By John Harrington

Dublin U-21 footballer Cillian O’Shea was something of a late bloomer.

This is his third year playing U-21 inter-county football, but before then he had never played at any level of underage football with Dublin.

His big break came when he did a very effective man-marking job for Kilmacud Crokes in the Dublin U-21 football semi-final on Ballyboden danger-man Colm Basquel.

Dublin U-21 manager Dessie Farrell was watching, and promptly called up O’Shea to his panel on the strength of that performance.

So less than a year after not making the Dublin minor panel, the young Crokes footballer found himself in with the county U-21 team.

“I wasn’t even on the development squad and you would think you would have to be on that if you were going to be called up for a minor team or something,” he admits.

“But I don’t think it fazed me, I kept the head down and kept working. I’m from Kilmacud Crokes so we would have a fairly strong senior team, so then I had that in my head and had that as my aim to see where it goes.

“I was never involved in development squads or anything all the way up, and i could be nearly closer to going hurling, would have played dual with Kilmacud all the way up and played colleges with the Dublin south team, it wasn't a great team but that was my first Dublin involvement and I was probably closer to playing hurling at minor level. It could have gone either way.”

O’Shea has developed impressively in the past couple of years and was one of four Dublin players to win an EirGrid 21 Award last year – given to the 21 outstanding players for the 2016 EirGrid All-Ireland Championship.

The defender gives a lot of credit to his improvement to Dublin U-21 manager Dessie Farrell.

“I don’t think that can be under-estimated and if you were to ask any other player about that; and that’s not an understatement at all,” says O’Shea.

“He’s one of the best coaches around and he’s very specific to each individual player. He improves your game so much and gives you that platform to develop I suppose."

The Dublin U-21s play Westmeath in the EirGrid Leinster U-21 Football Quarter-Final in Mullingar but simply retaining their provincial title is not the summit of their ambitions.

The memory of last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Mayo still stings, and this age-group of Dublin footballers wants to bury their reputation for being a nearly-team.

“We also lost the U-21 semi-final the year before against Tipp,” says O’Shea.

“This age lost a semi-final against Donegal (2014) at minor so I don’t think any of us have got past a semi-final at county level.

“A few lads have won club All-Irelands and stuff like that, schools maybe, but no-one has won a county All-Ireland so there’s definitely that desire in the group.

“It’s definitely in us, so it would be a shame if we weren’t to realise that potential.”

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