Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
LEAVING TH
2020 was the strangest season ever for gaelic football.. for some of it’s stars it would be their last
THE stop-start nature of the 2020 county season meant retirements weren’t confined to the usual period around the turn of the year, with a number of players taking stock ahead of the resumption of games in October.
Once the Championship concluded last month, there were a trickle of players that called time on their careers pre-christmas but that turned to a flow this past week as the 2021 season looms, albeit with the usual Covid-19 health warning that we have all grown uncomfortably familiar with by now.
The exodus was particularly pronounced in Mayo, where four great servants stepped aside this week and they may yet be followed by a handful more, while a number of others across the country are no doubt still weighing up their options.
But, at this remove, these are our t o p 1 0 Ga e li c football retirees since the 2020 season got underway.
5 Donal Vaughan (Mayo)
VAUGHAN started the
Mayo exodus last weekend when announcing his retirement having become increasingly peripheral to the cause, to the point where he didn’t feature at all in 2020, partly due to injury.
But when Mayo announced themselves as contenders on the national stage again during James Horan’s first term in charge, Vaughan han was hugely influential, with his performance in the 2013 demolition of reigning champions
Donegal particularly memorable.
He filled a variety of roles across the Mayo defence but, unfortunately, unfortun for many, many his rush of blood in the 2 2017 All-ireland final offsets s some of his sterling service. s
6 Seamus O’shea (Mayo)
ONE of a number of departures from the Galway panel this week, with
Ian Burke arguably the most high profile, though the
Corofin man n
ONE of several players who typified Mayo’s warrior spirit and was largely a first choice starter in the midfield engine room for most of the last decade.
Had to contend with more than his fair share of injury problems, particularly in recent years, and it clearly took its toll this year as he couldn’t force his way back in. will likely don the county colours again in the future.
But Bradshaw, soon to turn 34, has called time on a 14-year career caree in which he was dashing d a attacking catalyst from the Galway ha half-back line line.
9 Peter Kelly (Kildare)
ONE of several players who typified Kildare’s warrior spirit and was largely a first choice starter in the midfield engine room for most of the last decade.
Had to contend with more than his fair share of injury problems, particularly in recent years, and it clearly took its toll this year as he couldn’t force his way back in.
7 Tom Parsons (Mayo)
HAVING represented Ireland in the victorious International
Rules tour of Australia back in 2008,
Parsons’ Mayo career drifted to the point where he was dropped by James Horan in 2011 and didn’t make it back until 2014.
He enjoyed a fine run of form, largely alongside O’shea in midfield, from 2015-17 and his comeback from a horrific knee injury in 2018 was heroic to say the least.