The life and times of Kevin O’Connor
From Wolves to Longford in injury-plagued career
PICTURE the scene. It’s July 21st, 2012. Wolves are visiting Bray Wanderers. Matt Jarvis, Steven Fletcher and Irish international Kevin Foley are the immediately recognisable names – the ones that are putting bums on seats in the Carlisle Grounds.
But for one visiting journalist – whose name I can’t remember and whose employers I can’t recall - there is only one name that catches his eye and it doesn’t belong to the visiting team. “Did that Kevin O’Connor used to play for Wolves by any chance?” he ponders, wide-eyed. I confirm that he did indeed and my forgotten friend gushes about how this young fella from Ireland was regarded as the next big thing at Molineux and he was tipped for stardom.
“It’s always great to hear that sort of thing”, admits O’Connor when informed of the tale. With a bit more luck, O’Connor could have been in the away dressing room that day but a series of terrible injuries and rotten luck put the brakes on his extremely promising career.
He had many suitors as a 16year old Republic of Ireland underage international but he followed in Robbie Keane’s footsteps and joined the Midlands club.
He scooped the Academy Player of the Year and after a loan spell elsewhere, broke into the first team under new manger Mick McCarthy. Three matches and three starts into the new season, a sciatic issue left him on the sidelines for the remainder of the footballing year.
A separate injury left him a write-off for the following term but he’d done enough to earn a further year’s contract. However, Wolves’ patience ran out at the end of that season and suddenly O’Connor, now a young father, was clubless and clueless.
A lot had changed since his early courtships with Newcastle United, Stoke City (where brother James was an established firstteam member) and recently-rich Man City.
“It was something that I thought about but I just got a good feeling from Wolves. It was an easy decision. Once I’d signed for Wolves, there was interest from Man City. It was great to say Man City showed interest but realistically, you’re looking at where you can go (in the team) and how they’ll look after you and whether you’ve a chance of getting into the first team so Wolves was ideal for me.
“James was at Stoke so he was a great help. When I was in Wolves, he was only a 40 minute drive away so I would’ve spent most of my weekends in the early stages with James.
James was a huge help. He’d been in England about six years prior to me going over there so he was able to guide me.
“James knows what the script was like in football. He knew that I had to look out for number one basically so he while he probably would’ve loved to have me at Stoke, at the same time he knew Wolves would be the better option for me.”
It was in 2002 that O’Connor left his family home in Bray to attempt and realise his dreams at Wolves. Education held no interest for him as he banked on his feet paving the way in his career but with hindsight, the 32-year old sees the naivety in his 16-year old self.
As planned, O’Connor progressed to the first team and everything seemed on course for him to fulfil his potential until a mysterious injury struck.
“Looking back on it, I see 16 and I think it’s so young but at the time you think you’re old enough to be doing it. It’s a big ask for families as well when they have a young kid going but I was lucky because I had James over there.
“I went on loan to Stockport and it was a great experience to be able to go and play in the first team. I came back and Glenn Hoddle was the manager at Wolves. I felt I was doing well but like a lot of players out there I just wasn’t given my chance.
“But then he resigned and Mick McCarthy came in and I was straight into the team. I played the pre-season games for him and then I played the first three (competitive) games for him before I had an injury - a sciatic nerve in my back. I didn’t think much of it at the time, the physio said to take two weeks rest and that should sort it out but it was just prolonged. It kept going and going and never seemed to heal. I had two operations and it just wasn’t any getting better.
“I was getting injections. I tried everything under the sun trying to sort it out. There was one injection I had which would’ve numbed it for a week or two; that got me back training and I managed to secure a contract for another year. The injections were numbing it but it kept coming back again.
“I’d say I lost a year where they didn’t know what it was. There were so many specialists trying so many different things. I’d do one thing for six weeks, it wouldn’t get better so I’d see another specialist who’d do another programme for another six or eight weeks and it just kept going on like that and I was getting nowhere.”
There was finally light at the end of the tunnel for O’Connor but an innocent slip would present the next stumbling block in his career and would ultimately lead to his departure from Wolves.
“The first operation I had went well and then maybe six weeks after that, I was back in the gym doing very basic stuff and I went home and slipped in the garden and fell and hurt my hamstring. I was doing rehab and it got to the stage where if I tried to sprint, it just didn’t feel right. I went back to the surgeon again in Finland and he opened me up and realised that I’d ripped the hamstring off the bone when I fell.
“In my head, it was that second one which threw me over the edge. The first operation worked but it was bad luck. That’s the way it goes.
“Because I’d been injured for so long and I was coming to the end of my contact, I knew they’d be mad to offer me anything. You’re not going to employ someone if they can’t do their job and they (Wolves) had tried every avenue at that stage. When I left Wolves, they were very good to me. They kept me and looked after me so I stayed with them for a few months after the contract had finished (to rehab).
“It would’ve been great to carry on and see where it went but I’m not the only player in the world that this has happened to. I’ve got on with my life since then. The year after I finished with Wolves was very difficult for myself and my partner at the time. That was a real struggle. Football was all I knew.”
From there, O’Connor landed a trial with Walsall. Their manager was extremely impressed and interested in securing O’Connor’s services but then in the last minute of training, O’Connor tore the medial ligament in his knee.
His body was no longer suited to full-time training. He now had his son Darragh to think of and a mortgage to pay. A return to Ireland was considered but he spent a couple of seasons in the Conference first before news from his brother Danny would help him make up his mind.
