O’Sullivan was more than an impact sub

FOR the last month, I have felt more like an obituary writer than a football columnist on this page. Another one of my old team-mates closed the dressing-room door behind him this week and it will be a less fun place in his absence. Darran O’Sullivan was one of the great characters of our team, always up for a laugh but, behind the fun, was a deadly serious footballer.

He was a very good one, too, and our late collapse against Dublin in 2011 robbed him of the honour of becoming footballer of the year – an award that would almost certainly have gone his way, had we won.

He was one of those players you hated marking in training, all power and speed and if he turned you... well, that was it. The most staggering statistic from his career is that of 70 Championship appearances, he started just 29.

He was a great impact sub, but he was a far better player than that stat would suggest.

I suppose it was a measure of the competition within the squad, but I always felt he got a raw deal.

That was certainly the case at the tail end of his career when he was sitting out games as we cried out for his explosive speed to light a fuse.

One thing is for sure, those that shared a dressing room with him knew his true value.