A PICTURE PAINTS A THOUSAND WORDS
It took a while, but Aidan O’Mahony built up the strength to find himself and went out on his own terms
it is a book that can be judged by its cover but there is no slight in that. the stunning photograph of Aidan O’Mahony in the immediate aftermath of his final game for Kerry in the 2016 Allireland semi-final loss to
Dublin captures a tear streaming down his face as he takes in one final view of Croke Park from its main stage
it is more than a striking photograph, though, it is also an image that reveals a pleasing truth.
‘that tear signifies someone who went out on his own terms, who went out on a high, who had given every last drop that day,’ explains O’Mahony. ‘it was knowing that the end is here and knowing, outside of the result, that the end was right.’
And he had reason to know that because the first time he finished, it felt anything but.
in 2010, just as the football summer was gearing for take-off, he was done and dusted.
thirty years of age, four All-ireland medals in his pocket, a couple of All-stars and an All-ireland final man-of-the-match gong, made the case in a footballing sense.
But satisfaction of a career wellserved was not what brought him to that point, but an overwhelming sense that life was pressing down so hard he could no longer enjoy it.
the introduction to his story in Unbroken is a journey from his home in Rathmore to the Aiséirí treatment Centre in Cahir, Co tipperary in the company of his sister, Nora.
the book explains how he spent six weeks there where, aided by counselling and reflection, he found his way back.
‘i was a different person. My shoulders were back, my chest out; i was proud of myself and what i’d done,’ he writes.
And he has done so much since. Married to Denise, father to Lucia and Liah, he is still on the Garda beat, has opened his own fitnessbased business, became something of a national celebrity by winning the inaugural Dancing with the stars, is managing the MtU senior team and is still kicking ball for Rathmore at 42.
And yet, six years after his inter-county retirement, his book feels at times like an extension of that journey to recovery.
Diagnosed with asthma at an early age, he spent too much of his early years keeping everything bottled up. introverted by nature, he did all his talking on the field. if he had his time back, he would have talked more to those who mattered.
‘i would have been aware people would be saying that Aidan O’Mahony has written a book and sure how many books have been written about that era in Kerry football but, for me, the theme going through it is that there is a real person behind the jersey as well.
‘When you give talks to a business or to a school, you are always introduced as the person who won this or won that and that is not the real story. A lot of times when you are giving these talks, you feel like a bit of a fraud because you are not telling them about a real person.
‘that is why Unbroken came along. i don’t think it could be more honest because it was a tough one to write.
‘Back then, you didn’t talk about mental health and you kind of looked at it as a stigma.
‘i was not someone who went to a sports psychologist or could go to a psychiatrist to talk about things, even about the asthma i was diagnosed with when i was eight.
‘if put all those things together from a young age growing up, you are dealing with a person who grew up as an introvert, always kept things to himself and never dealt with anything.
‘i was not willing to talk to anyone. i probably had that stubbornness on the pitch as well and you are thinking to yourself that you are bulletproof.
‘But in the end, it all comes back and you are not enjoying going to work even though you love your work as a guard, you find that you are not enjoying going to training even though you love football.
‘You would be out socialising but only for the sake of it and then all the emotions were coming out with your friends and they were going “what’s wrong with this fella?”.
‘in the end one night when i was out, i just texted a friend who i knew would run with it that i was finished with football. it was probably a kind of cowardly way of dealing with it rather than coming out myself and making that decision. ‘But when you are in that frame of mind and when life was not great... it was an easy way to do it.’ it would not have come as a shock to those who knew him. At the beginning of that summer, the Kerry team were taking in a training camp in Portugal but on the morning they were due to fly out, he rang Jack O’Connor to say he was staying put.
Football was long past the point of being a release, it had become a source of pain. two high-profile incidents piled on that pressure. in the 2008 All-ireland semi-final against Cork, after a runin with Donncha O’Connor, he reacted to barely being touched on the cheek by collapsing to the ground and his Ballydesmond neighbour was sent off. the pile-on was inevitable, but he didn’t need to read it to know he had done wrong.
‘You would just love to turn back time straight away but you can’t. it stays with you, it is not a thing that goes away and it is still being brought up to me and that is fair enough, too. i held my hands up straight away and there are only so many times that you can apologise.
