Put him in full forward.
No, he needs to be out in midfield – Mayo don’t have the luxury to play him full forward.
Put him on the 45′, he’s the link man and can can barge through a blanket defence.
Play him everywhere – in and out, all about, whatever the game dictates.
Get ready for another summer of it because whatever 2017 brings, you can be damned sure that Aidan O’Shea will do three things: He will score a goal playing in at full forward, he’ll hit one from downtown with number 11 on his back and he’ll dominate a midfield too. All three of those facts will only feed into each different argument about where the Breaffy man’s best position is.
O’Shea just goes out to play football though and he’s not too bothered about where he’s playing – he’ll leave that for argument amongst supporters, speculation in the media and he, in his own words, will just focus on “getting it done”. It, of course, being Sam Maguire.
At 26, the Mayo man just wants the result now – he doesn’t care about anything, how it’s done, when it’s done. who’s the hero or any of that.
The county has some young guns coming through even if the narrative still follows them needing new blood. The like of Conor Loftus, Stephen Coen and Diarmuid O’Connor have gone a long way to establishing themselves with the seniors and, with the success that they’ve had at underage level, you can just about whisper the idea that Mayo might be ready for the last push. Maybe.
Even O’Shea and all his stature and experience would let those same young guys lead the way if it meant the holy grail at the end of the path. There’s no room for egos on this pursuit:
“They played minor, they didn’t lose a game. They played under-21s, they didn’t lose a game,” O’Shea said.
“I’d have no problem if Stevie Coen does the triple and lifts Sam Maguire – I’ll be happily standing behind him.”
After nine years at the top though, he still faces the same individual scrutiny in every performance but there was once a time when even Joe Brolly was raving about this man.
As for Aidan O'Se, what can one say only "f*** me"
— Joe Brolly (@JoeBrolly1993) August 4, 2013
After another final defeat with Mayo and then a disappointing club campaign at Breaffy, O’Shea got away from it all for a while in the winter when he lifted a basketball again and joined EJ Sligo All-Stars.
At the time, his coach Shane O’Meara was raving about him:
“He’s a power forward – and power is the operative word,” the basketball coach told SportsJOE.
“He’s really given us something that we needed in terms of physicality because the lads wouldn’t be as physically mature yet. We struggled to protect the point, we didn’t have a presence in there but now just the fact that he’s there, he makes people think twice about going to the basket.”
And, to Aidan O’Shea who plans on playing again this winter if GAA commitments permit, his play on the court isn’t much different to what he does on the football field.
“They’re [Sligo All-Stars] only young guys and still physically developing. They’re very good around the perimeter but probably don’t have huge physicality in their team,” he explained at AIB’s ‘Club Fuels County’ launch of the GAA All-Ireland Football Championship.
“It helps that Mother Nature has me at 6’4 and just shy of 16 stone. So you throw that into the equation, you’re going to throw down a few rebounds and box out a few guys.
“So [my role] is just basically to pull down rebounds, pass it out to the outlet, get up and down the court, work hard – similar to what I do in Gaelic Football, I think.”
He’s not only a big f**ker but he’s humble enough too.
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