Pádraig O’Hora: A warrior’s spirit with a caring mind

Pádraig O’Hora was 27 when he made his championship debut with Mayo in 2020. The All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin was only his third championship start but O’Hora was man-of-the-match. He’s already in pole position to secure an All-Star.

Pádraig O’Hora: ‘We want to change our town and the way things operate. We hope to make physical changes for these people.’ Image: Jennifer Murphy

On David O’Malley’s birthday on March 12, Pádraig O’Hora and O’Malley had a dare to see who could endure the longest in the freezing Brusna Falls in Ballina. When they arrived, rain was falling in torrents. The air was biting and raw, but O’Malley knew it would be even more torturous because he knew O’Hora wouldn’t back down.

Their friend Anne-Marie Flynn also joined them, but the duel was between O’Hora and O’Malley. They weren’t budging. The harder the rain fell, the longer the standoff went on. They lasted 39 minutes before eventually relenting out of necessity — hypothermia was setting in.

“It was a score-draw,” says O’Malley. “In fairness to Pádraig, he’d just had the vaccine that week and his defences were probably down. That definitely gave me an edge, but if I hadn’t said that we’d pull out at the same time, you’d have had to physically remove Pádraig. I’ve never seen anyone as determined.”

That determination is a powerful force. The dare had been built into the Freeze 4 February initiative devised by O’Hora. The charity event was based around volunteers submerging themselves in icy cold water every day for February. Led by O’Hora, who jumped in every day, he saw no reason to stop when February ended, so it ran deep into March.

Two teams of volunteers went head to head against each other. Team Flow was captained by O’Hora while Team BEElieve was led by local solicitor O’Malley. Both groups were loaded with well-known personalities taking the plunge for the cause.

At one stage, O’Malley recruited Joe Brolly. “Pádraig drop-kicked Brolly into the river from behind,” says O’Malley. “I told him to push Joe in, but Pádraig went the full way. There are no half measures with him.”

They recorded some funny videos, with volunteers often dressing up as staged characters, to promote the cause on social media. It was highly competitive but there was a deeper meaning too behind the naming of both groups.

Flow is dedicated to creating a more inclusive community for people with disabilities, while O’Malley heads up the Ballina Community Clean-Up Group, which has driven an extensive array of voluntary enhancement/biodiversity projects across north Mayo.

One of those projects was the restoration of the old swimming pool area by the river Brusna and Caltragh walking loop, where O’Hora staged Freeze 4 February.

“Pádraig is very much a Ballina man in that he wants everyone to be recognised, and everyone to get the same credit,” says O’Malley. “He is just one of us. And everyone in Ballina is very proud of him.”

They have every right to be, for far more reasons than just football.

Two years ago, O’Hora — who works as a social care assistant with Western Care — and another Ballina man, Ryan Cawley, decided on the idea of starting their own disco for adults with intellectual disabilities in the town.

Cawley had first come across the award-winning arts and personal development programme That’s Life, which is run by the Brothers of Charity to help people with intellectual disability to realise their artistic potential.

Cawley and O’Hora ran their first disco during the annual Ballina Salmon Festival in July 2019. They did four workshops in the lead-up to the event, trained up five DJs, and more than 100 people attended. The event was such a massive success that O’Hora and Cawley created the Flow Community Project.

“We are trying to create an environment for people with disabilities to come, integrate and express themselves and enjoy themselves in a safe environment along with their families and friends,” O’Hora told Anton McNulty in the Mayo News in December 2019.

“Ever since the first event, myself and Ryan came away from it in awe. From that moment we were inspired and were going to do this. We saw parents coming out crying with happiness and so delighted that their children and family can enjoy themselves. Once you see that, you are sold.”

Working with people with disabilities every day, O’Hora has long seen the struggles they constantly have to endure. “We are trying to fill that void and give them structure and an outlet and say, ‘There are friends in my community I can interact with through things like dance and music’,” said O’Hora in that interview.

“Our whole thing is about creating an inclusive community. We want to change our town and the way things operate. We hope to make physical changes for these people.”

With the support of Mayo County Council, Flow and O’Malley’s group are collaborating on creating and building a proposed play area in Ballina for children with sensory needs called Century Park.

