O’Shea leaves behind season to forget

JOHN O’SHEA has revealed that it was Shay Given who inflicted the injury which wrecked most of the Waterford man’s season at Manchester United.

Of all the Irish players associated with the World Cup play-off defeat in Paris last November, O’Shea had more reason than most to feel the lingering effects of the pain. It was an accidental collision with his own ’keeper which forced the defender out of the game in the Stade de France, and complications arising out of what initially seemed to be a run-of-the-mill ‘dead leg’ subsequently enforced an absence which lasted until the tail end of the season.

“It was Shay who did it to me,” says O’Shea. “His knee just went full force into the middle of my quad muscle. It caused bleeding and because it went so deep, bone cells grew as well, and I became a bit of a physio technician for a while. Calcification started and you just have to wait for it to dissolve because it’s not in a natural place, although eventually it goes away.