[caption id="attachment_24823" align="aligncenter" width="625" caption="Dublin footballer and the All-Ireland goal scorer, Kevin McManamon lined out earlier yesterday with Kerry Footballer and recent All-Star winner, Darran O’Sullivan for the launch of Kinect Sports 2. On Friday 28th October is Game Day as ‘Kinect Sports: Season Two’ will be available to purchase from most leading retailers nationwide."]
Balls.ie had the pleasure to sit down with Kerry footballer Darran O'Sullivan yesterday to talk Twitter, backheels and Oliver Callan.
On why he joined Twitter and what it does for GAA players:
I'll be honest, when it came out first, I had no interest in it. I only got set up because a girl at work was like 'Come on, we'll go following a few people on Twitter.' And then the first person to tweet me back was Tommy Bowe. I was kind of hooked on it then when he tweeted me.
In my position now, I'd be dealing with nothing but phonecalls. (With the international rules tour tweet) maybe I shouldn't have said it. I was on a bit of a rant at the time. It can be a dangerous tool like, but I don't mind. People can get to know you. It's good. You have total control. You can say what you want to say. A few people were critical of me saying it, but at the time, that's how felt so I'm not gonna take it back now.
A good few of us are on it now. There'd be myself, Paul, Killian Young, Brosnan, Bryan Sheehan's after joining, a few of the younger lads. I'm trying to get Gooch on it, but no.
On missing the Australia tour:
I just had to take it on the chin. It makes sense to have the best players out there. The number of players who couldn't even make it to any of the trials, you look at the Brogan brothers. They knew they were going to be up the wall with their club and they still are. I was lucky enough to be selected in the last 18, and I knew I was going to have a decision to make. In the back of your mind, you're a bit hopeful they might put things on hold for two weeks, but it wasn't to be. Hopefully in the future they'll figure out some kind of way to accommodate everyone because it's an awkward enough position to be in. You don't really say no to playing with your country and going to Australia on a tour.
On the spat between Paul Galvin and Oliver Callan:
I'm only hearing what I see in the paper, and when somebody said it to me, I didn't even know who (Callan) was. I said 'who's this fella?' And they were like, he mocks people, he impersonates people. I didn't know him at all. By all accounts, he [Callan] kind of targeted him [Galvin] and tried to drive him mad, and he [Callan] got exactly what he wants out. A bit of publicity.
On that backheel:
It's probably a subconscious thing. I was playing a lot of soccer when I was younger, messing before games, you know. It's an instinct. It was a bad ball, I was probably a bit too far ahead of Bryan. I just chanced my arm. Luckily it came off. Nine times out of ten, I could have come off in a heap. I was too busy trying not to laugh after it went it. Declan was laughing at me and I was trying not to laugh on TV. Jack gave me a bit of a slagging, but I'd say now he'd have had to something to say if I missed it.
On where the pain of losing an All-Ireland:
That lingers, that just stays, because every time you put on the TV or the radio, it's there to remind you. And it's nothing but if's and but's. If we'd won the All-Ireland, I'd have probably forgotten about the game. When you lose, you're constantly looking back on little bits and pieces. It was a couple of crazy minutes...six, seven minutes. I've never been part of a Kerry team that's thrown away a lead. On the biggest day, we made the biggest mistake we ever made.
