ANDY FOLEY DECIDED to move back to Ireland with his wife and young daughter after many years in Abu Dhabi. This was during the Covid times many would sooner forget.  

The young coach had previously worked at Wexford Youths with Shane Keegan, who suggested linking up with Ollie Horgan’s Finn Harps on his return.

Foley chiefly remembered Horgan and his assistant Paul ‘Heggsy’ Hegarty as a “pantomime act” on the sidelines, owing to their extremely animated nature and vocal frustration primarily aimed at League of Ireland officials.

But in need of a job, he somewhat reluctantly fired Horgan a text and was invited down to a training session at Finn Valley.

“I rocked up in the tracksuit for a chat, ostensibly not for anything else. And the next thing, between the jigs and the reels, I found myself taking the first team training session. I had no gear, nothing with me at all,” Foley tells The 42.

“There was no plan, no script, no anything. I was asking questions the whole time. What are we doing at the weekend? How do you want to set up? Can we incorporate that into the sessions? And it was always: ‘Ah, sure Jesus, we’ve enough to be worrying about with this, that, and the other.’

“There was always some sort of craziness and wildness going on with [Ollie]. But it was all very much ad hoc, maybe, would be the best way of putting it, but a lot of method to the madness. Because that training session, in hindsight, as much as I was telling everyone the story of the madness of it, that was essentially the interview; there’s no point in having the conversation if the training session doesn’t go well, and vice versa. So he was a wily character.

“And fortunately enough, I passed the test. It wasn’t the greatest session by any means, but I did enough on the day to get the seal of approval anyway.”

So, for the next few years, Foley served as first-team coach at Finn Harps, dividing up the training sessions with Sligo native Alan Henry.

Although there was “a bit of analysis” as well, and several other tasks in a role that was “constantly growing and evolving”.

Horgan also defied the preconceived notions Foley had.

“Aside from the 90 minutes on a Friday, he was calm and collected, methodical and analytical, and an unbelievable man for doing his research and checking everything out.

“His preparation, attention to detail, absolutely everything, how we set the team up, was second to none that I’ve worked with. I couldn’t underline how good a football manager he was.”

Ollie Horgan with backroom team Paul Hegarty, Andy Foley and Alan Henry. Evan Logan / INPHO Evan Logan / INPHO / INPHO

Part of what made Horgan so knowledgeable was his willingness to constantly attend games in person, no matter how obscure the fixture or long the travel time, often discovering hidden gems as a result.

“He’d send me to watch players that he already knew about or was aware of. So there’s a team up here, Cockhill, who are a very successful junior club. He sent me to watch them play. 

“And I was basically tasked to watch a striker. So I was texting Ollie, blah, blah, blah, he is doing this, he is doing that. And lo and behold, down in the corner to pitch, Ollie is also at the game, validating what I’m reporting back to him.”

Under Horgan, Finn Harps frequently punched above their weight, surviving several seasons in the Premier Division despite limited resources.

They were often perceived as plucky underdogs, although the late manager did not appreciate the condescending manner in which they were received.

“In the Showgrounds, there’s a bit of a walk from the car park, there’s a little cafe,  you’ve got to go to the back of the stand before you can get into the dressing room. So there’s a good bit of mixing with the supporters and the few lads that work for the club. 

“So I was walking in with them, and every single person we met stopped: ‘Oh, Ollie, pleasure to see you back again.’ Blah, blah, blah, full of praise, full of kind words. And by the time we got into the dressing room, he always had a little gear bag with him, and then the folded A2 sheets with the team on it — that was fired down, and he took it as an absolute insult. He said: ‘The only reason they’re being that nice to us down here is that they don’t see us as a threat.’ They don’t think we’re going to win. They think: ‘Oh, look, here’s the lads, an easy three points.’ He was furious.” 

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Similar to Foley, Dave Webster initially knew Horgan as “a mad thing” on the sideline.

Eventually, the Finn Harps boss would become the man who revived his career.

“I’d left Pat’s, and he gave me a phone call to go up to try and get me up to Donegal,” Webster recalls. “And I remember laughing him off the phone: ‘That’s never going to work, Ollie, what are you ringing me for?’ And he just said: ‘Look, just give me a chance. Sleep on it tonight. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’ And he rang me first thing the next day. He said, ‘Come meet me and just have a chat.’”

Dave Webster pictured during his Finn Harps days. Morgan Treacy / INPHO Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

Dubliner Webster was one of many footballers Horgan improbably managed to persuade to join, regularly travelling up to Ballybofey from faraway distances.

“Being around him and the training sessions, the bit of craic, a bit of madness, everything. It was worth its weight in gold. It outweighed the travelling,” he says.

“It’s just his personality, or his charisma, or something that he had. You just wanted to play for him.

