DEIVIDAS ALL SET FOR A LIFE DOWN UNDER
Dingle teenager Deividas Uosis is an All-Ireland Minor winning goalkeeper and is heading to the AFL in Australia to start a professional career with Brisbane Lions. John O’Dowd spoke with him
THE gaelic football playing pitches of Ireland are empty, barren and forlorn. Nobody is kicking a speculative shot over the bar from all of 40 metres, or plucking the ball out of the sky in the middle of the field. There is no crunching clash of shoulder to shoulder as the corner-back tries to beat the corner-forward to the latest pinpoint delivery into the inside line.
The goalkeeper’s gloves remain in the gearbag at home. Under the cupboard. Gathering dust. The kicking tee is also marooned inside in the bag. There is no use for any of them at this moment in time.
And we have no idea when that situation is going to change. Covid-19 has destroyed our GAA spring. It is running roughshod through our summer. We live in fear of its tentacles wrapping itself around our autumn and winter too. Our short term sporting plans are in disarray.
However, Covid-19 will be no match for us in the long term. Our future ambitions, our future dreams, our unyielding determination to plough on and prepare for the return of brighter days, simply cannot be stopped.
Step forward Lithuania, Dingle and Kerry’s Deividas Uosis.
March 25, 2017: It is a Saturday, the day of the All-Ireland Colleges Paul McGirr Cup Final. The venue is the Hawkfield Centre in Newbridge. The combatants in the decider – the famed St Patrick’s Maghera and the Eamonn Fitzmaurice managed Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne.
What was to unfold in the ensuing action was one of the greatest games of football ever seen at schools level. Or any higher level, for that matter. This turned out to be one for the purists.
Alex Doherty was in stunning form for Maghera. He scored 3-4 that afternoon. He was unstoppable. Yet he did not emerge on the winning side.
Killian Falvey and Dylan Geaney both found the net for the West Kerry school. Current Kerry Under-20 star Ruaidhri O Beaglaoich registered five points from play in a ten-point haul. Aodhan O Dubhain fisted the winning score in the closing stages of extra-time.
When the final whistle eventually drew proceedings to a close, Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne were All-Ireland champions. By the narrowest of margins. Uosis tries to sum it all up.
“There was one scout there that day, who was involved in picking people for the Irish trials for Australian Rules. That final for Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne was the day that I was first spotted.
“I was playing wing-forward. I think I scored alright. I’m not sure! We won by a single point after extra time. It was 2-20 to 4-13! It was an unbelievable match,” he said.
Uosis scored a point that day, but it was his non-stop energy, his stamina, his workrate, his creativity, his tactical awareness, that impressed the watching AFL scout. His name was firmly noted for future reference.
“I didn’t get asked to come to a combine then until 2019. It was around February or March last year, and I was asked up to do a few training sessions in UCD. Then I was offered a place at the AFL Europe Combine in Dublin last December.”
Recording 2.76 seconds in the 20-metre sprint, coming fourth in the agility test, and excelling in the ‘dreaded’ Yo-Yo endurance assignment, the Dingle man really made his presence felt.
“Yeah, the Yo-Yo test really challenges your fitness and your endurance. At the same time, it’s a great way to test a player’s overall fitness levels. It’s extremely popular now, to be fair. I did enjoy the whole thing actually, it was tough but great craic.
“There were about 20 of us there for it. I just focused on doing the very best that I could. When I had finished the 20-metre sprint, they said that I had done great in the running, but I didn’t really take any notice of that. The results didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get through it, and it was only a few days later that I found out that I had done well.”
So well, in fact, that the Brisbane Lions would soon be coming calling.
“I think it was in the middle of January this year that I got an email from them. They just said that they would be coming over, that we’d have a chat about the combine, and Aussie Rules and everything. There was no mention of a contract or anything at that stage.
“Then I think it was the end of January or the start of February that a member of their recruitment team came over to Dingle. He met me and all the family. He just spoke of how I performed in the combine, what I made of the game, would I be homesick if I went to Australia, just a lot of basic questions really.
