As a teenager, Sean Mullan never realized he was playing football with a future CFL hall of famer back in 1988.
Mullan was Mike O’Shea’s teammate with the Widdifield Wildcats Senior Football team that year - a team that won the first ever NDA football title for the high school.
But almost 30 years later, Mullan is now a football coach at Widdifield and the stories of Mike O’Shea are regular conversation in the locker room.
“At the time you really don’t think past the moment, but in hindsight, he’s one of those stories I use when I talk to kids at Widdifield who are playing football,” said Mullan.
Yes, O’Shea was part of the first Wildcats football championship, but it was what he did and how much he played that makes the story of the recent CFL Hall of Fame recipient that much more incredible.
O’Shea was a first team linebacker and a regular on special teams but in the NDA semi-final, the offence took a hit when an O-lineman broke his leg and Mike O’Shea stepped up to fill in.
“So here’s Mike O’Shea, playing offensive line, linebacker, and he was on all special teams and I’d ask the kids, ‘when does he get off the field to rest?’ Then they start doing the math in their head and realize he never got off the field,” said Mullan.
O’Shea played the rest of the semi-final playing every down and did the same in the NDA championship game, the NOSSA semi-final and onto the NOSSA final where O’Shea’s Wildcats fell 17-13 to the St. Mary’s Knights from Sault Ste. Marie.
So that was three and a half games where O’Shea had only halftime intermission to get a rest.
“He didn’t come off the field and he never complained once,” recalled Mullan.
“He was someone who did whatever was expected of him by the coaches and he never complained to his teammates. He just loved playing football, regardless what position, whether it was a position he liked or not. He just did it because he enjoyed it and was good at it.”
As a coach Mullan says, he would never put a normal player in that kind of position on his team. But, Mike O’Shea wasn’t just some normal player.
“In this day and age of safety and injury you don’t like to do it because it tires out the players but he didn’t get tired,” said Mullan.
Mullan also knows this incredible story of 'Ironman' football would never get out unless it was told by his former teammates back in North Bay.
“He’s the type he would never tell you that story. He wouldn't talk about his personal accomplishments, he would rather sit around with a beer and talk about the good times,” said Mullan.
“He will never boast about his personal accomplishments. He’s a grounded individual.”
It’s also no surprise with O’Shea’s perseverance in high school that he would go on to playing more games than any other linebacker in CFL history, and perhaps more impressively O’Shea missed just one game between 1997 and 2008.
Mullan now hopes the success he has shared with O’Shea as a teammate will transcend to the coaching level as O’Shea hopes to win his first Grey Cup as a head coach with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
