Toughest Trade

Anyone watching the Toughest Trade tonight on RTE 2 would have seen Jim O’Shea, the father of the famous O’Shea brothers of Mayo football fame. Most of our younger members might not be aware that Jim O’Shea is a former Shamrocks player and was full-forward on the  team that won the 1988 championship beating Moate All-Whites by 0-6 to 0-2 in the final. He was also Chairman of the club before he moved to Mayo. At least two of the O’Shea brothers are qualified by birth to play with Westmeath.

That Roberto Wallace fellow was some athlete as might be expected of one who reached the top in the most demanding football game of all although the Gaelic football match did not work out too well for the man with the 38-inch standing jump. He was a superb representative for his sport (which has its image difficulties), mannerly and modest in his greatness.

So too was Aidan O’Shea and more than any other GAA player in the two-year series of this programme, he exposed himself to the fitness levels and skill requirements of an unfamiliar sport and emerged with honour from the experiment.  

However if this Mayo curse things is working, judging by the good shape of the eighty-eight year old Dr Padraig Carney in the programme, Aidan O’Shea’s career might well end without the county winning an All-Ireland.  After the Mayo performances in the past few years one is inclined to believe that the curse is working.

There is a belief in Mayo that a priest cursed the team for over-celebrating in Foxford on the way home from Dublin after winning the 1951 All-Ireland final. The priest was angry at the behaviour of the fans while a funeral was taking place, and said the players should have got down from the back of the truck parading them through the town. The story goes that the priest said that while any member of this team was alive Mayo would not win an All-Ireland.

Dr. Carney ‘the flying doctor’ and the team’s fullback Paddy Prendergast are the only surviving members of the 1950 and 1951 teams.