Mayo winning Sam nearly killed us
Adrian Kilker (left) and Kieran O'Brien recovering in the Mater Hospital where they became great friends after both having near death experiences after Mayo's All-Ireland win.
The greatest day of their lives nearly became the last day of their lives.
Kieran O’Brien and Adrian Kilker had waited all their lives to see Mayo lift the Sam Maguire Cup. But in the frantic minutes and hours after the final whistle, both men suffered near-death experiences in Dublin.
Kieran O’Brien, popularly known as ‘Kiwi’, went into cardiac arrest in Croke Park just after Jack Coyne’s winning speech. He collapsed and stopped breathing. But for the quick thinking of family, friends and passersby, Jack Coyne raising Sam to the heavens might well have been the last thing he ever saw.
Adrian Kilker was out in Drumcondra as thousands of Mayo fans celebrated when he became unwell near Fagan’s Pub that night. He, too, had a cardiac arrest and what saved his life was an internal defibrillator he had installed after a previous cardiac arrest 16 years ago.
Both men endured a very different All-Ireland winning experience compared to other Mayo fans but have thankfully lived to tell the tale.
Castlebar native Kieran watched the game in the Premium section of the Davin Stand with his daughter Lily-Rose (20).
“What was the greatest day of so many of our lives was very nearly my last. My heart stopped working, my pulse was gone and I was out for more than ten minutes,” Kieran told the .
His daughter Lily-Rose vividly recalls the joy of Mayo’s win turning into grief.
“I remember being an eight-year-old at the 2013 final against Dublin where we lost and I said to Dad: ‘I just want Mayo to win once in your lifetime’.
“And then it happened, Mayo won and I was filming him crying, telling him how happy I was for him and there was so much euphoria. And then ten minutes later this happened and, in my head, he was dying.
“And as I was dragged away, I was thinking those ten minutes were the best ten minutes I’ve spent with him in my life. It was all the comfort I could have, that my last memory of my Dad was going to be us singing as Sam Maguire was lifted.”
Those around him pressed into action. Bríd Feerick, a nurse from Balla, started CPR and sent her husband to get a defibrillator.
A family friend Caroline Conway, a senior nurse in MUH, who was nearby, rushed down to assist. Her husband Padraic Conway took Lily-Rose out from what was a very distressing sight while all around strangers stepped up and helped in Kieran’s hour of need.
His sisters Melissa and Ailish, who were elsewhere in the ground, rushed over when they heard.
“All these passersby saved my life,” said Kieran.
The defibrillator and the CPR brought him back from the brink.
His sister Ailish accompanied him to the Mater Hospital in the ambulance by which stage he was breathing and conscious.
“In the ambulance I said ‘did Mayo win the All-Ireland?’ I was in a daze,” he said.
His wife Hannah and daughter Niamh rushed over from England.
Kieran is a passionate Mayo fan, flying home from London where he has lived since 1990 for most league and championship games.
When he was in the nearby Mater Hospital on the Sunday evening, a strange feeling of guilt came over him.
“There were so many people there with me and I was thinking ‘Am I after ruining what should be the greatest day for so many of my family and friends?' They told me I had done nothing of the sort but that’s how I felt.
“I thought I had ruined everyone’s delight. I was more upset about that than anything else,” he said.
Belmullet man Adrian Kilker was in dreamland. Like Kieran O’Brien, he is a passionate and dedicated Mayo fan who yearned for such a day. He is a member of Cairde Maigheo since the beginning, signed up by the late Eddie Cuffe from Belmullet and goes to most Mayo games home and away.
Like so many Mayo fans, he was tense on the day of the All-Ireland final.
“It was probably building up all day. I was on edge all day,” he told the .
He watched the game in the Lower Cusack Stand and was walking northwards up the Drumcondra Road towards Fagan's just after 8.30pm with his wife Ann, daughter Ellie and brother-in-law Liam McGonigle when, internally, the rigours of the day caught up with him.
He jogged across the road before them, through slow moving traffic while they stayed on their side of the road, initially oblivious to what happened.
“I jogged across the road and the last thing I remember is feeling dizzy and the next thing I recall is waking up and people around me helping. Friends from Belmullet, Ronan and Noreen Gaughan and Joe Murphy, were coming the other way and waited with me until I was in the ambulance and Ann and Ellie had arrived. I can’t thank them enough for their help,” said Adrian.
He had an internal defibrillator fitted after a cardiac arrest at home in 2010. Sixteen years ago, he stopped breathing for 25 minutes then but was brought back from the brink.
“When I went down, the defibrillator kicked in. One poor fella was on top of me giving me compressions and, when the defibrillator kicked in, the shock of it threw him off me,” he said.
Adrian was conscious again but, because his heart still had not returned to a proper rhythm, the defibrillator kicked in a few more times.
“I never felt pain like it but it was doing what it was supposed to do, trying to get my heart back into a rhythm,” he said.
He was in the Mater Hospital within 20 minutes. Ironically, both men had undergone medical check-ups in the weeks before the final and had been given the all-clear.
