“WAS IT MY ambition to be a coach?” Eamonn O’Hara asks rhetorically after his appointment as joint manager of Sligo along with Dessie Sloyan.
“Probably not. I didn’t have the burning desire to be coach. Not like when I was 13 and 14 and playing on the back lawn, kicking ball and saying I wanted to be a county footballer. I didn’t have the same burning desire.
“But things roll on, you get an opportunity, you feel you have a good way with people and trying to think of ways to best compete with fellas. You learn as you go along and borrow some of the stuff from managers that you admire from the past and bring their way of doing things.”
Unprompted, he reaches for an example. It was around 20 years ago and he was lying in his bed suffering from ‘flu on a Monday.
By Tuesday, things weren’t much better. He put a call through to manager Peter Ford and gave warning that he would struggle to make training.
‘Right…’ came the response down the phone and Ford let the silence sit there.
O’Hara talked for a little while longer before Ford replied, ‘I will leave it up to yourself,’ and hung up.
“That was it. It annoyed me all day. And I went to training,” says O’Hara.
“I did it. I was snottering and cursing and blowing and everything else. I was ratty. But I did it.
“We were togging in and having a bit of food afterwards and Peter walked in behind him and said, ‘The ‘flu wasn’t too bad.’
“And I was tempted to say something to him but I didn’t. It was one of those I sat with it and had to say, ‘Jeez, he played me well there.’”
Lessons from Forde, from Tommy Brehony, Mickey Moran, he will take into his own county management role.
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O’Hara and Sloyan are joint-managers. Sloyan had previously brought O’Hara in when they had a successful period with the county U20s.
They are assisted by Cathal Sheridan, the former Munster Rugby player turned Sports Psychologist. His services can be said to have never been more in demand after he completed a unique double over the past fortnight, having worked with All-Ireland winners Tipperary and Kerry across two codes.
Dessie Sloyan with Eamonn O'Hara and Cathal Sheridan. John McVitty / INPHO
John McVitty / INPHO / INPHO
One high-profile addition to the coaching ticket is 2012 All-Ireland winner, Donegal’s Eamonn McGee.
While O’Hara had played against him before and McGee was part of a Sligo IT setup that had won a Sigerson Cup, he got to know him better at a sleep-out on Dublin’s O’Connell Street as a fund-raiser for the north-west Simon Community.
“When we spoke to him about coming on board, one of the things he said to me was that he wasn’t coming down to pick up cones,” reveals O’Hara.
“We said 100%. He’s keen, he’s hungry and he’s one of those fellas that the Sligo fellas will really, really love. He will bring his own experiences and be invaluable to us and the players.”
Intercounty management is a business-like venture, but the pull of managing your own county has an effect on the Tourlestrane man.
“I suppose I am speaking for Dessie as well in this one. It was something myself and Dessie said we would do,” he says.
“There is a special thing to be able to represent your county at any side of it, it is unique to a number of people. We always try to win stuff and we got close on certain occasion. We won Connacht (in 2007) and it brought a huge amount of joy and happiness.
Celebrating Leitrim success with Mohill. Andrew Paton / INPHO
Andrew Paton / INPHO / INPHO
“You meet people in the street and they want to talk about those great days in the early 00’s. There’s an emotional thing that people want to talk about.
“You organically move through life. You play and then fall into a bit of coaching because somebody in the club didn’t want it, you step in for a day or two and get a taste for it. You go away and think about it and slowly but surely you finish your football and think you might want to manage.
“It was Ballaghadereen in my case and it steamrolled from there.”
The duo have a serious body of work behind them. Sloyan has won a Connacht hunior title with Easkey in 2018 and brought the Sligo U20s to a provincial title in 2022.
O’Hara was co-manager of Tourlestrane as they won five Sligo titles and guided Mohill to two successive county titles in Leitrim.
With a smallish playing population, the efforts will centre on developing every available player. The successful group of U20s from 2022 and 2023 are an obvious group to go after.
“I would be afraid that the window has closed for some of them already. I thought more would have come through for whatever reason,” said O’Hara.
“I said to the lads yesterday that whatever has happened in the past with these lads, from not playing well or having arguments or whatever it is, this is a new page.
“I know that’s a cliché, but in Sligo we don’t have that many fellas coming through on a regular basis.
“Even the Kerry side, so few have come through from their great run of minor teams. Tyrone, they are not automatically coming through for a variety of reasons. We know those Tyrone teams inside out from U20 level and apart from Canavan and McElholm, few of them have come through.
