A CORKING WAY TO WIND UP CAREER

Rebels great Walsh on final fling with his new club in the very heart of the Kingdom

- BY GARRY DOYLE

THERE are supposed to be neat endings in sport.

Aidan Walsh never paid much attention to those. At 35, with medals boxed away and reputations already written, he was meant to be finished with chapters like this.

An All-Ireland SFC winner with Cork in 2010. Two All Stars. Three National Football Leagues. Munster titles in both football and hurling. A career so decorative it scarcely needs embellishment.

And yet here he is again, back in Croke Park, lining out in an All-Ireland Intermediate club final - not with Cork, not with Kanturk but with An Ghaeltacht of west Kerry against Glenullin of Derry.

‘Not quite the ending anyone had planned. Which makes it all the more fitting.

Walsh’s route here has been anything but conventional. Life did what life tends to do. Nine years ago, he was in west Kerry playing in the annual Paidi O Sé tournament. His future wife was working behind the bar in Pdidi’s pub. One thing led to another. A Cork man found himself rooted in Kerry Gaeltacht soil. Along the way, some voices muttered. Lazy voices. The kind that sit on ditches and decide careers from a distance.

The suggestion was that Walsh - older now, miles on the clock - wouldn't make an impact if he ever threw his lot in with Kerry club football.

He heard it. He remembered it.