John O'Hara Article

**Mayo Red** · 16/11/2005, 11:25 PM

The following article appears in this weeks Mayo News and is taken from their website. Worryingly for Rovers he mentions a possible move to Scotland, I hope for our sake there is no truth to the Dundee United rumour

. He is a class act and according to the article he has signed on for next season so I hope he'll be around to help keep us in the Premier Division, and I hope we can go some way towards matching his ambition!

No 1 spot for O’Hara

John O’Hara, the Foxford goalkeeper tells Edwin McGreal he is enjoying nothing but good times at Sligo Rovers FC.

WHILE his former club Straide & Foxford were busy trying to dethrone the FAI Junior Cup holders Westport United on Sunday, Foxford’s John O’Hara was relishing the joys of success on a higher level.

Last Saturday night saw O’Hara and Sligo Rovers take the eircom League Division One title and it has rounded off a superb eight months for the Moysider since he moved to the Showgrounds in February.

After a four-year scholarship in America, O’Hara returned home to begin life as a professional footballer. The Showgrounds has been his starting point. Thus far it’s been worth his while. “It’s essentially the first major soccer honour that I’ve won,” admitted the 24 year old netminder this week. “I won leagues with Straide & Foxford back in Mayo but at a national level, it is the first thing that I’ve won so it’s a great feeling.”

The title was secured courtesy of a 0-0 draw with old rivals Athlone Town in the Showgrounds on Saturday night last. Mathematically, Sligo could have been caught but they put pay to the need for calculators with a point against Athlone. “The league was basically over because we were six points clear with two games to go and we had a much better goal difference than those behind us. If we got a point on the night, they couldn’t mathematically catch us but they weren’t going to catch us anyway.

“A crowd of about five thousand plus turned up on Saturday night and they emptied onto the pitch after. It was brilliant. We got the cup just in front of the stand and did a lap of honour and all the crowd waited on basically until we went back into the dressing room.”

And if that wasn’t reward enough O’Hara is one of three players nominated for the First Division Player of the Year. He joins Kieran O’Reilly (Cobh) and Aidan Price (Kilkenny) on the shortlist. “Just to be nominated for it is something else, especially as a goalkeeper,” O’Hara admits. “Not many goalkeepers achieve recognition. It was somewhat surprising but definitely it would cap off a great year were I to win it.”

OF course most people in Mayo will remember John O’Hara, the Gaelic football goalkeeper. Captain of St Jarlath’s and one of the many talented players in the Mayo minor team in 1999 which lost the All-Ireland final to Down, O’Hara has had nothing if not a hectic career.

Belverdere, Shelbourne, a scholarship in America and now Sligo have been part and parcel of his soccer career and when you throw in time with Mayo minors and under 21’s and Hogan Cup finals with Jarlath’s, you begin to get the picture.

At times O’Hara was so busy that his itinerary would make the average layman tired merely at the thought of it but he revelled in it. “It was hard to balance soccer and Gaelic football a few years ago. I was playing soccer with Belvedere and they are one of the top youth teams in the country. At the same time I was playing for the Mayo under 21’s.

“I would have an under 21 game on the Saturday night in Mayo and then a soccer game on the Monday in Dublin. I wouldn’t have done it though if I didn’t enjoy it and I loved it,” he admitted.

That was essentially the end of his Gaelic football career and while O’Hara misses the native code, he is content with where life has taken him. “It was a tough decision picking between the two,” he admits. “Gaelic is something that I have missed since. I would never go back playing now. Soccer is my game now and I’ll have to stick with it.”

A spell as sub ‘keeper with Shelbourne followed on from Belverdere but before long O’Hara’s patience at warming the bench ran thin and when a stateside scholarship beckoned, he didn’t think twice.

GEORGE Mason University in Virginia would be where O’Hara would spend the next four years of his life. He clearly enjoyed his spell there and, on the academic side of things, studied physical education.

“It’s a very good standard out there,” O’Hara, a former Irish Schools International, began. “They are way ahead with regard to producing players than we are. We were always ahead of America in soccer terms but now, they seem to be overtaking us from the underage up.”

The collegiate soccer structure in the US is drastically different to that in Ireland, with scholarship students practically being full-time athletes. “When you say to people over here that you were playing college soccer, they think it’s just like the Collingwood Cup (Irish universities cup played for over one single weekend) whereas over there it’s completely different. It’s a 25 game season from September to Christmas, you play two games a week, you’re training every day and you’d go to school for two hours every day in between the training and the games. You’re basically there to play soccer and all your classes are based around that.”

It is, therefore, hard to make it big out there with some serious competition but O’Hara managed to make a big impression, even if his side were struggling. “Being a goalkeeper, playing in a poor enough side in the first two years I did well individually. The have things out there like All Conference side which was for the best players in the league and each of the years I got picked on that side. Personally, that was good for me.

“PE teaching was always something I wanted to do,” he continued. “I just didn’t get points for it because they are so high and there’s only the one place you can do it in Ireland. I went to college for a year and did business studies. I wasn’t really for me, whereas PE was really my first choice,” he admits.

O’HARA returned to Ireland this Spring and he has been very impressive with Sligo, but the twenty-four year old Mayo man was ambitious beyond Sligo Rovers when he came home from America, something he readily admits himself.

However, he just landed at the wrong time of the year for those having winter seasons. “I had an agent when I left college and he already represented a guy playing for Sligo. I really had no intention of going back and playing for Sligo when I came home.

“I was after coming back and I was on my way to Scotland and I was on my way to Dunfirmline, I had a trial over there. It just worked out that I had a week off between coming home and the trial with Dunfirmline so I just went down for the week to see what it was like at Sligo and then I went over to Dunfermline. When I came back I decided to stay (with Sligo).”

“To be honest the other teams might have been a better option looking from the outside but it turned out that this was by far the better choice. The other teams were struggling and it was definitely a good decision to come here and win a league.

“This is hopefully just a stepping stone to something else, to maybe a move to Scotland, that is something I see myself doing. It’s definitely an ambition of mine to play somewhere whether it is England or Scotland. I signed a new contract recently that will allows me to wait here next year now that we have been promoted so we’ll just have to see how things work out.”

He may have options aplenty but O’Hara certainly isn’t one to complain about his lot. He’s playing a sport he enjoys and making a full-time living out of it and he appreciates the fact. “At the moment I’m playing full time, and that’s my job, why wouldn’t I be happy? There is about eight of us full time down there, and when we go into the premier league there would be another ten or so lads playing.

“It’s a hard way to make a living but at the same time its worth it, it really is. What else could be a better job than playing a sport that you love, one that you probably do for free anyway?”

Hard to argue with that.