Mayo mocking Kerry spurred us on to glory in 2014 – Ó Sé

Marc Ó Sé has recalled how persistent goading by a Mayo water carrier in the drawn game helped to motivate Kerry for their 2014 All-Ireland football semi-final replay in Limerick.

The replay was controversially played in the Gaelic Grounds because of a clash in Croke Park with an American football game that same day. But it turned out to be one of the great occasions that Saturday evening in late August as Kerry came from seven points down to win in extra-time and lay the foundations for an All-Ireland success they didn’t expect.

Ó Sé recalls the events of 2014 in a new half-hour GAAGO discussion forum Ratified that puts the former Kerry defender sitting around a table with the streaming service’s other analysts, Michael Murphy, Paddy Andrews and Aaron Kernan.

Ó Sé said Kerry had “scores to settle” with Mayo after a testy drawn game in which Kieran Donaghy conjured up a stunning comeback off the bench.

“In the drawn game, I was marking Andy Moran and there was this fell a runningonto the field with water and he was saying, ‘he’s gone, he’s gone Andy, his legs are gone, he’s done with it’,” he recalled.

“‘Who the f*** is this guy?’” Ó Sé recalls saying at the time. “He kept coming on and I just wanted to get a shot at him. At a team meeting after that game even Anthony Maher, the quiet guy on that Kerry team, (remarked) ‘who’s this guy running onto the field?’

“Kevin McLoughlin was another fella who was a bit chirpy on the day itself. We had scores to settle the second day.”

But Ó Sé was left to wonder if he would see action after he was dropped for the first time in his career. He said 2014 had been a “tough year personally, there was a lot going on” but football was his “outlet”.

When his manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice phoned him the week between the games to tell him he wasn’t starting in Limerick, it was “like a bolt of lightning”, he said. “The drawn semi-final was not my best game but it certainly wasn’t my worst game,” he recalled. “I felt I was going OK. I didn’t see this coming down the tracks and I was devastated, absolutely devastated. And I wondered, ‘is this it for me?’”

Ó Sé (above) came on after 20 minutes though as Shane Enright picked up a yellow card early that may well have been more. And scores were settled.

“A big melee broke in the corner of the field, and I see Anthony Maher pulling your man by the ears off the pitch.”

But Ó Sé acknowledged luck as a factor with Aidan O’Shea and Cillian O’Connor colliding, leaving both players off for a period.

The first episode of Ratified aired yesterday morning and will be free-to-air every Tuesday for the next 10 weeks.

Andrews also recalled that 2014 semi-final weekend and Dublin’s shock defeat to Donegal that Sunday in Croke Park. Without it, he said, Dublin would not have won the next six All-Irelands.

And he told how it led to a tough twoand-a-half hour meeting the following week, even as Kerry and Donegal were preparing for an All-Ireland final.

“We were all challenged and the worst thing was, we couldn’t really look ourselves in the mirror,” he recalled.

“It’s a really bad place to be as an elite athlete or trying to be a serious Gaelic footballer. Our analysis, our preparation, we were caught out physically, mentally, we didn’t expect what ye (addressing Murphy) guys were going to do. It’s (poor preparation) just a bad trait to have as a team,” he said. “From that point on, there was never one match, and I mean O’Byrne

Cup in January, where we were not physically and mentally prepared.

“We could be playing Wicklow on January 3 or 4 and we would have analysis done the week before, December 27/28. The players would go through their team, ‘this fella is right-footed, left-footed’. Every single player.

“Jim (Gavin) had his own hands up as well. He prides himself on preparation, attention to detail, unbelievable manager, strategist. ‘I was not prepared for that’.

“We prided ourselves on playing very traditional football, similar to Kerry. Our philosophy (up to that) was attacking football,” added Andrews. “As players it was magic to play. We would go training and training is 15 on 15. ‘Go and play and beat your man’. You loved it.

“We had this mentality that we were going to be the team to break the blanket defence. Winning an All-Ireland, that was magic but you need something else then to retain it. The reality was the likes of Jim McGuinness were looking at us and seeing gaps.”