YOU WOULDN’T GO asking John Hegarty what he thinks about ‘Winning Time,’ over on Sky Atlantic. Or if he wants Sully Dushane to get out of the London underworld unscathed in ‘Top Boy.’
‘And Just Like That?’ Surely he might get roped in by proxy?
No. No chance.
He’s the Wexford senior football manager, heading into his second season, looking to build on a salvage job last year.
During the day, he is the Deputy Principal of the Christian Brothers’ School in Wexford.
In the evenings, he is a Fine Gael Councillor.
Also, in the evenings, he slips on the ceremonial chains and fulfils his various roles and engagements as the Mayor of Wexford town.
On a Saturday morning, you can find him in the grounds of Glynn Barntown, where he takes the U12 team.
He is a husband and a father of four children aged 14, 12, 9 and 5, all requiring a taxi driver to bring them to their various interests.
So you ask the obvious. How in God’s name does that all work?
“There’s no secret,” he half-chuckles like a man who’s getting a little too used to the question.
“I can’t talk to you about boxsets. I can’t tell you what’s on Netflix. I have no idea. That doesn’t happen.
“A huge part of what I do, first of all, it’s to compartmentalise. If I am doing one thing, that’s what I am doing. And I am entirely focused on that.
“Maybe the modern way of talking, people say we are ‘present in the moment,’ and that all sounds lovely and daisy-picking. But when I am doing a job I am entirely focused on that job and that is important to me. Because when I finish up with Wexford, I want to be able to say I gave it 100%, everything I could.
“If I have to go back to 11 o’clock at night and doing some other work, then I will do it then. But it’s important to me that ‘what I am doing now, I am doing it 100%.’”
It’s refreshing talking to him, because for many intercounty managers, the gig is all they want, and disappointingly, all they need. There are some intercounty managers that the role is their entire life and also their work. For Hegarty, getting onto a training field is a release.
“It helps that I really enjoy the football part of it. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy everything else! But when I am on the pitch, I would refer to Richie Hogan the other day referring to the joy he got out of hitting a hurling ball. It’s the same for me in football. I love it.
“If I had a euro every time someone told me how busy I was, I wouldn’t need to do anything more.”
Nobody could doubt Hegarty’s loyalty to his county. His career was almost neatly sliced in two between the times when Wexford’s summer would be over with one championship defeat, and towards the end when they were gorging on high end delicacies of winning five games in Division 1 in reaching the National League final in 2005, all the while becoming accustomed to beating the likes of Meath in the championship.
All in, he played over 100 times for Wexford as a nippy inside forward, which was a serious record across a dozen seasons.
He won a Sigerson Cup with UCD, and a Railway Cup with Leinster. He added six county titles with Kilanerin.
And yet when he started out on the road, the horizon was bleak.
In his first championship game, he scored a point against Westmeath. Jason Lawlor chipped in with another. And their glamour boy of the time now sadly passed away, Scott Doran, hit 1-1.
Problem was, that was all they scored as Westmeath ran in 0-13. And that was the 1995 season over, on 21 May.
The day after, the squad convened for some pints. At one point in the afternoon Hegarty found himself sitting beside John Harrington, another man since passed away, who was at that stage a venerable veteran of Wexford football.
“And I asked him, ‘John, how long have you played for Wexford?’” Hegarty tells.
“He played twelve years. And I asked how many championship games he had won. In twelve years, he won two championship games.
“And I remember thinking, ‘I love football. I love playing for Wexford. But I don’t know if I can do that.’”
He didn’t need to. His group stuck at it. In time, Mattie Forde arrived like a comet from another galaxy. They stuck at it even when the beatings and the referee calls against them were scandalous. They committed and they trained hard. And they played every team in Ireland all the way up from Division 4, to the final of Division 1.
It taught him the lessons that he passes on to his players now.
“There isn’t a God-given right, no reason why a group of players cannot progress,” he says.
“Yes, there are certain reasons why the Kerry’s and Dublin’s will always be the benchmark. But in terms of progression and improvement, losing regularly in Division 4 to winning regularly in Division 1 was what we did.
“I see the lads now, and it’s the confidence that they don’t have. They are really honest, really committed, but they haven’t got the same experiences to fall back on.”
Last year, they concentrated on building a bit of spirit in the camp and reconnecting the bond with the supporters. Some apathy had crept in and was hanging around the place, waiting for all the windows to be opened.
Then they caught a bit of form here and there. Supporters and the team would chat after games.
“I remember after one game a few people contacted me a few days after the game and they said to me, ‘look, I don’t know if you said it to them or not, but it was remarkable how appreciative they were of the supporters.’”
Hegarty will see all of this as little steps, but he has no fear in taking giant leaps either.
In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be much made about Áine Kinsella being a coach. But here we are. The former Carlow footballer was doing video analysis for the county hurlers under Davy Fitzgerald and Darragh Egan, but moved to the big ball and is one of the lead coaches.
It’s a rarity, so it’s noteworthy.
“For me, it was really easy. I had worked with her for a couple of years. She is excellent at what she does,” Hegarty says.
“I value her opinion and what she does. The fact that she is a woman, is irrelevant. She was the right person for the job and she proved that. She had a very significant involvement and any of the lads you would be talking with, they would testify that she is central to what we are doing.”
The job has to be a ground-up effort. This year’s league took too long in getting going. Their opener was a draw at home to London and then were beaten by Laois. A defeat by Sligo determined that they would be staying down.
They lost their first round Leinster championship game to Laois. In the Tailteann Cup they had an encouraging draw away to Fermanagh and a win over Leitrim.
The trick now is to build on it. For some managers, the split-season doesn’t help them with limited enough exposure to players.
In his life as a teacher, a politician and mayor, he is a very visible presence around Wexford. The Mayor role there is one of the oldest in Ireland and he is continuously interacting with business and community groups. It all feeds into a general pride in his county and gives him reflection on why he manages.
Wexford have a very curious relationship with football managers. Since 1991, they had only one single manager from the county, Ger Halligan, before Shane Roche, Hegarty’s predecessor.
In among the names between times are Pat Roe, Paul Bealin, Jason Ryan, Seamus McEnaney and Paul Galvin.
“It can’t be built on gimmicks. And unless you have endless amounts of money, it can’t be bought in. Something that is there to be built into the future, the heartbeat has to be people who are close to it, who do it for the right reasons,” says Hegarty.
“In my case, I felt that Shane (Roche) did a fantastic job when he stepped in over Covid. He held the majority of the best players together when results were not going their way.”
He continues, “I do think it is really important that people understand where they are coming from. What they are doing and why they are doing it for.
“It’s something I really do feel strongly about; people don’t play football for Wexford because there is a real prospect of winning All Irelands. That’s not why you do it.
“I would venture it’s the same for lots and lots of teams.
“But it’s an opportunity to test yourself. To see how good you can actually be. That’s not to say that you can’t go out and win something.
“I would say the second reason is you do it because you want to represent the people of where you are from.”
He adds, “And in Wexford that’s hugely significant from a historical perspective, and a sporting perspective. Wexford were the first team to win a four in a row of football All Irelands.
“It might seem that modern day athletes, footballers and hurlers with their earphones in, wearing sliders, going to do their pre-activation, it has all become very professional.
“But it’s people at the heart of it. People matter. Relationships matter. Why you are doing it matters.”