Few players attract such individual criticism as Aidan O'Shea. It is weary and exceptionally unfair on O'Shea, and it often has the same thrust.
Here's Fergus Connolly, a former member of Jim Gavin's backroom team, speaking to the Sunday Independent last May.
Write this down! Put it in block capitals! AS LONG AS I'M ALIVE MAYO WILL NEVER WIN AN ALL-IRELAND.
You've that attitude for a start. And a midfielder, Aidan O'Shea, rushing around doing TV shows. What the fuck? You wouldn't see it in Kerry. You wouldn't see it in Dublin. Why? Because you win your medals and then talk about it.
There would be no media. It's about The Team, The Team, The Team, not what I can do for myself. Aidan O'Shea does media for himself. He's not doing it for the team. It's bullshit.
The latest to beat the drum is Joe Brolly, claiming on the Independent's GAA podcast that Mayo would never win an All-Ireland with O'Shea in the team. "I still make the point that I always make that while Aidan O'Shea is in that Mayo team, you're not going to win an All-Ireland because I don't think you can afford passengers come the key phases of big games".
Brolly was challenged, and it was pointed out that O'Shea played well in last year's All-Ireland final.
Yeah, when it didn't matter. He was winning balls and laying them off. What did he actually do? While James McCarthy came forward and kicked to killer points in the last quarter when the game is there for the taking. Where the great players, the All Stars step up and take that game, where was he? Where did he go in the last 20 minutes?
"That's what you judge a great player on. I really couldn't believe it that he got an All Star. Lee Keegan, meanwhile, didn't get an All Star?
There are ruthless decisions that need to be made and I'll put it to you this way, he wouldn't make the Dublin team. He wouldn't be on the Dublin XV if he was a Dub.
O'Shea did fade in the final 20 minutes of the final, but he had been outstanding up to that. There's no doubt that O'Shea will reflect on the All-Ireland final with some regret, knowing he has to improve, but he was crucial in ensuring Mayo made it to another final, so to couch criticism in hyperbolic shrieks that Mayo will never win an All-Ireland with O'Shea in the team.