“After that, he offered me a heads of agreement on a two-year rookie contract. I couldn’t turn that down. I spoke to (Dingle club mate) Mark O’Connor, who you can see is living the dream over there. He just said to me that it’s my choice but that if he was in my position he wouldn’t let the opportunity slip away.
“I’d say, even without speaking to Mark, I would have taken the contract anyway! I’m just so excited now to get started, I’m crazy training, staying very focused, and I just want to go over there and impress as much as I can. I want to try and be the fittest and fastest from the very start when I get there,” he added.
The versatile performer admitted that he hasn’t been in touch with any of the other past or present Kerry alumni in Australian Rules football, apart from O’Connor, and that he has been doing plenty of study on his future destination.
“Yeah, I’ve just been in contact with Mark, because we were teammates with Dingle. When he was home just before the New Year we went for
a kickabout together, one training session together, and it was great to pick his brains.
“I’ve been looking up lots of stuff about Brisbane, but I can’t get carried away just yet, with the virus going around. Until I know my actual date of departure I won’t get too excited.
“I shouldn’t be too bad with the heat over there. Lithuanian summers are very hot, we could get up to 35 or 40 degrees. I would have some past experience of that, so I should be fine, even though it will take a while to get used to the heat again.”
Uosis is due to leave for Brisbane in October but, as with everything in the world right now, nothing can be taken for granted. He doesn’t even know if he will line out again for Kerry Under-20s or for Dingle before he departs.
“There’s always going to be part of my heart given over to gaelic football. That’s where I started, and that’s why I am making my move to Australian Rules. Of course it would be sad not to wear the Dingle or Kerry jerseys at least one more time before I go but, at the same time, I have something very exciting ahead of me that I have to be focused on.
“Look, if it doesn’t happen this year, then hopefully it will be next year. But, right now, there’s no real fear of not being able to travel over in October. The virus is settling down in Australia, it’s settling down in Ireland as well.
“If there are any few flights going over, then I hope to be on one of them anyway,” he stressed.
One round of the Australian Football League, behind closed doors, was played in mid-March before the sporting world locked down in the southern hemisphere, with the Brisbane Lions losing their opening match of the season to Hawthorn. There are tentative plans for a return to training for some teams next Monday, May 18.
As a professional entity, the AFL has been hit very hard by the shutdown, with millions already being slashed off the spending cap for clubs, players being hit with 50 per cent pay cuts while there are no matches, and the international programme being stopped for this year. Indeed, the AFL have had to borrow around 600 million Australian dollars in loans from banks just to keep the game alive.
Therefore, Deividas Uosis is fully aware that he is one of the lucky ones to get signed on the dotted line before this pandemic began causing havoc.
“Yeah, by the looks of it, it looks like it was perfect timing for my part. It’s very unlucky for some other lads who were due to travel out there for some training sessions in April. That hasn’t happened now, of course, so hopefully they might get going later in the year.”
Uosis is joining a club that already contains Dublin’s James Madden and Tipperary’s Orla O’Dwyer, so he will have some Irish company when he lands in Brisbane and gets to work.
On the vexed issue in Irish circles of GAA clubs not receiving any compensation when one of their players makes the move to Australia, the Dingle man has very clear views on the situation.
“The easiest way of looking at this is to examine basketball. If a player over here in Ireland goes to America to play, there is no compensation. Remember it is the player’s choice to move. It is not the club’s fault.
“In my opinion, money should not be transferred when a person is moving from an amateur sport to a professional sport. Like I said, it is completely the player’s choice to go. That’s the biggest thing. If the club was selling the player, then that would be a different matter entirely.”
That is Deividas Uosis in a nutshell. Though not turning 20 until June, the Dingle man has a wise head on his young shoulders. He has a steely-minded determination and total focus on the career that is mapped out in front of him. He is absolutely driven to succeed. Covid-19 will not stand in his way.
Everybody in Kerry wishes him the very best of luck on his Aussie adventure.