Meath's Cillian O'Sullivan on his proudest moment amid his battle with MS
The Moynalvey clubman returned to play for Meath in this year's Championship only months after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
It ended in a 16-point defeat and he didn’t even get on the field, but Meath’s Leinster quarter-final defeat to Dublin this year was one of Cillian O’Sullivan’s proudest moments.
It came amid an extremely challenging six months or so for the 30-year-old, having been forced to return home from his honeymoon the previous December after displaying symptoms consistent with someone suffering from multiple sclerosis, which he was subsequently diagnosed with and is receiving therapy for.
But O’Sulllivan was determined not to stamp football out of his life despite the condition being a lifelong one. He eventually returned to Meath training and managed to work his way back into the matchday 26 for the Dublin game.
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“Going back training, I was unbelievably afraid,” he told the GPA’s Players’ Voice podcast. “Afraid of making mistakes, afraid of making a fool of myself, afraid of doing something silly but that quickly goes once you’re into it, you’re, ‘Ah no, ok, I can do this’ and it kind of creeps up on you then in terms of my return to playing.
“I had been training ok but knew I wasn’t anywhere near a starting panel and someone got injured and I was asked do you mind replacing them on the panel and that was the Dublin game in the Leinster quarter-final.
“It just kind of a bit of a shock initially but again, I had to be kind of careful because my brain had just taken over. I was just back into the old Cillian again, ‘This is standard, this is very much normal’ so I really had to take time and pause, ‘This is a pretty big deal, Cillian, you need to give yourself a bit of kudos for this’.
“Because the old Cillian would have been, ‘Go on, do your job, do your job, do your job, this is what you’re training to do’ but this was very new. I was never more happy to be sitting on the bench in Croke Park and I know we got quite well beaten that day and I was saying, ‘If I never get picked again, at least I’ve made it back here, this is just wonderful’ and I said that to my family after. I could never have been more proud of myself for being there.”
From a personal point of view at least, better was yet to come. He subsequently started each of Meath’s All-Ireland series games, although they lost all three of them.
“I didn’t place so much value anymore on getting picked to start a Championship match for Meath. It was just like, ‘Oh my God, I get to play with my friends at the weekend, I get to actually get out onto the pitch and do it, I don’t have to watch, it’s not just watching anymore on the sideline, I get to go out and do it, play this game that I’ve loved playing that give me all these wonderful experiences, these highs and lows of emotion that I get to go out and do that at the weekend’.
“That’s actually a much healthier position for me to play football from.”
Post-season, a fallout between manager Colm O’Rourke and the county board led to O’Rourke quitting as manager, with Robbie Brennan subsequently replacing him. While frustrated at the wrangling, O’Sullivan chose not to get involved.
“For me, it was (frustrating). I was just incredibly grateful to that management team. You say, ‘Of course they were going to let him (play)’, but they didn’t really have to and they could have done it in a very nice way, ‘Look Cillian, it’s best for you to go back to your club to play with your club’ and then you never get the call to go back but they gave me the time, they gave me the patience so I will always be grateful to the whole management team for that.
“When Andy McEntee was involved there was a whole rigmarole with him and the county board and I was kind of a bit of the centrepiece in that because I would have been in the leadership group and that’s incredibly draining and my experience from that was actually getting involved helps nothing. It helps no one.”
He added: “Players should play and the running of the management team should be left to the county board and the relevant individuals. For me personally, playing, focusing on my playing and myself is probably how I get the best out of myself from a club and a county perspective rather than getting involved in the politics that can go on at that level.”
You can listen to the podcast in full here.
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