It is a tough pill to swallow.
Look, since February Mayo have heard nothing but harsh words said about them.
First up it was the league and how poor they were.
Stephen Rochford’s side weren’t great, they lost to Monaghan and were trashed by Dublin but even in their victories, Mayo were discredited.
The win over Tyrone was put down to Mickey Harte’s side having a poor second half of their league campaign.
The whole start of the year Mayo didn’t get too much credit, just written off but the players never listened.
Championship came around and they were poor against Sligo but won nonetheless, they lost to Galway and again were written off.
Nobody gave them credit for nearly winning the game with a man less than their opposition, nobody gave them credit full stop.
So then Mayo went through the qualifiers and Aidan O’Shea came into the set up.
They were abysmal, there is no other way of putting it but through the qualifiers, O’Shea was their shining light, he should have won man of the match against Derry and picked up that accolade a couple of times on their road to the final.
Yet, the whole year he mirrored the criticism Mayo received, some of it justified some of it not.
There was ‘selfie-gate’, taking pictures with fans after a challenge game and getting berated by Bernard Flynn. Uncalled for.
Then there was the man marking of Kieran Donaghy, maybe it wasn’t his best performance, maybe the criticism was justified at that point of time.
But similar to Mayo as a team O’Shea was disregarded the whole year despite being their best player other than Andy Moran and maybe David Clarke.
Rewind last year to Dublin winning the All-Ireland by the finest of margins and the photo of Aidan and Seamus O’Shea sitting side by side heartbroken on the pitch of Croke Park is haunting.
Fast forward to present day and it is the same scenario, what more can Aidan and his brother do?
It’s everything to Aidan and Seamus O’Shea, it’s everything to the people of Mayo. An All-Ireland title would mean the world to the county and another defeat is just devastating.
And then you remember it is just a game, for as much as we all love it and how a sport that nobody outside of Ireland knows about and how 82.500 people pack into a stadium that is relatively unknown is magnificent, you know deep down it is just a few lads kicking a ball around a pitch and there’s more important things in life.
Aidan O’Shea knows that, as much as he was devastated he can see the bigger picture.
There’s the banquet at the end of it all and priorities set in, O’Shea is a father first and a GAA player second.
it’s the biggest day of his playing career to date, it’s the biggest disappointment yet again but O’Shea is just happy to celebrate being able to give his daughter such a special memory. The GAA is great but family is even better.
And for the Mayo players that will be heading back west for their homecoming with nothing but broken hearts they’ll soon realise that they’ve given nothing but sheer enjoyment and great memories to their county and made people proud to say they’re from Mayo and another great chapter of their life has been written.
They’ll have their day but at the same time they’ll enjoy this one even if it is not quite what they wanted.
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