McMahon much more than a B-list performer

THE PARTY LINE is crystal clear. These past few weeks the Dubs have been “tearing lumps out of each other” at their St Clare’s training base in DCU with a return to fundamentals like intensity and hunger.

Philly McMahon has profited from these feral training matches to such an extent that he has been returned to the corner back residency for tomorrow’s meeting with Louth.

Gilroy called the past five months “shadow boxing” but it is these attempts to replicate championship intensity that draws comparison between Dublin’s internal skirmishes and the Kilkenny hurlers’ famous sessions in Nowlan Park.

Showing well at training can get you on to the team. Just ask McMahon.

The Ballymun native nailed down the corner back slot in 2010 (shelving a progressive Mixed Martial Arts pursuit as a result) but injury in 2011 – just a fractured knee and grade two tear of lateral ligaments – saw Cian O’Sullivan finally get a run of games in blue.

When the versatile O’Sullivan felt that all too familiar tweak of the hamstring last Tuesday night, it became a straightforward decision for the make-up of Pat Gilroy’s fullback line: Mick Fitzsimons, Rory O’Carroll with McMahon breaking up the southside’s Holy Trinity.

He made his way back into the side via performances on the ‘B’ team. The Dublin panel don’t consider that a derogatory term. They want members of the Bs to have a chip on their shoulder. They want the likes of McMahon to be trying to crease a Brogan brother or Diarmuid Connolly.

The Bs have been beating the As of late. Again, this makes for a happy/angry camp. Either emotion will suffice.

“Last week I was actually on the B team,” McMahon explains. “To be starting shows how it increased my hunger to play better.”

These matches are serious. They know all week they are playing a game.

There’s a referee on site, a selector managing each side, with Gilroy overseeing affairs.

“The Bs wouldn’t be winning by much and that’s how you know the intensity is good. If one team wins by a lot you know something is wrong. That’s what was happening in the league campaign. The As were giving the Bs a good hammering so the Bs got together and we knew we had to increase the intensity for ourselves and to help the As as well.”

Dublin malfunctioned during the National League because, like clever All-Ireland winners, they were trying to evolve.

Too clever it turns out.

But, as always, there was method to Gilroy’s ways. When attempting new attacking formulas the players neglected some basic principles, leading to uncharacteristically heavy defeats to Mayo and Down.

The Bs sorted it out and as a result some of them became As.

McMahon is one of three players – Eamon Fennell and Kevin McManamon the others – who didn’t start last September’s final against Kerry but are in ahead of O’Sullivan, Denis Bastick and Barry Cahill tomorrow.

“The intensity of the Bs is still huge. It is so close to who you are picking, I’m sure Pat has a headache about it. Even though there are only three of us that didn’t start the final last year there is not that much in it in every position.

“It doesn’t reflect on the team sheet how well the Bs are doing.”

McMahon, simply put, is well made. Clearly practising what he preaches, he is about to open a third Bodily Kinesthetics gym in Good Counsel GAA club to go with others in Ballymun Kickhams and Thomas Davis. Aston Villa’s Enda Stevens and other professional soccer players are coached by him, doing TRX suspension training, in their preseason.

There was his famous tunnel dust-up with the bigger Cork defender Michael Shields last year. Once it started there was no stopping him, but with some notable incidents of Dublin indiscipline during the recent league campaign (stemming from frustration, according to Gilroy), McMahon is conscious of not losing the head when matters boil over again.

“Especially with the stick we get in matches. You play the likes of Tyrone, these northern teams, they like to throw it into you. That’s no disrespect to other counties (probably realising Louth live on the northern border).

“You have to be able to give and take it. You would get away with a lot of it at training sessions but at the same time you don’t want to bring that into your game. You have to be careful what you do. Discipline is the most important thing on the field.”