Bouncing back after testing times

Keith Duggantalks to Kerry's Aidan O'Mahony about how he overcame losing an All-Ireland final to Tyrone and then 'that incident'

THE CAREER trajectory of Aidan O’Mahony is a good example of the speed of the sporting life of any Kerry footballer. In Kingdom country, they do not hang around.

Páidí Ó Sé invited the Rathmore man on to the panel in the spring of 2003. A year later, he won his first All-Ireland after impressing Jack O’Connor sufficiently to nail down a place at left-corner back as a young, skilful defender who took care of business in unobtrusive fashion.

There was a vacancy or two in the defence and O’Mahony slotted right in – it was as if he was designed specifically for that role. By 2006, he was man of the match in the All-Ireland final playing centre back and he claimed his third All-Ireland medal a year later. All-Star bling followed.

IN COMPARISON to the experiences of the vast majority of county footballers, it is a rich accumulation of success and experience in a compressed time. In his own mind, O’Mahony could argue that last year balanced the scales somewhat. It wasn’t just the ignominy and dragged-out consequences of a moment of foolishness playing against Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final or the winter controversy that flamed when the use of his inhaler for asthma prior to the All-Ireland final against Tyrone led to him failing a random drugs test.

The biggest blow was losing the final – his second September defeat to Tyrone – and missing out on the three in a row.

The other issues were messy and unfortunate, but he had the mental toughness and discipline to deal with them. When O’Mahony made an appearance in Galway as a guest of the Puma team taking part in the Volvo Ocean Race, he offered a wry smile when the issue of that failed drugs test was brought up. In his red windcheater and with his sallow skin, he could have passed for one of the sailors hanging around the docks.

For a few minutes, O’Mahony had politely raced through the stock questions about the Cork match in the manner of a Garda – O’Mahony is based in a Cork barracks – giving court evidence about a minor traffic incident.

He knew sooner or later the question would come, but when asked if last winter seemed terribly long because of “everything that happened”, O’Mahony cast his eyes to the grey skies and deadpanned, “ah no, I had three weeks in Australia with the International Rules so it was short enough”, and set his face in a picture of solemn innocence. But in a way, he wasn’t joking. His method of dealing with a desperately prolonged series of meetings to clear his name was to let the process run its course.

Perhaps his work as a Garda helped him to understand the slow machinations of bureaucracy; once O’Mahony tested positive – for sambutenol – what had been a miserable few minutes in a testing room when he was still absorbing what had happened against Tyrone became a “case”, a paper chain that would take months to play out.

The case was highly publicised because it was the first time a GAA athlete had been involved in drug testing and the unfairness of having his name revealed publicly was a debating point. O’Mahony admits those weeks in November and December were not exactly fun-filled, but he refused to lie down under the pressure.

“The big thing was the first meeting above in Dublin it carried a potential two-year suspension, but my club Rathmore were involved in a relegation battle so that was my top priority at the time. The sports council have a job to do. They met two or three times and, as I said at the time, I have been asthmatic for 20 years so I knew my conscience was clear. But they have a job to do so, there wasn’t much I could do about it. All teams are more cautious about it now.

“I take the ventolin. The main thing was to prove that the sambutenol was associated with that. From day one, they understood that and my conscience was clear and I was glad the issue was put to bed. Team doctors have to look into what every player is taking because even the most innocent thing – Lemsip or other small things can cross the line. But teams have become more aware of what they can and can’t take.

“But the anti-doping crowd and the teams know if it is a harmless thing it can be worked out. There is a process of elimination and you have to work through it. So it is in the interests of the player to clear himself.”

O'MAHONY TOLDhis club colleagues to expect a storm in a teacup shortly before the results of his test were made public. Séamus Cooper was one of O'Mahony's first coaches in Rathmore; he had him sketched out as a forward because he quickly showed an aptitude for kicking with both feet. Then he was working in England for a few months and when he returned, the 12-year-old O'Mahony had been drafted into the defence.

(Cooper’s efforts were hardly wasted though. When the Rathmore crowd gathered in the The Bridge to watch the 2006 All-Ireland final, the owner declared in a rush of blood if either of the Rathmore boys, Aidan or Tom O’Sullivan, kicked a point he would stand the house.)

When O’Mahony, drifting deep into Mayo country as he tailed playmaker Ciarán McDonald and landed his first score, the bar staff got busy planking free pints on the counter. When the centre half kicked a second, the owner began to worry).

But for Cooper, O’Mahony’s asthma was simply part of who he was as a sportsman.

“I often carried that inhaler in my pocket when he was a young lad. Throughout that whole time, he played his club football and concentrated on that.

