TOM O’SULLIVAN showed up in Dublin yesterday to collect his footballer of the month award and you’d swear it was the first honour he’d ever got in his life. Winning a fifth All-Ireland football title would make anyone giddy, it’s just O’Sullivan gave the impression this one mattered more than the rest. And understandably so.

“I think there were a lot of things made it so special,” he explained. “It was such a hard-fought All-Ireland, number one. Mike McCarthy coming back. Tadhg Kennelly coming back. Tommy Griffin going in full back. And there were certainly a lot of issues there. Then it all came together on the day.”

In some ways his giddiness can be traced back to three years ago, when after Kerry’s 2006 All-Ireland win over Mayo, O’Sullivan hinted he would probably follow McCarthy into retirement: “It was exactly that. Then I said I’d keep going for a year. Then another year. That was the case though. You’ve heard it before, but I was going to go that time as well. I think you just say that at the time. I could have said it last week as well. The weeks and months go by, then you get hungry for it again.

“When you start playing club, you come back from the holiday, and there isn’t much else to do down in Kerry.

“But no, I wasn’t surprised when Mike Mc came back, because we always felt he was well able to come back. If he’d come back last year there was a possibility we’d have won the All-Ireland. I spoke to him this year, and when he saw the team was in trouble he just wanted to help. It’s just hard to know if he’ll be back next year. He’s married with a baby on the way. But no one has announced their retirement yet.”

O’Sullivan’s display at corner back in the All-Ireland win over Cork sealed yesterday’s award, and of course his season. Yet he admits Cork did then a huge favour by beating them earlier in the season: “Cork practically hammered us in the first round, and opened up our eyes to a lot of faults in the team. Certainly if we beat Cork, and we could have beaten them the first day, even though it would have been against the grain, we wouldn’t have even got to an All-Ireland final.

“There was a lack of fitness there anyway. There were a couple of players carrying an extra few pounds as well. Excluding myself! But tactically we got it wrong as well. Players weren’t tuned in. Everything seemed to be all over the shop, and we certainly didn’t see that coming into the game.

“Travelling up to Longford as well, and the Sligo game, those games got us fit, and tuned in as well. That was certainly a big help going into the Dublin game. And Dublin not bringing their football boots was a big help as well.

“That game was going to come from somewhere though. There was a lot of criticism in the media. Some team was going to get that backlash. It was Dublin unfortunately that got it. I think a lot of the media were saying we weren’t a team, more individuals.

“So as a team we went out to prove that the media was wrong. Look, we wanted to win the All-Ireland as well. Before the Dublin game we weren’t playing as a team . . . I think sometimes when players win so much they tend to work as an individual, maybe.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t really training either. I just think we needed something to gel us, and I think the criticism helped gel us.”

At 30, O’Sullivan also had his experience to call on, and he reckoned that was another deciding factor in their win over Cork – particularly when Cork went five points up early on: “If we were a younger team I don’t think we’d have won. A younger team probably would have dropped the heads. But we’ve a lot of experience in the backs, at 30, 31. Tommy is experienced too. And just stuck in there. That’s what you have to do.”

Chances are O’Sullivan will stick in there for another year or so.

Cooney plays down AFL issue

GAA president Christy Cooney believes the issue of young footballers going to Australia on AFL contracts is “blown out of all proportion” and that the return of several such players within the last week is evidence of that.

Cooney was responding to reports that Kerry’s star young forward Tommy Walsh and team-mate David Moran are both poised to sign for the St Kilda club in Melbourne on a rookie contract.

“Well I don’t know how truthful that is,” said Cooney. “But I have expressed my view previously that the whole thing about our players going to Australia and playing AFL is blown out of all proportion. Something like four players have announced in the last week that they are coming back, and we only have about four or five now playing full-time AFL professional sport, so it is not a major issue for us.

“I don’t know the circumstances and I would want to be fair to the people that are coming home. Maybe they decided it wasn’t for them. Maybe they were homesick and wanted to come home for a variety of reasons.

“I am more concerned about people who are dropping out and not continuing to play our games.”