“There were times when we’d pull up to Finn Park before a game, and Ollie’s out on the tractor cutting the grass.

“Ollie was like: ‘I couldn’t have you playing on that, lads. Now let’s go in there and get settled.’ So you say: ‘Jeez, I want to play for this fella.’”

Webster remembers “the yellow card claxon going off every time the ref is walking over to the sideline”, but notes there was “a real intelligence” behind the outlandish façade.

The retired defender also recalls Horgan’s dedication to the job: “We finished the season one year — it might have been my first or second year there. We just stayed up, and we were across the Jackson’s Hotel, where we used to stay. A good group of us were over there, having a pint. And we said: ‘Jesus, give Ollie a ring.’ It was about 10.15 pm. We went straight over after the game, and Ollie was already in the car on the way down to Belfast to the port to get the boat over to Scotland to meet a player the next day. He was always on the go. Always watching games.

“[Former Finn Harps goalkeeper] Mark McGinley worked as a teacher in a school [St Eunan's College] with Ollie. Mark substituted his PE class while he could be on a flight to Slovakia or Slovenia on a random Tuesday to meet a player. But that’s just who he was. He just wanted what was best for where he was.”

Webster also acknowledges the personal debt he owes Ollie. Having initially considered retirement after a failed St Patrick’s Athletic spell in 2019, he ended up sticking around until the end of the 2024 campaign, retiring with an FAI Cup winner’s medal at Drogheda.

“I really didn’t know where I was going, to be honest. I didn’t really have a good year at Pat’s. And my daughter was born in August. There was a realisation there when your firstborn is born — what’s going to happen outside of football? I had a meeting with Stevie [O'Donnell], and I got released from Pat’s. I was thinking: ‘Jesus, where am I going from here, or what am I going to do?’

“Obviously, no education behind me, because I put everything into football, so I got the call off Ollie, and it was good timing in a sense of not that I had nothing to lose, but I said: ‘Look, I’ll give it a go, one more year.’ I travelled up and down. It made sense financially as well.

“And I suppose, I’ve a lot to thank him for, because my career after that, I had some great years, unbelievable years, got to know Ollie really well. I would call him a great friend. And you meet people through your life who make a lasting impact on you, and Ollie was certainly one of them with me.”

Drogheda’s Dave Webster and Assistant Manager Daire Doyle celebrate after winning the FAI Cup final. Nick Elliott / INPHO Nick Elliott / INPHO / INPHO

There is one memory in particular that stands out: “The minute I did the knee, he rang me straight away. We had about an hour and a half chat. It was more about off the pitch. It wasn’t even about my rehab. It wasn’t me getting the knee right. It was just: ‘Sort your head out. Make sure you’re okay. You’ve got a full life ahead of you. Football’s only gonna last a few more years.’

“So it put perspective on it, looking at it from not a football point of view, but a life point of view. It was like a life lesson, I suppose, that he’s given me because he’s done it a couple of times himself, and he told me how it affected him and his relationships and stuff. So that side of it was brilliant because it made me get my head right and my knee right at the same time. And I suppose without that, I couldn’t have got back. 

“I take great pride in my name being associated with his now, since he passed, and even before he passed.”

Webster also appreciated Horgan’s tendency to think outside the box.

“We were having a bit of goalkeeper trouble up in Harps. I think Mark McGinley was going a bit AWOL, and Ollie got Gavin Mulreany in.

“He had a bit of a rough start. So he thought we’d get someone who had a bit of experience. And I was texting back and forth about it. Obviously, because I lived in Dublin, he just assumed I knew all the Dublin GAA players. He just texted me out of the blue, going: ‘What’s Stephen Cluxton doing these days?’

“‘I haven’t a fucking clue, I don’t know.’

“‘Try to find out, will you, and see if you can get him up?’

“‘Leave it with me,’ he laughs.

“Malcolm Slattery, the Rovers kit man, had a few dealings with some of the Dublin lads.

“Mal was like: ‘No.’ So I said, ‘Ollie, I don’t know what he’s doing.’

“He says: ‘Sure, look, it might have just been a mad one. We’ll go back to the drawing board anyway.’”

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Galway manager John Caulfield and assistant Ollie Horgan react on the sideline. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

In 2022, following the club’s relegation from the top flight, Horgan left Finn Harps by mutual consent after nine years there.

Ahead of the 2023 campaign, he linked up with Galway as John Caulfield’s assistant.

The Tribesmen had a frustrating season the previous year, narrowly missing out on promotion.

It was no coincidence that the campaign Horgan came aboard; they steamrolled the First Division, winning the title by a 25-point margin.

In the eulogy at his funeral, Caulfield acknowledged that Horgan had been the missing ingredient that the squad lacked.

But the pair had known each other long before then, from their years competing in amateur football with Fanad United and Avondale, respectively.

