Aidan O’Shea: Mayo will defy doubters again in 2018

Aidan O’Shea expects Mayo will be written off next year as they have been over the last couple of seasons.

Admitting a Division 1 title would be a reach for the county, given their geographically split panel in the early part of the season, the newly-appointed Ireland International Rules captain foresees the team being dismissed again in 2018.

“You can probably write what next season is going to look like for us, up to the championship. We’ll win games in the league that people expect us to lose and lose games that we should win. There will probably be one hammering and everyone will say that’s us done for the season. You’re going to have boys back late, boys in Dublin who won’t be training with us. When we get to championship we just seem to be a different animal.”

Reviewing the gauntlet they ran to a second successive All-Ireland final this year, O’Shea felt it was in keeping with how Mayo have gone about their business in recent times. “Typical us, really. It makes ye (journalists) look like fools — ye tell us we’re not going to win anything and all of a sudden we turn around and play well again.

“We’re never going to hammer a team by 20 points for some reason, like Dublin do in Leinster. We just don’t do that. We always seem to keep teams in it. Realistically, we could have lost to Derry. James Kielt was standing over that free and I thought, ‘that’s our season dusted’, because I’ve seen him kick points from some yardage. I thought that was our season gone there. Thankfully, we dug that one out.

“When we got to Croke Park we got a bit of a scare here from Roscommon. Then we got our shit together for a longer period of time against Roscommon, just started playing a bit of good ball again.”

Claiming Mayo’s first Division 1 title since 2001, he says, would be ambitious, considering a large proportion of the panel are Dublin-based and will train there during the week.

“Look, there’s a reason why Kerry won one, Dublin have won and when Cork were consistent they were winning a lot of league titles. Is it possible for us to win a league title? I’m not quite sure with our situation.

“It might take something out of us for the championship. It’s never something that we’ve said — we want to go out and win the league, go balls out for it.

“It’s a matter of tapering and, to be honest, staying up. You want to give boys a chance, an opportunity. Some guys got good exposure in the league last year and it’s

important to stay in Division 1 for us, absolutely. You’ll probably take a stake in the ground halfway through the league and say, ‘Right, where are we? Is it right trying to get to the league final?’ That hasn’t been on our radar the last couple of years because we’ve been down the other end trying to stay in the league. Let’s see how that pans out next year.”

Watching back on the All-Ireland final with brother Seamus obviously made for difficult viewing because of the narrow defeat to Dublin and Mayo’s strong performance. He agrees it’s the toughest of his four final defeats to digest. “I watched the game back with my brother. He said ‘ah fuck it, we did that’. I was like, ‘but Seamie, we’re doing fucking so many things well here.’ When you lose a game by a point, you’re analysing every single play. That’s a one-point loss. I’m sure Dublin made loads of mistakes, have places they would improve, but they won the game by a point so they don’t have to reflect on those things.”

The 27-year-old didn’t have much issue with how Dublin killed the game off in the closing minutes. “If there was a foul in play then should the free be taken where the foul was committed and then obviously we don’t have a kick-out but a free. I’m not sure. Look, they were trying to stop us kicking short no more than any other kick-out all day. They went a little further and dragged boys to the ground and stuff. It’s just smart. They stopped us from getting the ball, they kept it for the rest of the game, they won the game.”

Last month, Kieran Donaghy said O’Shea was the

“aggressor” in their exchange in the semi-final replay which saw the Kerry forward sent off. O’Shea’s take on it? “I think maybe it was to do with maybe them losing more than anything else to do with me.

“I thought, for us, both days it worked in terms of what our objective was out of it.”