‘it is something i wish i never had done but everyone in their life has a light-switch moment and i am not the first one to do something that i instantly regretted.’
hOWeveR, in the aftermath of that year’s All-ireland final defeat to tyrone, word leaked that he had become the first GAA player to fail a post-match drugs test, after twice the permitted levels of salbutamol – the drug used to treat asthma – had been found in his system.
in time, he would be cleared, no suspension followed but the damage done exceeded any match ban.
‘it was the biggest thing that floored me,’ he admits.
‘the whole way it was carried out and leaked for someone who was asthmatic all their life was really hard to take. even last week, i spent nearly two days in bed with it.
‘You look back at it and that stigma was over you for nearly three or four months. it was a tough one because i was getting it left, right and centre, whether it was from the media, whether i was out or at work and obviously there was a short supply of sympathy for me because the diving incident was only a few months earlier.
‘You are totally paranoid. You are going to bed at night-time thinking about what people think of you.
‘i used to go on social media forums and there might be nine positives things written and one negative thing but my head was in such a place that i would only pick up on the negative thing and go with that.
‘And then, you start thinking “i have given this so much and now it is all being thrown back in my face”. But the people it hurt the most were my family – they are the ones who have to pick up the paper and read about it.’
there was enough in all of that for him to fall out of love with the game and it showed. His arrival on the Kerry team, along with that of Paul Galvin, provided Jack O’Connor not just with two high-end players but with a warrior culture that had waned a little in the group.
A man-marking specialist, he became a defensive pillar but in the aftermath of 2008 his form dipped to the point he got dropped the following summer.
While piecing his life back together was the prize gained from those six weeks spent in Cahir, he quickly discovered that football was still very much part of that life.
As ever, a player who always found his motivation in a challenge, discovered his next one in a photo caption.
‘When i came out, Rathmore played Laune Rangers the week after and i was put sitting on the arse of my pants in that game and the moment was captured for the paper. the caption on the picture was “FALLeN iDOL” and i remember looking at that the following morning and saying to myself, “well that is one thing i won’t be remembered as anyway”.
‘it made me a driven man.’ Another thing did, too, and it cut much deeper.
His father, thade, took so much pride in his son’s career that he busied himself compiling scrap books of every game he played for Kerry
You feel like a fraud because you are not talking about a real person
and, more than any medal, being the source of that pride felt like the greatest prize of all. When he passed away suddenly in 2012, it left him heartbroken but he vowed that he would win the All-Ireland one more time just for his dad.
He drove himself harder than ever in that pursuit and despite breaking two bones and dislocating his elbow in 2013, he returned inside five weeks – doctors had set an eightweek minimum absence – to play a part in an All-Ireland quarter-final.
And when they got to the final the following year against Donegal, he had eyes only for Michael Murphy.
The last conversation he had with his father was on the day after the 2012 final, when Thade had expressed his delight that Murphy, a player he so admired, had captained Donegal to victory.
He shared that admiration of Murphy, who stood between him and a heavenly promise, while he made another to his team-mates on the eve of the final.
‘I remember saying “I will mark Michael Murphy” and repeated that mantra three times,’ he writes in the book.
He did, Kerry won and, when it was all over, social media footage emerged of him, on his post-match stroll around the pitch, handing over his boots to a young child, Diarmuid Willis, who suffers from Angelman syndrome.
He had no idea who he was at the time but when contact was made afterwards, O’Mahony advised Diarmuid’s father to auction the boots for Home From Home – a respite centre in Killarney which the family used but was experiencing funding challenges.
The boots raised £24,000 at a function in London, and it added to O’Mahony’s belief that it was an intervention from a higher force.
‘I have absolutely no doubt to this day that it was my father who carried me over to him with the boots because I was just walking about carrying them and the next thing I looked to my left and there he was in the front of the stand.
‘And then it snowballed and the boots went off and got auctioned. It was just a lovely story that made that All-Ireland very special.
‘It was my fifth one but it was the most special,’ he adds.
And words don’t do that justice. There is another powerful photograph in the book of him hoisting the Sam Maguire Cup towards the sky from the podium with his eyes cast to the heavens.
Promise made, promise kept. nUnbroken, Aidan O’Mahony, Hachette
Books Ireland, £14.99.