After 17 seasons of inter-county duty, Tomás Ó Sé, who recentely released an autobiography, called time on his career with Kerry this year. And in his weekly Irish Independent column, the decorated star confronts the circumstances which led to him being dropped during the 2009 season.
It was a championship which ended with an ideal script for the Kingdom. An All-Ireland win tinged with the sugary taste of beating Cork in the final was the stuff of raw local rivalry, and a seventeen point drubbing of Dublin was the dream act in the quarter-final.
But the smooth conclusion belies the tumultuous path which brought Jack O'Connor's side to that point. Watching Kerry stutter through the championship was indecipherable to most GAA pundits. And Tomás Ó Sé who was in the thick of Kerry's campaign that year says the hard work in the training ground 'just wasn't clicking in games.'
Their season looked to be nearing crisis point when they just about squeezed through against Sligo in the qualifiers. And for Ó Sé, things were about to descend into even worse territory.
The five time All-Ireland winner met up with some friends over from England for drinks. But what began with intentions of just indulging in some casual beverages escalated into an all night session.
Ó Sé was summoned for a meeting with management in Killarney where the expected sentence of being dropped for the Antrim game was duly delivered. But the former defender confesses, that he wasn't happy with the way the situation was handled.
'I didn't like the way it came out, and Jack could have handled that better; we could have organised releasing that information in a better way and it wouldn't have mattered as long as we were strong- minded enough to keep focused. It p*ssed me off.'
Colm Cooper was also dropped for that game for dishonouring drink prohibition policies and it was rumoured at the time that he was present for Ó Sé's unauthorised session. Ó Sé however, dismissed these misconceptions.
'A lot of people thought I was with 'Gooch' that time: not at all. To this day I don't know what he was doing, and I never asked him. After it all finished we'd have a great laugh about it - 'Where did we go on to after that?' 'What did we do then?' That kind of thing.'
Tomás Ó Sé has just recently released an autobiography entitled The White Heat.
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