IN HIS SHORT managerial career so far, Graham Coughlan has become accustomed to firefighting.
In the Dubliner’s first job, in December 2019, his Bristol Rovers side were 2-0 down to Sol Campbell’s Southend United at half-time.
A fuming Coughlan read the riot act at the break.
Rovers came out and won the second half 4-2.
“I told them their Christmas party was cancelled,” Coughlan said afterwards of his impactful intervention. “I told them I’d see them in the morning, we’d watch the video – the Rocky Horror Show – and go through it and fix it.
“I ain’t having that type of performance in the first half. It was lacklustre, it was flat, we couldn’t pass the ball from A to B, we had runners running off us, we were non-existent.
“Let’s be straight and honest. We could have been 3-0 down at half-time. We were lucky it was only two. That’s not me, that’s not my team, and that’s not that group.
“Maybe they’re going into games thinking they’re top players and thinking we can do this and that. Football doesn’t work like that. You come off it, and your mentality isn’t right; you see what happens.
“The lads will go off, they’ll have their Christmas do and let’s be honest, they fully deserve it.”
The incident felt like a metaphor for Coughlan’s career. His remit has invariably been simple – rescue struggling teams from dire situations.
It might have been different if a big move early in his career worked out.
After spells at Cherry Orchard and Bray Wanderers, the youngster joined Premier League champions Blackburn in 1995, but didn’t break into the first team during four years at Ewood Park.
Instead, the defender enjoyed a sustained career at a lower level. His four seasons at Plymouth are so fondly remembered that he made the club’s Team of the Century.
In his only full season at Sheffield Wednesday, Coughlan was named the club’s Player of the Year before falling out of favour the following campaign.
He was already 21 and had worked in an electrical warehouse by the time he joined Blackburn, so it’s no surprise that Coughlan was thinking about life after by playing from an early stage – as early as 2008, after signing for Shrewsbury, he was already combining playing with coaching, and his one-year deal with Southend in 2010 included a stint as the club’s reserve-team manager, eventually graduating to assistant boss and first-team coach roles.
After being appointed defensive coach at Bristol Rovers in the summer of 2018, he was named caretaker manager the following December.
Advertisement
When he took over, the club were in the relegation zone after eight losses in 10 games.
But Coughlan made an immediate impact, earned the permanent job, and guided them to safety.
By the time he left the club midway through the next season, Rovers were fourth in League One, two points away from the automatic playoff places.
Graham Coughlan had a major impact in his 12-month stint at Bristol Rovers. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
So they reluctantly parted ways as Coughlan made the unusual choice to drop a division and become manager of Mansfield Town, who were 18th in League Two, seven points above the relegation zone.
Coughlan cited the club’s ambition and facilities, as well as moving closer to his Sheffield home, as the motivating factors behind the switch.
Yet he could not repeat his Bristol Rovers success at the Stags. He was sacked after less than a year in charge following a poor start to the 2020-21 season. They overhauled the playing squad in the summer, but won just four of his 27 matches in total there.
There was a brief spell at Sheffield United U23s, before being appointed on a two-and-a-half year deal at Newport County in October 2022.
It wasn’t the spectacular success of his Bristol Rovers stint, nor the unequivocal failure of his Mansfield spell.
The club were 19th in League Two when he took over, and he guided them to 14th by the end of the 2022-23 season.
The following campaign concluded with an 18th-place finish, which cost Coughlan his job, so the Dubliner left the club in almost the same position he found them.
Another unenviable task ensued in November 2024, when the Irishman took over a Boston United side seven points from safety in the National League. Coughlan guided them to survival in their penultimate match of the season – an outcome he labelled a “miracle”.
Coughlan’s managerial stock had risen again, and Boston rejected an approach from fellow National League team Hartlepool that summer.
Yet the remarkable achievement of avoiding relegation was soon forgotten. With the club 17th after a run of one win in 17 fixtures, Coughlan was dismissed midway through the 2025-26 season.
He spent two months at League Two side Barrow in an advisory role to interim manager Sam Foley. Yet he could not prevent the struggling side’s relegation before Waterford came calling last May.
As is usually the case when Coughlan is hired, the Blues were in big trouble when he took charge on a short-term contract until the end of the season.
The club were bottom of the Premier Division and had failed to win any of their first 14 league matches, nine points adrift of ninth-place Sligo Rovers.
