‘Notorious’ fan Philly McMahon up for fresh fight

His appreciation for combat sports, for instance, was kindled by a dalliance with boxing while growing up in Ballymun. It was when Owen Roddy, Conor McGregor’s pad man, rented some gym space off him that the Dublin defender looked into mixed martial arts.

Almost a decade on and he’ll still indulge in a bit of boxing or jiu-jitsu when the flow of the football season ebbs away. The combination of skills required clearly mappeals to him but there is a more basic attraction to it all, too.

“I like it. I like the challenge of all the different styles mwithin the one sport. And I like that myou can channel the aggression into a sport like I do with football as well. But you can actually hit people in that sport,” he laughed, “which is a little bit better.”

That will square with the one-dimensional image many may still hold of a player who appeared to bite Paul Kerrigan back in 2010 and one who served a one-match ban for an incident when his hand made contact with the eye area of Kieran Donaghy.

Five years separate those two incidents but, though McMahon admits to a fascination with the ‘mano a mano’ nature of combat sports, he isn’t slow in pointing out that he has seen red just the once in a decade’s service with the Dubs.

The All Star he received last year emphasised his abilities as a player and the man who has emerged through his interviews and his actions off the pitch is that of a multi-

faceted, thoughtful individual. As for his MMA kicks, he’ll have to get them via McGregor for now.

The Notorious takes on Floyd Mayweather at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in the early hours of Sunday morning which means McMahon, a firm fan of a man who is sporting Marmite, will have to make do with the reruns.

“I suppose I’m like every Irish person. We want him to win but it’s a big challenge. You just never know because it’s like us playing Tyrone: we don’t know how well we’re prepared for it. We don’t know how well our attack is going to work. The same with them. So we can only prepare as best as we can.

“But this fella [McGregor] has so much self-belief that anything can happen. He can just catch him with one shot. He’s definitely the bigger man and has freak power and freak movements. It’s like the Donegal game we played in 2014: we didn’t know they were going to come out with them sort of tactics.”

Ah, the Donegal game.

The shadow of that loss, Dublin’s last to date in the All-Ireland Championship, hangs over this Sunday’s meeting with Mickey Harte’s side given the suspicion that the Red Hands are the Ulster side most equipped to call a halt to Dublin’s inexorable march since.

That they can be a Donegal 2.0.

With just Mark Bradley utilised as a recognisable forward, Tyrone will clearly ask different questions of the reigning champions and McMahon has no problem in handing out props to a northern team that has proven to be especially hard to break down.

He sees an opponent that counter-attacks at speed, a side with a wide spread of creators and scorers and, it goes without saying, an impressive defensive foundation on which everything else is based. But, hey, he’s comfortable with all that, too.

McMahon has played in both zonal and man-to-man defensive systems in his time with Dublin and he appears to be as comfortable haring forward as he is in keeping manners on a forward deep within his own half.

Whatever the task appointed to him this time, he’ll be ready.

“If I was left one-on-one inside, I will be comfortable,” he said. That squares perfectly with a man for whom the idea of standing alone in a ring or an octagon, with no teammates to back him up, has always been an intriguing one.

It’s not just the physical edge that appeal to him on a canvas, or on grass. McMahon digs the mental side of sport as well. He doesn’t use a sports psychologist but he reads what and when he can and he’s rarely short a word when it’s required on the pitch.

If there was a time when opponents felt that he could be got at with a sledge here or a taunt there then the fuse seems longer now. The man himself greets the very prospect of verbals with glee.

“I’d like to be a fly in the changing room of the opposition,” he admitted. “It would be a stupid thing to do because it’s kind of my bread and butter.”

McMahon is, in short, one of the GAA’s most interesting characters. He runs his own gyms and a healthy food delivery company and he is heavily organised in charitable and other social work. He is never averse to talking about any of it.

Or himself.

In the interview prior to this game he spoke at length about everything from McGregor and MMA to the power of positive thinking, football, mind games, work/life balance, his businesses and how he keeps the whole show on the road.

He swears by something called a default diary, for example. Look it up.

A recent priority has been making time for family. He’s been trying to call round and see his dad every day but

football isn’t suffering. Far from it. He describes 2015 and ‘16 as his two best years by a distance and agrees that, at 29, he is at his peak.

Looking at it now, with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge that the Dubs are chasing what would be a fabled three-in-a-row, it may be no coincidence that his and their best years have followed on from that traumatic

Donegal defeat in 2014.

“After that game the players took a bit of ownership, that the players have to be able to adapt on the pitch. We have to take ownership and make sure we make the decisions and, if we see something changing, to do that.

“The management team have helped us adapt in

training and different

scenarios and to prep us for different opposition. So again, like last year, we haven’t seen anything different just yet but we’re making sure that we’re able to adapt.

“2014 was a prime example of that because we didn’t adapt on the pitch. Donegal broke, we left gaps at the back and conceded three goals. That was the end of our

season.”

Older, wiser, more mature and accomplished: the best may be yet to come.