Missing medals made Jason Sherlock a better coach

Three years later, a call came from Dublin’s football development officer Stephen O’Shaughnessy, a former Dubs’ team-mate, to get involved with development squads and shape their footballing future. The timing was right.

And a year after that, Dublin boss Jim Gavin, fresh from their shock All-Ireland SFC semi-final defeat to Donegal, requested Sherlock’s services with the seniors and Sherlock has helped oversee a remarkable three-in-a-row in the intervening period.

The transition from playing to retirement is a challenging one but Sherlock believes perceived failures as a player helped shape him as a coach.

“When I finished playing initially I saw my career as a failure because I lost a lot more big games than I won and that was tough to deal with,” Sherlock said, at the launch of the Leinster GAA and GPA Coaching Pathway for inter-county players, an initiative to encourage former players to get involved in coaching.

“But once I got the reflection and perspective, I could say ‘right, I mightn’t have got the trophies I wanted to win but I developed my character, my resilience, and I never gave up. I developed innovation and creativity.

“I always came back and I always believed until the day I retired that I was getting better as a footballer so I always applied that in my head. I look back now and see that they are the traits that will fuel and motivate me as a coach.”

Through regular conversation with former Irish boxing head coach Billy Walsh, Sherlock learned that his playing experiences could act as a catalyst to improve his coaching experiences, and he holds Walsh’s advice with him to this day.

“Billy had been dealing a lot with Nicolas Cruz Hernandez, the Cuban native that coached the Irish boxing team. Billy had a lot of disappointments in his own athletic career but Cruz assured him of one thing. “He said ‘All the medals that you think should have been around your neck, they’ll always be in your head as a coach’ and I identified with that and got a lot of comfort out of that. Regardless of what I did as a coach, my foundation will always be my playing career.

“The reality is players are going to lose a lot more than they’ll win but there will be so many positive opportunities from those experiences that you can apply to your coaching career.”

The 41-year-old, who launches his autobiography Jayo this week, recognises that nothing will replace representing the Dubs on big days in Croke Park but he gets a huge kick out of helping others achieve their potential on the pitch.

“Never underestimate the contribution that you can have on a young athlete, in terms of inspiring them in their career. We have an advantage as former players if you feel motivated to help and get involved with coaching,” he says.

“The beauty of being a coach is that you can probably influence a lot more players as a coach, you have the opportunity to make an impact on a panel. When you’re playing, you can only affect your own performance and your team-mates around you.”