By Cian O'Connell

"I probably can park it better now than I could initially in my career," Shane Ryan responds when asked about dealing with defeats and disappointments.

The last two All-Ireland SFC Finals brought pleasure for Kerry in 2022 and pain 12 months later.

"I'm not vastly experienced by any stretch of the imagination, this is my sixth year with Kerry, defeats are probably a little but easier to manage as you get older," Ryan adds. 

"You probably take them more in context. Club action for me was great. I was back playing for Rathmore, a week or two after the Dublin game. My focus was completely, solely fixed to Rathmore. I completely forgot about Kerry for two or three months."

A busy schedule with Rathmore helped to cleanse that loss from the system, but it is never fully forgotten about either.

"Now, when you do get back in the set-up, doing your bit of gym work or training, you start to reflect a bit," Ryan says. 

"For me, I think it is important not to get too high after the highs, and too low after the lows. I think the experience of playing in goal has maybe helped me there. 

"Sometimes, I think if the stats are against the goalkeeper at kickouts, it is the goalkeepers fault. If the stats are with them, it is the goalkeepers win. In reality it is somewhere in between. 

"It is never all the goalkeepers fault or it is never all his fault if things go right. I think that comes in defeats too. 

"You look at what you can control, what couldn't you control, and you park things then that you couldn't control in a game. 

Whether it is how good an opposition player is on a certain day, decisions made by opposition players, referees, or whatever the case is. 

"You try to bring it back to what you can control, when you bring it back to what you can control, I think that makes it a bit easier to set a plan in place to make things right. It makes it a bit easier to recover from those defeats, I think."

Is Ryan's approach to sport very analytical? "I would be, but I would not be numbers obsessed because numbers never tell the full story," he replies. 

"I do a good bit of video work myself, be it on the opposition or be it with players in the dressing room. I try to, where possible, switch off when I am not in training whereas previously I would not have been great at that. 

"If something went wrong previously in a session, it would play in my head for two or three days, but now I can leave it behind me and pick it up again when I come back on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. 

"So, from that point of view, I am on when I am on but I am fresh going into sessions as well as I am not completely focussed on numbers and videos in a session."

Responding to sporting setbacks can be helped by colleagues and friends. "It is experience, is is conversations with coaches and other players, with loved ones at home because while football is very important to all of us it is also important to put it in the context that it is not the be all and end all," he says. 

"For me, if I how I perform at the weekend is dictating my mood in the Monday morning that is a dangerous thing. 

"If I am playing well to be happy for that week, then that is putting more pressure on me, so I try to separate those where possible."