Ed McGreal has an exclusive in the Mayo News today (with thanks to Jucer for the tip-off) that Aidan O’Shea is heading off to Australia this coming Sunday for a trial with two Aussie Rules clubs: read it and weep here.
If Aidan does head off into the sunset, then it’s obviously a hammer blow which will set the county back in a very significant way. We all know that we’re not exactly endowed with an embarrassment of stand-out talent at the moment and if Aidan were to slip through the net in the same way that Pierce Hanley did a couple of years ago, our prospects of assembling the kind of team that could make a serious attempt to challenge at the highest level would look even more bleak than they do already.
The one glimmer of hope, from a selfish Mayo GAA perspective, is that Aidan says he’s fully committed to lining out for us next year and that any possible move to the Antipodes is only one that he’d consider “down the road”. We’d better get cracking and win that All-Ireland pronto, then.
No matter what slant you put on it, this news is bad, really bad. You wait 30 years for a good center forward and good FF, both arrive at the same time and both are whipped from under our noses. We’re still harping back to what might have been if Ger Geraghty had hung around back in the 80’s. If we do lose this fella along with Hanleys loss then the big day in HQ will go on indefinite hold. I know he says that he will be back but if he loves the place, and they like him, then i think he will be lost to mayo football forever.
lets just hope it all goes tits up for him over there and he comes back determined to play for mayo for the rest of his days ! selfish on our part i know !
We need to find a Mayo version of JP McManus, someone to provide “encouragement ” to those lads to stay in Ireland.