“I felt more pity for his parents, who had to deal with it all for those few months. Aidan is a strong character and he could handle it. But I thought after everything, Aidan should have been hailed as a kind of model for kids who are now seven or eight, be it in Kerry or Roscommon, who feel they cannot play with their teams because they have asthma. It was a missed opportunity.”

It spoke volumes for O’Mahony he has never carped about what, at the very least, was a hugely inconvenient and stressful intrusion on his life. For all the lip-service paid to the dedication of contemporary GAA stars, those few months left him exposed to the trials and tribulations faced by any professional athlete.

He could have been forgiven for deciding he didn’t need the hassle. After all, he had won every honour possible at senior level.

“Yeah. It was a tough year, losing an All-Ireland final and then that incident,” he says evenly. “But I am used to these things. January came, we were back training and in the gym. You come in and play your football day in and day out. These things do bring you on. The incidents before and after do make you driven. It does make you stronger. A lot of people thought it would finish me but I am only too happy to be back trying to claim my place again.”

Perhaps his tenacity stems from his original hunger to make it as a Kerry player. When players like O’Mahony burst in to the national consciousness, it can look as if it is the end point to years of planning and nurturing by this mythical football machine that the rest of us believe exists in Kerry.

The truth is more haphazard.

There was nothing inevitable about O’Mahony making it. Even in Kerry, it is possible for the music of prodigies to go unheard. That is particularly true if you grow up slightly outside the big citadels of Kerry football, as O’Mahony did in Rathmore, a small club with a solid history locked against the Cork border.

Neither O’Mahony nor Tom O’Sullivan, who grew up half a mile from him, received visits from the royal court of Kerry football in their adolescent days.

There were few overtures from the legends. O’Sullivan never played minor. O’Mahony failed to make the cut in 1998. Cooper mentioned to Charlie Nelligan, the coach at the time, that this youngster was worth looking at, but the panel had been chosen.

That spring, Rathmore played An Gaeltacht in a league match and O’Mahony held Dara Ó Cinneide to a point from play. Cooper rang Nelligan and made another case and Charlie agreed to bring him in and he liked what he saw. O’Mahony had missed out on the Munster campaign, but he was brought on in the All-Ireland semi-final against Laois, when he marked Brian McDonald.

But how many kids get a run on minor teams and then lose heart or interest or have their heads turned by the world?

O’Mahony was still running in the outside lanes, but he knew where the finish-line was. After Tom O’Sullivan made the under-21 team – and gave a fine account of himself marking MF Russell in a county championship game – O’Mahony was the first to congratulate him. And then he declared: “I will be on the senior team before you.”

“And they are good mates,” laughs Cooper. “But people knew then Tom was on the way up. Aidan had yet to make his mark. I felt he had the physique and the athleticism to absorb the heavy training Kerry do. That is where a lot of nice players fall short.

“He was a fierce man for the gym; he would spend hours in there. I was half surprised Páidí Ó Sé never picked him – I think he was afraid he wasn’t ready. But from minor up, he was able to take hits and use both feet.”

So O’Mahony had an insider’s view of the Kerry set-up throughout the traumatic summer of 2003 and when Jack O’Connor came in the following autumn, he saw in the Rathmore man the kind of brio and application he liked.

Cooper recalls his first senior match, a challenge against Dublin for a pitch opening at Pat Spillane’s place. O’Mahony marked Darren Homan, who was used as a third midfielder. It gave the Rathmore man a chance to showcase his ball skills.

HIS FIRSTchampionship game was against Limerick and he was shadowing a flyer in Stephen Kelly. Pace, it was rumoured, was the flaw in the Rathmore man's armoury. Early on, he got turned, out of inexperience rather than speed, but Séamus Moynihan drifted off his man and halted Kelly with a thundering shoulder.

O’Mahony responded to the break the senior man had given him by growing as a player over the course of the match. That was it. He was on the road and he has never looked back.

So here he is five years later, indispensable to the Kerry cause. He is polite in his demeanour and guarded, saying all the politically correct things about Cork and, in true Kerry tradition, doing his level best to add smoke and mirrors to the general perception his team are favourites.

In a way, it has come full circle.O’Connor is back in harness and with his return brings the sense Kerry are in a dangerous mood. “Jack gave me my first chance,” O’Mahony says. “And a lot of people are glad to see him back. We have won the league and he has brought new ideas in and a new training regime. And with so many new lads coming in, players are looking over their shoulders. That is good for us.”

Kerry football may have shaped O’Mahony, but he has also shaped himself. Year six beckons and his conscience is clear.