SHELBOURNE”S SEAN GANNON earned the praise of Shane Keegan, David Sneyd and Gavin Cooney on the latest episode of The Football Family, the podcast for subscribers to The 42.
“I genuinely feel his career doesn’t get the credit it deserves. He’ll retire as the most decorated League of Ireland player of all time,” Keegan said.
“He would have been at Dundalk when I was there and I swear to God, if you did a presentation on the opposition for two hours straight, at the end of the presentation Sean would come up to you with additional questions.
“The man overthinks things. No matter what, he would come down to me at the end, and so politely and so genuinely say: ‘Shane, that was really good, but I was just wondering about you not mentioning this or that.’ He’d have some sort of additional question about a piece of information that I hadn’t given.
“I used to love that because within my role that was great. An awful lot of players wouldn’t have been listening to a word I’d have been saying! But he’s listening to everything and still wants more info. He’s the sort of fella that I can definitely see going down the coaching route.”
“You know how he ended up signing for Shels don’t you?” Sneyd said. “He was walking his dog out near Tolka Park one day and bumped into Damien Duff. Obviously, Duffer is a dog lover and so they got chatting. Duff said: ‘There’s a chance you could be leaving Rovers, is that true?’ And apparently it was. Now, I don’t think the deal was done there and then but that’s pretty much how it was sorted.”
Cooney added: “If Gannon and Shels go on to win the league, is that Irish football’s most consequential dog walk since Roy took Triggs out after Saipan? Have we had many more important dog walks?
“He’s had a brilliant season,” Keegan said.
“He was named in Chris Forester’s, Michael Duffy’s and Daryll Horgan’s PFAI teams. Two of the lads there have come up directly against him in terms of playing in the same area of the field and they both picked him. It shows what a season he is having.
“He’s one of these lads who is basically Gary Neville, an out and out right back. When he has to play right of a back three it doesn’t suit him as much and when he has to play right wing-back it doesn’t suit him as much. He’s just rock solid as an out and out right full,” Keegan added.