The run the team have been on since then has been nothing short of remarkable.
They began with a 4-1 defeat to St Pat’s, followed by a 2-2 draw with Derry before a 2-1 win against Drogheda.
A 2-1 loss to Shelbourne was offset by a 3-3 draw with the Drogs and an emphatic 4-0 over relegation rivals Sligo Rovers.
But after the 2-0 loss to Shamrock Rovers on 19 June, Waterford went on a scarcely believable 13-match unbeaten run.
The streak ended before the international break versus the Hoops. The reigning champions came from 2-1 down to secure a hard-fought victory.
Rovers themselves had been on a seven-match winless run before then, but manager Stephen Bradley paid tribute to Coughlan’s side speaking earlier this week.
“We had a difficult run in terms of results, not performances,” he said. “Waterford was an extremely difficult game; they’re the in-form team in the country.
“We saw against us why; they had some chances, and another night they score and win the game. They’re an extremely difficult team to play against. And when they get it right on the night, they’re very difficult.
“So that was probably the most difficult game we’ve had in some time, if I’m being honest.”
Coughlan’s transformation of Waterford has won the 51-year-old many admirers.
“If you want to be successful in management, I don’t care what anyone else says: [it's about] resources and finances,” Tim Clancy, who managed Drogheda, St Pat’s and Cork City between 2017 and 2025, tells The 42. “If you don’t have that, what is success?
“Graham Coughlan should be manager of the year in the League of Ireland because he came in, and they were miles adrift, and now there’s an outside chance of getting fourth place, and maybe winning the cup.
“And he’s turned a squad of players who were absolutely zero on confidence when Jon Daly left to now – all of a sudden, they look unbelievable. So that’s success, in my eyes, massive success, and probably the biggest success of this season will be Graham Coughlan’s job at Waterford.
“But people who would look from the outside in the UK might go: ‘Waterford finished sixth. What was so great about that in a 10-team league?’
“On a CV, Stephen Bradley would have a better season this year from winning a league title. But Graham Coughlan’s would say, ‘Oh, he got a team safe.’ But that doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story that Rovers probably have double the budget of Waterford.”
Coughlan and Waterford will be underdogs again tonight when they travel to face another title-contending team, Bohemians, at Dalymount Park.
But having already managed minor miracles with the Munster side and elsewhere, Coughlan will be confident he can inspire yet another unlikely triumph.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Close
Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic.
Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy
here
before taking part.
Waterford looked dead and buried. Then, a little-known Dubliner changed everything
IN HIS SHORT managerial career so far, Graham Coughlan has become accustomed to firefighting.
In the Dubliner’s first job, in December 2019, his Bristol Rovers side were 2-0 down to Sol Campbell’s Southend United at half-time.
A fuming Coughlan read the riot act at the break.
Rovers came out and won the second half 4-2.
“I told them their Christmas party was cancelled,” Coughlan said afterwards of his impactful intervention. “I told them I’d see them in the morning, we’d watch the video – the Rocky Horror Show – and go through it and fix it.
“I ain’t having that type of performance in the first half. It was lacklustre, it was flat, we couldn’t pass the ball from A to B, we had runners running off us, we were non-existent.
“Let’s be straight and honest. We could have been 3-0 down at half-time. We were lucky it was only two. That’s not me, that’s not my team, and that’s not that group.
“The lads will go off, they’ll have their Christmas do and let’s be honest, they fully deserve it.”
The incident felt like a metaphor for Coughlan’s career. His remit has invariably been simple – rescue struggling teams from dire situations.
It might have been different if a big move early in his career worked out.
After spells at Cherry Orchard and Bray Wanderers, the youngster joined Premier League champions Blackburn in 1995, but didn’t break into the first team during four years at Ewood Park.
Instead, the defender enjoyed a sustained career at a lower level. His four seasons at Plymouth are so fondly remembered that he made the club’s Team of the Century.
In his only full season at Sheffield Wednesday, Coughlan was named the club’s Player of the Year before falling out of favour the following campaign.
He was already 21 and had worked in an electrical warehouse by the time he joined Blackburn, so it’s no surprise that Coughlan was thinking about life after by playing from an early stage – as early as 2008, after signing for Shrewsbury, he was already combining playing with coaching, and his one-year deal with Southend in 2010 included a stint as the club’s reserve-team manager, eventually graduating to assistant boss and first-team coach roles.
