By John Harrington

Cian O’Sullivan believes Dublin’s defeat to Kerry in the Allianz Football League Final might ultimately be a blessing in disguise.

That loss ended the Dublin team’s 36-match unbeaten run which was becoming something of a millstone around the team’s neck.

With every game they won, the more the record was being talked about and the more significant each subsequent match became.

O’Sullivan found that whole narrative distracting and is relieved it won’t be a factor anymore as they get ready to embark on their championship campaign.

“It is definitely (a relief), if you like to take a positive out of things,” says O’Sullivan.

“You are probably well aware that players try and steer clear of all those things as best we can and we wouldn’t have been paying too much heed to the unbeaten run and however many games it is.

“But it was just so widely talked about and publicised, that your friends and family, or in the media or where-ever, that it is very hard to get away from it.

“It does seep into the subconscious and therefore become a bit of distraction to your preparations for the game. That is done away with now. That distraction isn’t there.

“So, is it a positive going into the summer? Yeah, it probably is. It’s a good thing that that distraction is kind of gone now."

The absence of that distraction might be a relief, but O’Sullivan is keenly aware too that losing the League Final to Kerry gives one of their biggest rivals a major boost ahead of the Championship.

He knows from his own experience of winning big games with Dublin just how transformative an effect coming through on the right side of a titanic struggle like the League Final can have on a team.

“Yeah, majorly so,” says O’Sullivan. “We would have had a few kind of defining games over the last number of years. The mental resolve and resilience that’s built into the team, that’s probably one of our greatest strengths.

“And we’ve shown it time and time again. But to get that, to build that, you have to come through those type of games. You need those defining wins.

“There’s no amount of sitting around a training ground in front of a flip chart that you can do to learn that. You have to experience it.

“You have to be in a game with ten minutes to go behind four or five points and pull it out of the bag to really build that kind of resilience in the team.

“And I think that has been a hallmark of our success over the last four or five years.

“Having the experience of going through those battles and oftentimes, it’s games that you lose that you maybe learn the most from, and being able to bounce back from those losses really builds that mental hardness in the team.

“Obviously Kerry will take a lot out of that win against us in the League Final, but I think we still showed...I think they probably could have won by a bit more than they actually did if we didn’t turn things around the last five, 10 minutes.

“So thankfully, again we showed that we still have that string to our bow - we are happy with how we closed out the games.

“It’s just unfortunately that the rest of it wasn’t up to our standards.”

Dublin’s late charge came up just short when Dean Rock’s last-gasp long-range free rebounded off the post.

They ultimately left themselves with too much to do after a third quarter that saw them run ragged by Kerry who turned a one-point half-time deficit into a five-point advantage.

“Our distribution of the ball was just awful,” says O’Sullivan. “Kerry turned it over, came down and kicked a few good scores against us.

“That really punished us. I think probably the winning of the game was in that period.

“In that period our distribution was a bit sloppy. A few kick passes went awry. We were on the attack. Few handpasses went astray. Key fundamentals weren’t executed properly.

“When a team like Kerry turns over ball when you’re on attack, then you’re scrambling to get back to defence, that’s when you’re most vulnerable.

“They punished us with a handful of scores. We need to shore up on those aspects otherwise it will be a short summer for us.”

One of the most surprising moments of that League Final was when O’Sullivan himself was called ashore.

It’s debatable whether the substitution improved the Dublin defence in any way because the man he was marking, Michael Geaney, promptly kicked two points after O’Sullivan’s departure.

O’Sullivan himself admits he probably wasn’t in peak condition for the League Final because he took six weeks off at the start of the year to go travelling through South-East Asia, but he's confident he’ll be fully up to speed in time for Dublin’s championship campaign.

“Coming back from travelling I was conscious not to go straight into training with the rest of the lads, just building it up like the rest of them had, for the first couple of weeks, it was just getting my match fitness up to where it needed to be in the last couple of games,” he says.

“It probably wasn't where I would have liked it but I'm doing good training with the club the last week or two and feeling good and hopefully now going into the summer I'll be back up to my peak.”

A fully fit O’Sullivan is crucial to Dublin’s hopes of a three-in-a-row because there’s no-one else in the panel who can carry out his deep-lying centre-back role with such authority.

Staying fully fit has always been something of a battle for a man with a long history of hip and hamstring issues, but the 29-year-old believes he now has a good routine he hopes will see him through the 2017 campaign.

“Yeah, throughout the whole season that's just something I need to keep on top of,” he says.

“Whether it's getting a sports massage or keeping a direct line with the physios. Probably the biggest thing is just managing my load and being given the independence to manage that as I see fit.

“I think that if there's a night I need to take off training or something that I'm confident that I can approach the managers and say this is something that I need to do.

“Each player is different. Some guys will rock up to training five minutes before training and throw on the shorts and go out and run around at full-tilt, whereas I need to be there half an hour beforehand to check in with the physios and do a few bits with them and then do my exercise to make sure my glutes and hips and are all fired up and aligned before I got out onto the pitch.

“There's just a bit extra. Each player is different, for me that stuff works. For other players they're more bio-mechanically aligned and don't have to do too much of that stuff.”

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Sports compression wear leader, SKINS, yesterday announced the renewal of their sponsorship agreement with Dublin GAA and leading inter county footballer and SKINS ambassador, Cian O ‘Sullivan until 2018.

The sponsorship will see SKINS provide compression and recovery garments for the Dublin senior football and hurling team.