The fundraising target is €150,000. They have already raised over €100,000. O’Hora’s Freeze 4 February project accounted for a significant chunk of that total.

O’Hora has also been heavily involved in the park’s design, especially around its sensory needs. “There aren’t too many guys that would go to those lengths for charity,” says David Clarke, former Mayo ’keeper, and a team-mate of O’Hora’s with Ballina Stephenites.

“The charity work has been a massive boost to the town and the people in Ballina. It has really shown the type of character Pádraig is. He’s a really good fella.”

O’Hora has always operated outside the box. He first pricked the national consciousness as one of the final three competitors still standing at the end of the TV programme first shown on RTÉ last year, Ultimate Hell Week.

As O’Hora underwent a gruelling eight-day series of challenges based on the selection course for the Irish army’s ranger wing, he and 27 other candidates were tested to the limit; physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

It’s the hardest test any soldier in the Irish military can go through, with a failure rate above 90%.

O’Hora got 13 hours’ sleep in seven nights, just 25 minutes the first night. There were times when the pressure bent him out of shape. But he never broke.

In interviews afterwards, O’Hora spoke about his daily routine of meditation, and how it helped him get through so many difficult challenges on the course. O’Hora’s interest in the practice initially stemmed from spending time in sensory rooms at work.

“I really enjoy what I do, and I think I learn a lot from people with disabilities rather than the other way around,” O’Hora told Mike Finnerty in the Mayo News last year. “I try and see how they see the world.”

O’Hora has always had a different approach to life, especially around sport, and the wide-ranging impact it can have. When he was younger, he did karate, boxing, kick-boxing, and jiu jitsu. He was on the Mayo panel for a short period under Stephen Rochford in 2016 before packing in football for two years to get involved in mixed martial arts. He only returned to football with Ballina Stephenites in 2019 because he had learned to really appreciate the different energy he could get from team sport.

O’Hora was 27 when he made his championship debut with Mayo in 2020. The All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin was only his third championship start but he was man of the match. He’s already in pole position to secure an All-Star.

“He’s just got that savage competitiveness in him, whether it’s training or a game,” says Clarke. “He’s the type of fella that when he decides to do something right, he does it absolutely 100%. He has real confidence in his own ability.

“You could play him anywhere. If you give him a job, you can be guaranteed that he will do it to the absolute best of his ability. He won’t give up. He’ll never back down from anything. That competitiveness is the basis of Swanee’s game.”

His nickname is hewn from his lineage. O’Hora’s grandfather was a local councilor who was called Swan. A lot of O’Horas in the town carried the same name. Pádraig was so different that they just added a couple of extra letters.

In so many ways, O’Hora is an anomaly, a warrior’s spirit with a philanthropic soul and a caring mind. He used to have dreadlocks. He wouldn’t look out of place in a heavy-metal band but playing chess provides another form of his meditation.

“He’s a real family man to his partner Roisin and (kids) Caiden and Mila-Rae,” says O’Malley. “To look at Pádraig, you’d think he’s cocky but he’s nothing like that. There is no ego there. He has the long hair and ponytail but that’s just him. He’s very calm but he’s great craic. He’s a real cool customer.”

There were times when his Stephenites team-mates couldn’t work O’Hora out. For years, he ran table quizzes in the club to fundraise for charity. When he was out of football for those two seasons, the Stephenites players used to pack the place out for those quizzes, mostly in the hope of convincing O’Hora to return.

He never bowed to the pressure. He just returned in his own time, when the timing was right for him and everyone else around him. “I call him our Jon Snow (character from Game of Thrones),” says O’Malley. “He’s a leader. Lads from north Mayo are their own men. They’re not manufactured. Pádraig is certainly his own man.

“Sometimes, we’re kinda seen as unfashionable up here in Ballina, and Pádraig fits that criteria. He’s not your typical Mayo player. His path wasn’t easily mapped out.

“He has gone and lived a bit. He has got involved in his community, and that community means so much to him. He’s nearly like Rocky Balboa, as opposed to Apollo Creed. Apollo was the protégé honed in the gym. Like Rocky, life has taught Pádraig what to do.”