Aidan O’Shea gives his take on marking Kieran Donaghy at fullback

Whether you were sitting at home or in Croke Park there was that moment.

Mayo and Kerry was always going to be one hell of a battle, a team that had been written off all year but had that little bit of magic about them against the league champions and favourites. But player for player you couldn't call it, the last time the pair faced off in championship football we were treated to two of the most epic encounters in recent footballing history. And then the 2017 semi-final happened and it was the exact same, a thrilling draw. Yet, in that game, there was a moment of realisation. That moment where you rubbed your eyes in disbelief, is Aidan O'Shea actually marking Kieran Donaghy? Three years prior it was Donaghy that tormented Mayo and ultimately broke their hearts, the memory still engraved in the each of the players' minds but he wasn't going to get it as easy this time. The pundits put down Donaghy's performance against Mayo that day as the reason they got the draw, Mayo would have won it if O'Shea wasn't marking him is the narrative that was going around so when the replay came around  and O'Shea picked up Donaghy again you could see the nerves jangling from the Mayo fans that day. But it worked, Donaghy was kept quiet and Mayo reached the All-Ireland final with relative ease, O'Shea did well and Rochford stuck to his guns. The Breaffy man was speaking on the latest episode of the GAA Hour to Colm Parkinson after the announcement of the International Rules squad and his captaincy and went through the process of the two games:

"They were probably flirting with the idea of playing somebody in there with a bit more height, I didn’t think it was going to be me but (Stephen Rochford) came to me the weekend before the game and said ‘what do you think?’ and I said ‘sound’," the 27-year old said. "I said ‘look, I think it could work, I think it might do what we need to win the game.’ That was all that mattered and I said if you need me to do it I’ll give it a right rattle, I look forward to the challenge and it was a challenge. "You don’t go from playing full forward, midfield or centre-forward all your life to going back to play fullback and thinking it’s easy, it’s not going to be and obviously, from a personal point of view, I prefer to be anywhere else but fullback. "From our perspective, when you look back on it, I think both days the objective of it worked. People think it didn’t but the fact the first day we conceded two bad goals was totally irrelevant of me playing full back and we would have won the game comfortably. "I think the second day we won the game comfortably by not conceding bad goals and it’s as simple as that. "If you look at our forward line that day I think we scored something crazy from play that day in the game so I think there was a lot of rubbish written in the paper that week about taking me out of fullback and I think it might have been to get me out of there for a reason. "I’m glad that Stephen and his team stuck to their guns and I think it worked the next day and worked the first day, we were happy with how I did."

It didn't look like O'Shea was going to pick up Donaghy in the replay, he'd been on Johnny Buckley at centre-back for a large chunk of the game and admitted that he was in no rush to drop back as Mayo had the bulk of possession:

“It was just the way the game started "Things were going well up there so there was no point going back yet they haven’t got the ball yet so we’ll keep going I heard people thinking after that it was by design but it was more the fact the way the game was playing. "We seemed to have them pinned back in we were going well so I just waited for the opportunity to get back there and sit back in and that’s just really how it panned out."

You can listen to the interview in the latest episode of the GAA Hour below https://soundcloud.com/sportsjoe-gaa-hour/aidan-oshea-interview-darach-honans-hips-ballyragget-celebrations