Focus on football has made dual ace Aidan Walsh a Gaeltacht force

One of the last proponents of the dual inter-county player is now relishing his single code status.

Sat, 10 Jan, 2026 - 07:15

Eoghan Cormican

Aidan Walsh volunteers a couple of fascinating admissions towards the end of the conversation.

The chat has turned to his single-code focus over the past 12 months. In his native Kanturk, single code focus is an alien concept. You hold a hurley in one hand and a Gaelic football in the other.

July, August, and September, and many times October too given their upwardly mobile status of the past decade, is a fixed diet of championship hurling one weekend, football the next.

The diet only changes whenever one of the teams is knocked out and taken off the menu.

Transferring to An Ghaeltacht, and with the nearest hurling club an hour back the road, one of the last proponents of the dual inter-county player was relishing his single code status.

The soon-to-be 36-year-old spent the last two years of his inter-county existence lining out for the Cork hurlers. He spent four of his last six years in red lining out for the hurlers.

He chose and prioritised hurling. This was in spite of his own admission that he always thought himself a better footballer. That belief has been given time to breathe and build over the past 12 months.

There’s also been time and space to prove wrong those who believed 2010 All-Ireland football winner Aidan Walsh wouldn’t come up to the mark in the 2025 Kerry intermediate football championship.

“Focusing solely on football definitely will extend my career, because even for the last five or six years with Kanturk, we did 70%, 30% hurling/football or 80%, 20%; we were hardly even doing football,” Walsh begins.

“We made a big focus on being extremely fit as a group and hoping that was going to get us over the line, and if we got knocked out in the hurling, then we could really concentrate on football.

“I would consider myself a better footballer, so it's been very enjoyable this year to be able to focus totally on football and just try and get the most out of myself in that capacity.

“I've been kind of challenging myself this year too. There were a lot of people talking and saying that I wouldn't start or I wouldn't be able to contribute much to Kerry club football, so I had an extra motivation to push myself a bit harder and prove that I am capable of offering something.”

That latter argument has long been tucked into bed. But for any last doubters, there were his two steals on the Sallins restart and an orange flag kick, all in the first-half of last weekend’s All-Ireland semi-final epic.

For the first time in eight years, Aodán Breathnach, as he is now listed in match programmes, is heading back to Croker. That last visit was the occasion of the 2018 All-Ireland intermediate club hurling final. An unlikely set he now hopes to complete.

“We'd gone up senior with Kanturk, so the chances of getting to Croke Park at senior level definitely wasn't going to happen. I never thought I was going to get back, so I'm absolutely over the moon.

“I won't be nervous, I'm just trying to enjoy it as much as possible because it'll never come around again for me at my age.”

Back to West Kerry. Aidan and his partner, Doireann Ní Shé, are the second last house in Dunquin. Situated on the Slea Head Drive, the curtains are opened every morning to a pretty spectacular view.

The pair are together nine years, their paths first crossing when Doireann was throwing him out pints during one of those infamous New Year’s Day sessions at Páidí Ó Sé’s in Ventry.

Their four-year-old boy, Macdara, is at the root of Aidan’s relocation to West Kerry, sporting and otherwise.

“Doireann and Macdara moved back down west, [but] I had my own hurley business, so I had to stay around Kanturk. I had fierce ambitions to help Kanturk get up senior in hurling and football. When we achieved that and with Macdara getting a bit older, it started creeping into my head that I should transfer to An Ghaeltacht because Macdara wasn't able to go to a lot of my Kanturk games.

“Macdara and Doireann were the real reason I transferred down so they could go and see me play for however long I've left.” And dad is only too delighted to report that the four-year-old is mad to swing a hurley about the place, even if the auld fella isn’t picking up the timber much any more, save for a St Stephen’s Day long puck.

Not all of his old self was left at the border. The suitcase carried across contained all of his old Cork training gear. And it was a salty reception he received when he showed up in Gallaros for the last get-together before the Munster Club final, against Cork opposition, in a Cork training top.

“The boys were going to do red arse on me because I wore a Cork top,” he laughs.

Given the engine is still running on their 2025 season, Google translate has been as busy as those Cork and Kanturk training tops of his. Pre-match talks, messages into the team WhatsApp group; all are delivered as Gaeilge.

“My Irish is improving, but not at the pace they speak it. I’d have a fair idea of what they'd be talking about, but football is not rocket science either. I’m experienced enough to know what you should and shouldn't do. I've adjusted to it.”

The same as he has got his head around the fact that this fourth All-Ireland medal he is attempting to pocket - U21 football, senior football, and intermediate club hurling the existing three - is being fought for alongside lads from once-enemy country.

“It's obviously a bit strange playing for a Kerry club, but I don't see it that way. I play for An Ghaeltacht and am very lucky to be playing for them.”