“I didn’t know what way to think. I had to make a hard decision because when I was at Walsall on trial, I wasn’t employed. I had no income and I had a mortgage and a young lad so you have to make tough decisions. I thought; look, this hasn’t worked out well for me in a good while. It wasn’t just leaving Wolves, things just weren’t getting better. I had to make a decision whether to knock it on the head and try and get employment (or keep playing).
“For a good few years, we (Kevin and his partner) both wanted to move back and then we eventually did when I was 28 I think. My brother Dan was playing in the League of Ireland and he said to me that a few clubs had been asking about me so I was delighted. Pat’s showed interest initially through Liam Buckley so I went in and trained with them. He wanted to see more of me because understandably he was cautious about the injuries but I’d been playing semi-pro in England where I’d been playing every game and I was fine.
“I was training with them and then Pat Devlin showed interest so I went down and trained with them and Dan was there at the time and in fairness to ‘Devo’, he sorted me out with a job and a contract with Bray so for me that was a big thing because I needed that security. It was a big decision so with that, we went back to England and put the house up for sale and we moved back over here. It was perfect.”
O’Connor then got the honour of lining up alongside his brother for the Seagulls. It was not a cherished time in his career though as he was left frustrated by what he thought was an underachieving side. Both Danny and James reluctantly concede that Kevin was the prodigy in the family but Kevin admits he would be nowhere without them.
“There’s a lot of aspect to what makes a good footballer. Ability wise - possibly, but when you look at James and Dan; their dedication and determination (is brilliant). They would have more attributes in that regard than I would have. They were both very good players and for me having those two to look up to for advice and everything else - they’ve been fantastic to me on and off the field even to this day.
“I played with Danny for a year and a half. It was great. The one thing I’ll say about my time at Bray is that with the players that we had, we didn’t achieve what we should have. I put a lot of that down to the backroom stuff that was going on then - it still is now - it’s been going on for years. That was the only disappointing thing for me because I would’ve loved to have played for Danny while achieving better things. It was a good squad but it never took off.
“They offered me a new deal but I thought it was time to move on. I was starting to lose that enjoyment aspect to it at Bray. The off-field stuff and we just weren’t really going anywhere (were the reasons for declining the new deal). I thought maybe it was better to get a fresh start and enjoy my football.”
His fresh start was at Longford Town. Ironically, his last action in a Bray jersey was to score a thunderbastard in the relegation play-off that would keep his new employers in the First Division. O’Connor made amends as he helped the Midlanders to the league title in his first season. The midfielder heaps praise on former Town manager and assistant manager Tony Cousins and Gary Cronin respectively but after three seasons with De Town, his workload lead to him informing Town boss Neale Fenn that he wouldn’t be re-joining in 2018.
But is the door completely closed on the 32-year old’s League of Ireland career?
“It’s more or less properly closed but you never know,” he laughs. “There’s always a maybe!”
“For the moment, yeah. It’s a decision that I thought about even last season. The commitment was getting a lot. I was captain last year and I’d be turning up late to training because of work and for me, I’ve always been on time and it wasn’t good being captain and turning up late. For me, I knew I couldn’t commit. I just had to be honest. I can’t be late to training and ringing up saying I can’t make this or that - it’s not professional. I had to leave it. I’m 32 now as well so I’d like to start to focus on life outside of football. I’m trying to do exams with the bank and that’s what’ll take me somewhere, not the football. Football has to end some day.”
Ulster Bank have been his employers for the past two years. His brother Dan opened the door for him a few years ago but without a leaving cert to his name, Kevin fell at the first hurdle in the interview process. And it’s for that reason that – at 29 years of age – O’Connor sat his leaving cert a full 13 years after leaving school.
It would not have been his plan at 16 but O’Connor says it is the best thing he’s ever done. He prefers not to wonder what might have been. He joined the Wolves academy alongside 10 others and they were told that if they were lucky, one of them might make a living out of football. O’Connor did, as did Keith Lowe (over 500 professional appearances in England, currently with Macclesfield Town) and Karl Ikeme (Wolves goalkeeper still, currently battling leukaemia). An injury-free career may have seen O’Connor trump both of their achievements but what’s done is done.
“You do think ‘what if?’ but I don’t dwell on it. I don’t want to be beating myself up over it. It was great to get in the first team at the time. I went over there at 16 with the aim of breaking into the first team and I did that. I look back and I’m happy with what I did but at the same time it would’ve obviously been nice to see how far I could’ve gone.”
Having once trained with the likes of Paul Ince and Paul Gascoigne (“he wasn’t well the poor fella – skin and bones – but he was unbelievable in training still”), O’Connor can’t see himself venturing into the amateur ranks (“I’d probably lose the rag”).
His son Darragh, now 10, is showing signs of the O’Connor genes and has come to the realisation in the last few years that his dad was something of a big deal.
O’Connor rates his First Division winner’s medal and a gold medal from the European Youth Olympics as two stand-out high points from his career.
Pre-season started back recently on these shores and it is the first time in years that O’Connor had no interest in it.
“It’s very early days for me. I’ve only just retired so I just want to enjoy the break. Most teams got back training last week and I was thinking about it but I was happy to be sitting at home.”
For now, O’Connor will enjoy his downtime. He’ll attend League of Ireland games as a spectator and get to spend more time with Darragh.
He wants to progress in his career and make the most of himself. You can bank on that.