STEPHEN: FOUR SIGHT SO VITAL
FORMER captain Stephen Mcdonnell admits a lowly rating of his display in the 2013 All- Ireland drawn final helped kickstart his Cork career.
Defender Mcdonnell retired from the Rebels last week, following goalkeeper Anthony
Nash ( below) in quitting the county game.
He walks away as a two- time Munster SHC medallist, having skippered the 2017 team to their provincial win over Clare.
But his mood was far different after facing Clare four years earlier in the first of their two 2013 All- Ireland final meetings.
Speaking to Red FM, Mcdonnell said: “I remember I was on a bus after the drawn game, we were heading back to Cork the following day and we stopped at a beach on the way down.
“It was a recovery session and I remember there was a newspaper being thrown around the bus. It was rating every player, a big spread over a couple of pages as you’d imagine with an All- Ireland final.
“I remember it came back to me and I looked down at my rating and it was four out of 10. That was the worst of all the players.
“That kind of gave me the kick that I needed to say, ‘ Hold on a second now, I need to do something about this’.
“I got through that game grand but I know for a fact I was out there and I wasn’t playing well, I wasn’t looking for the ball and I wasn’t getting after it and I wasn’t attacking the game.
“That was down to nerves, a bit of a lack of belief in myself, coming from the northside, ide, none of my family ly had played with Cork, my friends went down a different path, ‘ Who do I think I am?’ All that kind of stuff was at play.”
Mcdonnell said he ‘ challenged’ those thoughts in the three weeks before the replay.
Cork lost but
Mcdonnell recalls a personal victory as he ‘ went out there in the
All- Ireland final replay and got nominated for Man of the Match’.
He said: “I went from being the worst player with Cork to potentially the best player with Cork and one of the top three players on the pitch.
“The only difference was, not that I was a worse player or a better player, or that I trained any harder or any less, it was just the quality of my thoughts and my belief in myself.
“That set the foundations for me to go on and drive on and to be a leader and ultimately the captain.”
Mcdonnell is the founder and chief partner of Live Unbound which provides high performance and leadership support in both business and sport.
The 31- year- old Glen Rovers man added: “They say starve fear and feed courage. Big time in that first game against Clare I was feeding fear. Thereafter I was feeding courage. It was a choice.
“It was a transition point that put some foundations in place for me going forward.”
Mcdonnell pointed to his success as captain in 2017 as another highlight from his career.
He said: “Out of all the teams in Munster we were outsiders, the least favourites, we were being written off by everyone, no matter who we played. “So for us to go the hard ro route in 2017, qua quarter- final, s semi- final, final a and to win it was some feeling.”