GAA star opens up on superstition ahead of All-Ireland SFC final victory

They like their piseógs in Kerry and Mark O’Shea was spooked by superstition ahead of the All-Ireland final against Ulster champions Donegal

They like their piseógs in Kerry, and Mark O’Shea was spooked by superstition ahead of the All-Ireland final.

The colour clash with Donegal meant that both counties would wear their change strips for the decider as the Ulster champions donned a predominantly white jersey, with Kerry switching to blue.

It became Kerry’s default alternative decades ago, representing the Munster colours with the long-standing tradition being that counties would adopt their provincial strip if a clash emerged in the All-Ireland series.

But while it cropped up regularly over the years given the predominance of green in county jerseys, this was the first final that they had worn it in an All-Ireland final since 1972, when they lost to Offaly after a replay.

O’Shea, who only broke into the side this year at 27 years of age, had more contemporary reasons to feel restless about the blue however.

“When we were wearing the blue jersey, I was like, ‘Feck sake’ because I wore it when I made my debut against Mayo up in Castlebar and we were beaten,” he explained. “And I made my starting debut against Meath in the Championship with the blue jersey. So I was like, ‘Jeez, I don’t know about these blue jerseys’.”

That Meath game came amid a rut of injuries which threatened Kerry’s All-Ireland ambitions. Their midfield hasn’t been the most celebrated sector of the team in recent years and with Diarmuid O’Connor and Barry Dan O’Sullivan out through injury, manager Jack O’Connor had to go further down the trough than he would have liked.

The nine-point defeat to Meath in the group stage appeared to reduce Kerry’s Championship campaign to a procession, amid serious doubts around their ability to muster a serious assault on the All-Ireland with the personnel they had available at the time. At that stage O’Shea was seen as somebody who was part of the problem more than the solution.

“Jack was saying, ‘You’ve nothing to lose’, and I suppose after the Meath game I may as well have never put on boots again, and that was the first time I suppose I’d seen inter-county, if you’re not at it… look, you can probably get the criticism, and rightly so, we weren’t at it and I wasn’t at it.”

But as some key players were phased back in, O’Shea remained prominent – largely because of a lack of fit alternatives – but his graph rose with that of the team as Kerry started picking off Ulster opposition.

He was left out for the Cavan game as O’Connor made his return from injury, only to last just three minutes as O’Shea was immediately pitched in. He stayed there for the remainder of the year as Armagh, Tyrone and Donegal were dismissed, all of them with remarkable comfort.

Prior to this year, O’Shea’s only involvement with Kerry had been in a McGrath Cup game in 2020 when the team was away on holiday. He had never even played underage football for the county but he caught O’Connor’s eye during Dr Crokes run to the All-Ireland semi-final last winter.

“No, never played under-age. I got a massive growth spurt there when I was about, I’d say, 17, 18. I went from about five nothing to about 6’2” or 6’3”. So, yeah, Crokes, my parents, they always kind of taught me, ‘Look, just keep at it’.

“I tried to master the skills when I was smaller. When obviously the height came, things kind of started to progress a bit fast and you’re kind of thrown into playing with Crokes.

“Obviously, playing with Kerry was something I thought probably would never come around and just very, very glad that it did.

“I was like, ‘The boat is probably gone here as well’. But, look, Kerry is such a good championship. You’re playing against the Barry Dans, Diarmuid, David Moran and these fellas down through the years. So, it’s a good kind of place to be putting yourself up and you can get a bit of confidence from it too.”

His uncle Pat, Kerry’s All-Ireland winning manager in 2007 and a dominant figure in the club, had a strong guiding hand too.

“Ah, he did, to be fair. I suppose, minor was when I got a bit of belief in myself. And Edmund O’Sullivan, to be fair, he was an unbelievable coach, an unbelievable mentor to me and still I can always pick up the phone and just have a chat about anything, to be fair.

“And from him to kind of Brian Mac (Mahon) in the Crokes and then to Pat, like, to be fair. I’ve had Pat now for two stints and the quality of what he does, he’s a serious man.”

O’Connor, fresh from delivering his fifth All-Ireland, is one of the most successful managers of all time and the simplicity with which he helped to elevate O’Shea from a decent club footballer to a county player of real substance is telling.

“The one thing Jack kind of said to me a few times, he was like, ‘Look, you’re, I suppose even over the last year, you’ve played a lot of big size games with Crokes’.

“So he was like, ‘Look, it’s no different to them games.’ And he was right, at the end of the day it’s a game of football. And once you take out the emotion, that’s all it is.”