Cycle of hope and hardship gives way to a more consistent Sligo

Veteran Patrick O'Connor eager for Dublin clash, with some familiar faces opposite, as Yeats County continue on upward curve

Sat, 17 Jun, 2023 - 07:03

Maurica Brosnan

Work and play. Dublin and Sligo. Patrick O’Connor knows them both intimately. On Sunday his worlds collide at Kingspan Breffni.

The Sligo footballer is a business advisor with Bank of Ireland in Dublin and rides the bus back west for training. It means a dash for the door before 5pm and collapsing into bed well after midnight but it is doable all the same. Under Tony McEntee, they found a format that works for the team and for the players.

“We head down on a Wednesday, a gang of us get a bus down,” he explains. “Then we head down on a Friday, train Friday and Sunday. It is a bit more manageable. If we have a Saturday game, we go Tuesday and Thursday but in fairness to management, they only ask us to attend one of those sessions. We do our own up here on the other day.”

This weekend is only the second time Sligo have ever played Dublin in championship. A novel pairing in many ways and yet so much of it is familiar for O’Connor. He went to UCD and played with the likes of Eoin Murchan and Con O’Callaghan, both of whom are named to start the Sam Maguire Cup Group 3, Round 3 game.

“I would have played with Eoin Murchan for two years and Con for one year. Jack McCaffrey was injured at the time and helping out. They are all good lads to be fair," says O'Connor. “We’d a good team at the time. Stephen Coen from Mayo, who won an All-Ireland at that age (U21), was there. You learned a lot from them.

“Sigerson was tough to manage. Once you pick up a few injuries it can snowball. I was (Sligo) captain the second year of it. I focused a bit more on Sligo at that stage. Some people can do both, I just found injuries kept coming. By my third year I decided to just go with Sligo.”

He was only 21 when Paul Taylor appointed him captain in 2020. Niall Murphy had opted out and the St Farnan’s club man was next in line, having been a member of the panel since 2016.

Hope and hardship. For much of his career, they came hand-in-hand. The season he was captain ended with just three league wins and a conceded championship fixture. The previous campaign they didn’t win a single game in league or championship.

Even pleasurable outings brought pain. Sligo won a Division 4 final in Croke Park last April and went on to reach a Connacht final against Galway. O’Connor was dropped for that defeat.

Post-match, manager McEntee said it was an incredibly difficult decision and that he didn’t know if he had to apologise for the tactical call.

“It was a bit of a shock,” admits O’Connor. “Disappointment more than anything. You have to get your head right to make an impact off the bench. Look someone had to miss out and it was me. Our ethos in the group is that everyone is important. You have to park it and move on. We had a discussion around it and it is one of the situations where you won’t see eye-to-eye. Move on, there is no point getting caught up in it.

“Look, there was no need to (apologise). There are over 30 in the panel and only 15 can start. Management does what is best for the team. You can’t argue with their intentions.”

Sligo are still in the hunt for third spot and a place in the knockout stages of the championship. Exactly where they want to be. Step by step, they are making progress. For the last few years O’Connor has carried with him a belief that they can do more. There is more to come.

“Definitely the priority was getting out of Division 4. Our next priority was to make the Connacht final which we did but weren’t happy with our performance. I don’t think we are in bonus territory yet. Making the last eight would be. Coming into this series we had our sight set on making a preliminary quarter-final.

“I take it day-to-day. Game to game. You can get bogged down in performances and results. Just go game to game and training to training, I find you enjoy it more that way. I put a lot of pressure on myself before. If you peel it back and just enjoy football as it comes, the performance can look after itself.

“We had a few tough years with Sligo. We went a long time without even a win. You can get bogged down in where you are at and the division you are playing in. You learn the hard way from bad days and try to move on from it.”

Fully focused on today because he knows of an exciting tomorrow. The county’s U20s recently won consecutive provincial titles and a raft of those teams have filtered into the senior side. Few of them will feature in the short-term but the lift that has provided is still colossal.

“At the end of the day, we are Sligo GAA supporters,” says O’Connor with conviction. “We are happy to see the lads do well and it creates a buzz around GAA. Some of those lads are joining training now and flying. It looks good for the future.”