“We don’t have the numbers so we have to have a clear pathway for players to come through and develop. That’s something we have to work on; who is there, who is in the country. We just have to see what is there and work with last year’s panel and what we can shape and mould as time passes.”
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'There is a special thing to be able to represent your county' - O'Hara takes charge in Sligo
“WAS IT MY ambition to be a coach?” Eamonn O’Hara asks rhetorically after his appointment as joint manager of Sligo along with Dessie Sloyan.
“Probably not. I didn’t have the burning desire to be coach. Not like when I was 13 and 14 and playing on the back lawn, kicking ball and saying I wanted to be a county footballer. I didn’t have the same burning desire.
“But things roll on, you get an opportunity, you feel you have a good way with people and trying to think of ways to best compete with fellas. You learn as you go along and borrow some of the stuff from managers that you admire from the past and bring their way of doing things.”
Unprompted, he reaches for an example. It was around 20 years ago and he was lying in his bed suffering from ‘flu on a Monday.
By Tuesday, things weren’t much better. He put a call through to manager Peter Ford and gave warning that he would struggle to make training.
‘Right…’ came the response down the phone and Ford let the silence sit there.
O’Hara talked for a little while longer before Ford replied, ‘I will leave it up to yourself,’ and hung up.
“That was it. It annoyed me all day. And I went to training,” says O’Hara.
“We were togging in and having a bit of food afterwards and Peter walked in behind him and said, ‘The ‘flu wasn’t too bad.’
“And I was tempted to say something to him but I didn’t. It was one of those I sat with it and had to say, ‘Jeez, he played me well there.’”
Lessons from Forde, from Tommy Brehony, Mickey Moran, he will take into his own county management role.
O’Hara and Sloyan are joint-managers. Sloyan had previously brought O’Hara in when they had a successful period with the county U20s.
They are assisted by Cathal Sheridan, the former Munster Rugby player turned Sports Psychologist. His services can be said to have never been more in demand after he completed a unique double over the past fortnight, having worked with All-Ireland winners Tipperary and Kerry across two codes.
One high-profile addition to the coaching ticket is 2012 All-Ireland winner, Donegal’s Eamonn McGee.
While O’Hara had played against him before and McGee was part of a Sligo IT setup that had won a Sigerson Cup, he got to know him better at a sleep-out on Dublin’s O’Connell Street as a fund-raiser for the north-west Simon Community.
“When we spoke to him about coming on board, one of the things he said to me was that he wasn’t coming down to pick up cones,” reveals O’Hara.
“We said 100%. He’s keen, he’s hungry and he’s one of those fellas that the Sligo fellas will really, really love. He will bring his own experiences and be invaluable to us and the players.”
Intercounty management is a business-like venture, but the pull of managing your own county has an effect on the Tourlestrane man.
“I suppose I am speaking for Dessie as well in this one. It was something myself and Dessie said we would do,” he says.
“There is a special thing to be able to represent your county at any side of it, it is unique to a number of people. We always try to win stuff and we got close on certain occasion. We won Connacht (in 2007) and it brought a huge amount of joy and happiness.
“You meet people in the street and they want to talk about those great days in the early 00’s. There’s an emotional thing that people want to talk about.
“You organically move through life. You play and then fall into a bit of coaching because somebody in the club didn’t want it, you step in for a day or two and get a taste for it. You go away and think about it and slowly but surely you finish your football and think you might want to manage.
“It was Ballaghadereen in my case and it steamrolled from there.”
The duo have a serious body of work behind them. Sloyan has won a Connacht hunior title with Easkey in 2018 and brought the Sligo U20s to a provincial title in 2022.
O’Hara was co-manager of Tourlestrane as they won five Sligo titles and guided Mohill to two successive county titles in Leitrim.
With a smallish playing population, the efforts will centre on developing every available player. The successful group of U20s from 2022 and 2023 are an obvious group to go after.
“I would be afraid that the window has closed for some of them already. I thought more would have come through for whatever reason,” said O’Hara.
“I said to the lads yesterday that whatever has happened in the past with these lads, from not playing well or having arguments or whatever it is, this is a new page.
“I know that’s a cliché, but in Sligo we don’t have that many fellas coming through on a regular basis.
“Even the Kerry side, so few have come through from their great run of minor teams. Tyrone, they are not automatically coming through for a variety of reasons. We know those Tyrone teams inside out from U20 level and apart from Canavan and McElholm, few of them have come through.
“We don’t have the numbers so we have to have a clear pathway for players to come through and develop. That’s something we have to work on; who is there, who is in the country. We just have to see what is there and work with last year’s panel and what we can shape and mould as time passes.”
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