Sean O'Shea taking Donegal defeat on the chin
Seán O’Shea of Kerry, pictured today for AIB at the launch of the 2026 GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. This year marks a significant milestone as AIB celebrates its 11th year supporting the GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. This season, AIB are celebrating the profound impact of managers, mentors, and backroom teams who embody the spirit of supporting players for the life they’re after.
By John Harrington
Kerry star Sean O’Shea admits the Kingdom players have had “a difficult few days” reflecting on their heavy Allianz Football League Division 1 final defeat to Donegal.
They were well beaten in all aspects of the game as Donegal romped to a 13-point win that didn’t flatter them, and O’Shea isn’t hiding away from the fact that he and his team-mates failed to deliver.
“I'm personally very disappointed, yeah,” says O’Shea. “That's kind of the first thing you need to do after a performance and a defeat like that.
“You have to look in the mirror first and analyse your own performance. And then you look at it from a broader perspective as a team as a whole.
“So, yeah, that's just the feeling of disappointment after a performance like that individually and as a group. That will sting after a game like that, especially with it being a final in Croke Park.
“We fought back a bit near the end and put a bit of a reflection on the scoreboard that maybe didn't justify the performance. I don't know, was it 13 points in the end? But it was probably a heavier defeat than that, given the way the two teams played.
“We just have to take it on the chin and realise that on the day we weren't anywhere near the pitch of it, we weren't good enough. Full credit to Donegal for the performance they put in too.
“There's been plenty of time for reflection this week now and then we have to park it and look forward to the Championship and try and find areas to improve.”
Kerry players David Clifford, centre, and Seán O'Shea, right, after their side's defeat in the Allianz Football League Division 1 final match between Kerry and Donegal at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile.
The most obvious area for improvement will surely be how Kerry competed for kick-outs, especially their own.
Donegal dominated this battle-zone, both in terms of their ability to win it cleanly in the air and also out-fight Kerry for any breaking ball.
“Yeah, the kick-out battle is just so important now in the game,” says O’Shea.
“What you can do on the kick-out is going to determine how the game goes, really.
“You've seen that throughout the league in different matches with different teams that if you can turn the screw on the kick-out, you can get a serious advantage. They definitely dominated us in the kick-out on Sunday, both on our ball and on their kick-out as well. They were able to get them away. So that was a huge difference, I suppose.
“There's a couple of different aspects to the breaking ball. There's the tactical aspect where you're trying to time when you're coming into the break zone. You're trying to see which direction the midfielders are jumping from, which way the ball might land off them.
“And then you just have to be brave as well at the end of it to get in there and put the body on the line and get the breaking ball, whether it's bouncing or getting down over it.
“But, yeah, it has definitely gone from more one-on-one battles to now being probably eight or nine fellas around the landing zone. There is certainly tactical elements of it, but also that bravery piece.
“We lost a lot of kick-outs in that break-ball zone. As you saw, they kind of stacked that middle third with a lot of their big men and had good presence out there.
“And when they were breaking it, they were hungry on the breaks as well. It's definitely something we'll have to learn from and just make sure that for our next day out we're hungry on those breaking balls.”
The Kerry players and management will have plenty of time to work on it at their five-day training camp in Portugal next week, a prospect O’Shea is hugely enthusiastic about.
“I think it's hugely beneficial as a group,” he says. “I think especially given the nature of the league is so condensed, there have been eight games, It's hard to get time to reflect on those games individually during the week because you're trying to recover.
“You have another game the following weekend, you're trying to prepare for that team coming. There's a lot to get done. Even from the point of view of just getting time with the group, spending five days or whatever it is with the group brings the team very close together.
“The tactical work and the meetings and the pitch work are hugely important. But then the time that fellas get to spend in each other's company as well, which brings them closer together too, that's another hugely valuable thing.
“The work you get done out there, one day is nearly the equivalent of a week's training here. Just because of the amount of time you get and spending it together.”