At the Mater, Adrian had a second device fitted while Kieran O’Brien has an internal defibrillator inside him now. After a spell in the intensive care unit, the two men ended up on the same ward together. They didn’t know each other but became great friends, bonding through their near-death experience on the day Mayo finally reached the Holy Grail.
Kieran O’Brien qualified as a nurse 36 years ago and while he now works full-time as a solicitor, he still nurses part-time and has had to use a defibrillator on people on several occasions. Four weeks before the All-Ireland, he had to perform CPR on a man who collapsed on the street in London during a heatwave.
“Little did I think I would be in a similar position a few weeks later,” he said.
Both men are keen to use their experience to encourage more people in GAA clubs and community groups to learn CPR and how to use a defibrillator. Kieran knows from his own experience that those skills can make the difference between life and death.
As Adrian, a gasfitter and plumber himself, puts it, heart attacks are more to do with the plumbing around the heart, blockages of arteries, whereas a cardiac arrest is more electrical, the heart simply stops beating.
“I think anyone who is involved in a GAA club, a soccer club or any community group should try to do defibrillator training. It is not a hard device to use, it tells you what to do but having that experience could save someone’s life,” said Kieran.
He knows too how big sporting moments can be overpowering and has been at so many of them, often with his daughters Lily-Rose and Niamh.
“At half-time in the All-Ireland, I was texting people that this was our best ever chance. In the second half, I kicked every ball. Marty Morrissey used the expression ‘heart-stopping’ when Jordan Flynn hit the bar – how right he was!”
He was fortunate it happened in Croke Park – which has 16 defibrillators on site – and is so close to the cardiac care specialist hospital, the Mater.
“If it happened on the M50 or the M4, it most likely would have been a different outcome,” said Kieran.
On the Tuesday, he was greeted by the nurse manager at the ward, Abina Reilly, who started nurse training on the same day as him in 1990 at the Central Middlesex Hospital. He is very grateful for the level of care he received at the Mater.
He is particularly grateful to Michael Arundell from Tyrone, Orlaith Schroeder (née Walsh) from Dublin/Kiltimagh and Stacey Congleton from Kerry, who helped him at Croke Park. He is also hugely grateful to his cousin Kenny O’Brien and wife Aoife, who co-ordinated everything afterwards.
“Everyone was so good, they did so much for me. I will never forget it.”
Both men were overwhelmed with the good wishes that flew in. On the Monday, which was Kieran’s 54th birthday, Andy Moran, Colm Boyle, Jack Carney and Jack Coyne sent him a personal video message from the train as they headed home with Sam. His clubmate Paddy Durcan rang him to wish him well.
On Wednesday in Belmullet, in front of thousands at the homecoming there, Ryan O’Donoghue sent his good wishes to Adrian for a speedy recovery and both have been blown away by the amount of people who have reached out to them.
Both men were in hospital for two weeks and are easing their way back to reality. Kieran would ordinarily have been at the Castlebar Celtic v Dundalk game but rest was the doctor’s orders and he is following those to a 't'.
“You dream of these big days. I was at all 12 finals I could be at, everyone apart from the Covid final (behind closed doors) in 2020. You could nearly make a case for us in all of them except 2004 and 2006 against Kerry. For it to finally happen and then this to happen after, it all feels like a dream. I’ve wondered so many times, ‘did that really happen?’
“Watching the homecoming in MacHale Park and after playing on that pitch growing up and not being there for that moment felt slightly punitive but I was lucky to be alive at all, thanks to the goodwill of passersby and Croke Park staff,” said Kieran.
Adrian Kilker (62), who lives in Attycunnane on the way into Belmullet town, has been a stalwart of the Belmullet club since he and Ann returned home from England 30 years ago to raise their children Scott and Ellie there, who have both been heavily involved with the club too.
Adrian is particularly proud of Ryan O’Donoghue, whose talent he recognised from a young age when he played with Scott.
“You could see his potential as an eight-year-old, his determination and leadership. For a small club like ours to produce one of the best footballers in the country is fantastic. It is an awfully proud thing for the club and a great way to bring kids on,” he said.
He thinks of those who have passed away and were not there for the day of days and is grateful he has lived to tell the tale.
“People give out about hospitals but the care I was given was fantastic, they couldn’t do enough for me. Myself and Kieran were both very lucky we were where we were when it happened. We will never experience a day like that again,” he said.
“I was watching the homecoming in Belmullet on social media. In one way, you wish you could be there but you realise you were not fit to be there.
“You have a machine and you hope it is never needed but it is nice to know it is there if you do need it.
“Kieran is living proof you can survive a cardiac arrest and I’m proof that the defibrillator inside you works too.”
And for Lily-Rose O’Brien, there is the immense relief of her father having survived a near death experience.
“I’m nearly crying now every time I see him. I give him hugs and I know it was very close to him not being here right now.”
Many Mayo fans have said they were grateful to live to see it. For Kieran O’Brien and Adrian Kilker, that gratitude has never been more literal.
