O’Shea sickened by Australia loss
Ireland’s Oz effort was hampered by players falling sick
AIDAN O’SHEA has lifted the lid on the full extent of the disruption caused by the vomiting bug that struck down the touring Ireland squad in the recent International Rules Series.
‘It was like a mini hospital, to be honest,’ reveals the Mayo All-Star who needed all his captaincy skills to keep spirits up as the travelling party was severely affected. ‘A few of the boys, Niall Murphy and Enda Smith, we didn’t see them for four days. Enda Smith came down one day and looked like he’d lost a stone in weight.
‘Michael Murphy was in bed up until the day before we got the bus over to the stadium the first day. Gary Brennan was out on the pitch the day before the game and had to run in to get sick. It was insane. We were going into the dressing room not knowing who was even going to be able to play.
‘You’d come down to the team room and every time you’d come down someone would say, “that fella’s gone to bed — he’s sick”. I was saying, “What is going on here? It’s ridiculous”.
‘We knew the two boys were going to be out. Murph playing — what he did was incredible.’ Michael Murphy’s 20-point haul coming off his sick bed in the first leg wasn’t enough to save Ireland from a 10point first test deficit in Adelaide.
And yet, despite preparations being far from ideal — Ireland flew out Darren Hughes for the second test — O’Shea is left to wonder what might have been, especially when they streaked ahead 33-17 in Perth.
‘We were down to 20 players plus sick players. If we had a full deck I’d like to think it would have been a little bit closer. Seven points up in the second test going into the last quarter, we were very happy. We were in a good position. I think we just panicked in terms of trying to get the aggregate lead back rather than concentrating on just winning the game. We panicked. A lot of the basics, we fell down on. It was disappointing.’
Australia stormed back to win the second test by three and reclaim the Cormac McAnallen Cup and O’Shea insists it has a future.
‘I think it has to be a two-test series. I don’t know why Adelaide was picked in terms of its location; it was a great stadium but there’s not too many Irish people there,’ said O’Shea.
‘Whereas in Perth there was a lot more buzz when you were walking down the street. People would say, that’s the Australian or Irish team — they knew about the game and it being a lively spot in terms of people wanting to see that game.’
With a test in America being floated for 2019, O’Shea welcomed the suggestion. ‘Yeah that’d be cool — I made my debut for Mayo in New York. Philadelphia is what they are talking about; [GAA director general] Páraic Duffy was going to have look at it and see if it is viable.
‘I think the Australians are pushing for it in terms of getting into America and showcasing some of their players over there. It’s a shorter flight anyway and with Irish connections everywhere over there I’m sure you’d get a big crowd.’ As for being used as a pawn in the AFL’s bid to tap into the lucrative American market? ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says smiling. ‘We’ve broken into all these places anyway. We’re out in every corner of the world so it doesn’t make any difference to us. The bigger they can make it in conjunction with ourselves, the better it is for the game.’ The trip to Oz and a bit of basketball has helped prevent him obsessing over yet another heartbreaking All-Ireland final defeat. Not for the first time, he insists that September defeat to Dublin won’t break this Mayo team.
‘You are motivated as ever. You crave for those moments that we have put ourselves in and the motivation is to get back there. The problem we have had the last couple of years is nearly focusing too much on being there instead of focusing on the journey. You have seen us play poorly — we could have lost games we should really be winning — and we have lost to Galway twice in a row.
‘You can’t get obsessed in getting back there and trying to win the All-Ireland because there is so much stuff that can happen in between.’
So while he likes of the idea of the Super 8s, the new round-robin model for the All-Ireland quarter-final stage, O’Shea pleads caution. ‘I like the change, it’s different. It’s going to be harder to get to an All-Ireland final, not that it wasn’t hard this year.
‘Having a big Championship game in MacHale Park, that’s kind of cool. We’ll see what happens. We have got to get there first.’