After being appointed defensive coach at Bristol Rovers in the summer of 2018, he was named caretaker manager the following December.
When he took over, the club were in the relegation zone after eight losses in 10 games.
But Coughlan made an immediate impact, earned the permanent job, and guided them to safety.
By the time he left the club midway through the next season, Rovers were fourth in League One, two points away from the automatic playoff places.
So they reluctantly parted ways as Coughlan made the unusual choice to drop a division and become manager of Mansfield Town, who were 18th in League Two, seven points above the relegation zone.
Coughlan cited the club’s ambition and facilities, as well as moving closer to his Sheffield home, as the motivating factors behind the switch.
Yet he could not repeat his Bristol Rovers success at the Stags. He was sacked after less than a year in charge following a poor start to the 2020-21 season. They overhauled the playing squad in the summer, but won just four of his 27 matches in total there.
There was a brief spell at Sheffield United U23s, before being appointed on a two-and-a-half year deal at Newport County in October 2022.
It wasn’t the spectacular success of his Bristol Rovers stint, nor the unequivocal failure of his Mansfield spell.
The club were 19th in League Two when he took over, and he guided them to 14th by the end of the 2022-23 season.
The following campaign concluded with an 18th-place finish, which cost Coughlan his job, so the Dubliner left the club in almost the same position he found them.
Another unenviable task ensued in November 2024, when the Irishman took over a Boston United side seven points from safety in the National League. Coughlan guided them to survival in their penultimate match of the season – an outcome he labelled a “miracle”.
Coughlan’s managerial stock had risen again, and Boston rejected an approach from fellow National League team Hartlepool that summer.
Yet the remarkable achievement of avoiding relegation was soon forgotten. With the club 17th after a run of one win in 17 fixtures, Coughlan was dismissed midway through the 2025-26 season.
He spent two months at League Two side Barrow in an advisory role to interim manager Sam Foley. Yet he could not prevent the struggling side’s relegation before Waterford came calling last May.
As is usually the case when Coughlan is hired, the Blues were in big trouble when he took charge on a short-term contract until the end of the season.
The club were bottom of the Premier Division and had failed to win any of their first 14 league matches, nine points adrift of ninth-place Sligo Rovers.
The run the team have been on since then has been nothing short of remarkable.
They began with a 4-1 defeat to St Pat’s, followed by a 2-2 draw with Derry before a 2-1 win against Drogheda.
A 2-1 loss to Shelbourne was offset by a 3-3 draw with the Drogs and an emphatic 4-0 over relegation rivals Sligo Rovers.
But after the 2-0 loss to Shamrock Rovers on 19 June, Waterford went on a scarcely believable 13-match unbeaten run.
The streak ended before the international break versus the Hoops. The reigning champions came from 2-1 down to secure a hard-fought victory.
Rovers themselves had been on a seven-match winless run before then, but manager Stephen Bradley paid tribute to Coughlan’s side speaking earlier this week.
“We saw against us why; they had some chances, and another night they score and win the game. They’re an extremely difficult team to play against. And when they get it right on the night, they’re very difficult.
“So that was probably the most difficult game we’ve had in some time, if I’m being honest.”
Coughlan’s transformation of Waterford has won the 51-year-old many admirers.
“If you want to be successful in management, I don’t care what anyone else says: [it's about] resources and finances,” Tim Clancy, who managed Drogheda, St Pat’s and Cork City between 2017 and 2025, tells The 42. “If you don’t have that, what is success?
“And he’s turned a squad of players who were absolutely zero on confidence when Jon Daly left to now – all of a sudden, they look unbelievable. So that’s success, in my eyes, massive success, and probably the biggest success of this season will be Graham Coughlan’s job at Waterford.
“But people who would look from the outside in the UK might go: ‘Waterford finished sixth. What was so great about that in a 10-team league?’
“On a CV, Stephen Bradley would have a better season this year from winning a league title. But Graham Coughlan’s would say, ‘Oh, he got a team safe.’ But that doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story that Rovers probably have double the budget of Waterford.”
Coughlan and Waterford will be underdogs again tonight when they travel to face another title-contending team, Bohemians, at Dalymount Park.
But having already managed minor miracles with the Munster side and elsewhere, Coughlan will be confident he can inspire yet another unlikely triumph.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
a true underdog story Graham Coughlan League of Ireland LOI Soccer Bohemians Waterford United