old Cork star.

“It showed massive skill and I think the country should be proud of the talent shown by Gaelic footballers.”

The prospect of a third consecutive series victory for Ireland is something Sheehan would like to be a part of in Australia next year.

However, he hopes there are some conditions in place. “We would hope that Australia would have a few better lads. To be fair to them, you could see that they were giving it their all. A lot of our football skills played out there, we said we would play that game and it paid off. We got the goals but hopefully next year, and there was talking during the week about them picking their All Star team, there would be that much more competition.”

He anticipates the Australians will be stung by the margin of their defeat in this series. “They play professional sport and are highly competitive. If it was the other way round we would be hurting bad and next year I think they are going to come back at us. No one likes to lose by that margin. I have no fear that they will bounce back against us next year.”

With an intermediate final against his Cork and Ireland team-mate Aidan Walsh’s Kanturk to look forward to next weekend, Sheehan didn’t celebrate too much on Saturday evening

Preparations with Ireland, he admits, have impacted on how he’s building up for the decider.

“It’s hard to be doing both, I suppose. Myself and Aidan have been best of buds over the last eight or nine weeks going up together and we always have been good friends.

“We played against each other all the way up at underage but it’s a different story when we go out on the pitch against each other. Obviously, we give it our all for our clubs too and at the end of the day that’s the most important thing to us. That’s where it all starts for every player.

“It was a great opportunity to represent the country but the club is my number one goal. When you achieve anything with the club it’s extra special and hopefully next week we can do the job.”