The pair also undertook the same FAI pro licence coaching course together in 2014.

“It’s funny how people underestimate [him] with the long, shaggy hair. He was a maths and PE teacher, highly educated and intelligent. But the big thing was his attention to detail; his work ethic was incredible,” Caulfield says.

“He’d bring up players here, players there. He was just non-stop, on the go. And I think, you could see from Harps, the way he pulled fellas from different areas.

“I met him [after his Harps departure]. You don’t want to insult anyone, because he’s a football manager in his own right.

“But I just asked him: ‘Would you give me a hand?’ It was a great fit because he has Galway connections. He’s from Galway. A lot of his family are still around Galway, even though he’d been away in Donegal for so long; he was back in Galway all the time.”

The club were in the process of adapting from a part-time to a professional set-up, and Horgan’s high standards helped shift the culture there.

Caulfield adds: “It was ideal, because he understood, being a manager, what you have to deal with. He understood dealing with budgets, boards, travel, and all the stuff. People think it’s about a training session. When you run a club like Galway, you have many hats on, because you could be dealing with the commercial side. It could be meeting the main sponsors or meeting the owners. So there’s lots of that stuff that he didn’t really want to do, and I was able to do that, and he would do other stuff.”

Galway United's Conor McCormack lifts the First Division trophy. Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO

Horgan passed away from cancer at the age of 57 on 28 August last year, only officially departing his role at Galway earlier that month.

“The greatest tribute I could say to him is that he was sick, a year out,” adds Caulfield. “It was kept very quiet, which was important. And we went on a pre-season trip to Spain, this time last year.

“And through his illness and sickness, he had gone over twice in December to arrange the trip. I had nothing to do with it. He went over, arranged the hotels, the two teams we were to play, and the training sessions. And he single-handedly did it. And I remember arriving off the plane. And I said to him: ‘Fair play, you pulled it off.’ He said: ‘You can say that to me when we’re on the plane going back. Some of these teams might not turn up to play, the training ground might be closed,’ but everything went off to a tee.

“But you knew, when he went off to organise it, that everything would be perfect. And the key thing is, he was on treatment at the time. So he was very sick, but no one knew about it. He just continued to work away as the only way he knew.”

Caulfield also appreciated how, in a sport whose participants often hold their cards close to their chest, Horgan was a refreshing anomaly.

“He called it as it was. There was no bullshit. 100% what you saw was what you got; there was no fluffing it up. You got it straight. And that was why he was crucial to me.”

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Shane Keegan came up against Ollie Horgan-managed teams several times during the former’s stints at Wexford Youths, Galway United and Dundalk.

And off the pitch, the pair were friendly.

“We’d have a good bit in common, I suppose, in the sense that we’re both massively into opposition analysis,” he recalls.

“So I’d be ringing him for every little bit and piece. He’d be ringing me. Now, you have your Wyscouts, and you have all the games on TV and all that. But back in 2013-15, the only way to do opposition analysis was to be at a game, sitting in the stands; there wasn’t really any other way to go about it.

“Of the teams in the First Division, the only two playing on a Saturday were [often] Cobh and Longford.

“So to be honest with you, Ollie and I would regularly have a conversation with each other and arrange that one of the two of us would be heading in one direction while the other would be going in the other direction. Or if only one of them was at home, it might be a case of: ‘Listen, I’m getting to that one. You give yourself the night off. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow and fill you in on it.’ 

“So I don’t think there would be a manager in the League of Ireland that I would have spoken to as often as I would have Ollie right through 2013 to the next five, six years, he would have been my main point of contact.”

Shane Keegan pictured during his time in charge of Wexford Youths. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

In addition to possessing “an encyclopaedic knowledge of players,” Keegan remembers the exhausting experience of playing Horgan’s sides.

“He was going to bring a huge amount of energy on the sideline, and he would be very vocal, both to his players and to officials. So you nearly want an extra hour of sleep when you’re going up against them, because you knew you were going to have to match that in terms of being vocal yourself and trying to be equally on the officials’ cases, so he didn’t get on top of them, more so than you.”

Away from the pitch, Keegan also encountered a more relaxed, sociable side of Horgan. Their tactical football chats would sometimes descend into lengthy discussions about GAA, given their mutual love for the sport.

He also has a fond memory of meeting Horgan at the Hotel Clarinbridge Court on a random Monday when he was Galway manager.

“We could compare notes and get the laptop out because the team we had played, he was due to play them the next weekend. And the team he played, we were due to play them the next weekend. 

“We sat down, and the bar person came over anyway. I said: ‘A cup of tea.’ And he took the piss out of me, I suppose, and I said: ‘Fuck it. We might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’ So we ordered two pints. That was at 12 o’clock. We came out of it at about five o’clock that evening, a good few pints into the two of us.

“But what amazed me was, when we came out, when I went to ring a taxi, his wife came and collected him at the front door. I reckon he always had it in his head that we were going for pints for the fucking day, but he just never made me aware that was going to be the plan.”

Like many others, Keegan marvelled at Horgan’s ability to attract top players against the odds.

“I’d absolutely love to have been a fly on the wall at those conversations. Because one thing he doesn’t do is sell you a dream. I mean, he’s not somebody who’s going to fill you with shite. In fact, quite the opposite, he plays the poor mouth and rightly so, because he was operating with a limited budget, and from what I can gather, he’d still be playing the poor mouth even when he’d be talking to a player that he’s trying to sign.

“He’d tell them: ‘We’re no world beaters,’ and all this. But ‘I think you could make a difference,’ I suppose, was the sales pitch.

“But I wonder, because I also asked one or two players: ‘What’s he like in the dressing room?’ Because he’s often told the media, ‘Ah, sure, we have no chance Friday night.’ And I’m going: ‘He can’t be saying that to you in the dressing room.’ Players have said to me: ‘He would, yeah.’

“‘He’d be telling us that, but you never know, if we give it a right good shot, if we’re really, really organised, we could pull off a shock result.’ And lo and behold, that’s exactly what they would do.”

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Finn Harps' John Dunleavy takes over in goal during a 2021 Premier Division match. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO

Born in Donegal, John Dunleavy was a Finn Harps fan all his life.

He had the club’s scarf above his bed after moving over to England as a youngster and joining Wolves.

Dunleavy is keen to emphasise that aside from “the craic”, Horgan was also “a brilliant person” whose teams “no one liked coming up against”.

The defender was in the latter stages of his career and “had almost resigned myself to not playing again” when Horgan’s call came.

“[Ollie] knew that my coming up there, pulling on a Harps jersey or training t-shirt was going to be an awful pull for me, and hard to get away from,” he explains.

And for Dunleavy, one night epitomised Horgan as a human being first and a manager second.

The player found himself in Letterkenny Hospital after sustaining a bad injury during a game.

“[Ollie] came down, he sat with me in the hospital for an hour and a half, and then he said: ‘Listen, I’m going to go home and get a bite to eat here, but I’ll be back in to you at two o’clock [in the morning].

“I said: ‘You’re grand, go on and head home.’ And he said: ‘Right, well lookit, I’ll text you anyway. I’ll text you and see how things are going at whatever time. He texted me at three or four o’clock in the morning. 

“So I said: ‘Look, I’ve still not been seen, Ollie, but my dad’s going to come down and get me.’ And he said: ‘Are you sure? I’ll come and collect you at five o’clock in the morning, and take you home if you want.’

I said: ‘No, no, you’re dead on. There’s no problem. Dad’s coming to get me.’ He said: ‘Okay.’

“Five o’clock in the morning, he texted me again: ‘Everything okay?’ He said: ‘I’ll text you again when I wake up for school at seven o’clock and see how you’re getting on then.’ And he did too.”

A sign at Finn Park in memory of the late Ollie Horgan. Evan Logan / INPHO Evan Logan / INPHO / INPHO

The much-missed coach wasn’t always “the lads’ best friend”, but managed to strike a balance between empathy and professionalism that resonated with the majority of footballers he coached.

There are countless great Horgan-related anecdotes, and Dunleavy is happy to share one.

“I was talking to the chairman of a football club in Donegal, just randomly,” he remembers.

“I said: ‘Would you have had many dealings with him?’ And he said: ‘Well, I’ll tell you a good one.’ They were talking about a player one time, the two of them, he might have been at this club in Donegal, but played for Finn Harps. And maybe the club wanted him back because he wasn’t playing enough. And there was this bit of back and forth between the club and Finn Harps. So anyway, the next thing, the chairman of this club said he’s going to ring Ollie and have a chat with him about it. So he rings up Ollie, two o’clock in the day during the week. Ollie answers the phone. ‘How’s it going?’ ‘Not too bad, Ollie.’

“What about this player? And they chatted about it for a minute, and the next thing, all you could hear in the background were just these whistles. And he’s like: ‘What is going on here?’

“And he said: ‘Sorry, Peter, I’m refereeing a school’s game here.’ So he’s in the middle of reffing a school’s match, and he’s here talking about players and all that sort of stuff. It was just unreal. Didn’t miss a beat. Unbelievable.”

Dunleavy continues: “His legacy is, I suppose, just simply the mark that he made on the League of Ireland in the time that he was in it.

“And that’s not alone from players that played for him, but also people that played against him, and how they speak about him, and the respect with which they spoke, and how he managed teams. And as a person, he was just unapologetically himself. He was just Ollie. He’ll give you everything from his end, and to a degree, I suppose he expects that in return.

“I won’t ever forget him.”