O’Rourke appointed as Pat’s ladies boss
Former county manager takes over at St Patrick’s
ST PATRICK’S have unveiled their Senior management teams for 2021 with the most significant news being that former Wicklow ladies boss Mick O’Rourke has taken over from Robert Hollingsworth as the new manager of their club’s ladies footballers for the coming season.
Casey O’Brien remains as the Senior football boss while the expected return of Michael Neary to the helm of the Senior hurlers was formally announced by the club at the same time.
All three men have significant jobs on their hands for the next year. Casey O’Brien will look to get his charges back to the summit of Wicklow club football after they were undone by Alan Costello’s Tinahely last year. But with the beaten finalists, champions Baltinglass and the always threatening Avondale all eager for success, and a Rathnew side hungry for recovery, the road to Miley will be an extremely tough one for O’Brien’s charges.
Michael Neary returns to take charge of the St Pat’s hurlers after a year away in Avondale. Ray Nolan returns to his home clubs as manager having taken over from Neary in 2020 and the former Wicklow goalkeeper faces a tough task to get the Wicklow town hurlers to a county final or beyond given the improvements made by the likes of Kiltegan and Éire Óg, a Carnew side keen on redemption and a Bray Emmets team that looked massively impressive when sauntering to another county title.
But the big news was the appointment of Mick O’Rourke as manager of the Senior ladies team. The team many believed were the ones with the biggest potential to stop the juggernaut that is Tinahely endured a very disappointing 2020 with the McGettigan sisters not playing and the failure to return to the county final.
Now, with O’Rourke at the helm, can the Offaly native drive them on to stop one of the best club teams to have ever operated out of the Garden County.
O’Rourke says the decision took quite a bit of deliberation over but once he realised how good the set-up was and when he took into the account the undeniable potential within the team, he made his decision to jump back into management after two years out.
‘Two years out, had wondered about whether I would go back this year, especially with Covid still going on, I was maybe a bit reluctant and thinking about taking one more year out, but then I received an approach from a couple of representatives from the ladies section of St Patrick’s GAA Club and discussions and things went off for a couple of weeks, and thoughts about it, and I decided to go back at it with St Pat’s,’ he said.
‘I had to take a few weeks to ponder over it, and also to see if it was the right time for me to go back in and was it the right set-up to go back into. After a lot of consideration, I decided to go back at it and give it a go for the next couple of years,’ he added.
For a man who has been in and around ladies and men’s football in Wicklow for a long time, his roots in the game have rarely been examined. We asked for a brief synopsis.
‘My playing career started out down in Offaly. I’m originally from Coolderry, originally a hurling club. Hurling would have been my game coming up. Obviously would have played football as well with the club and with schools and in college in Athlone. I played Sigerson and Fitzgibbon with Athlone and the Garda College. I would have been involved with Offaly hurling at 16s, Minors, under-21s, and I was even involved for a while with the Senior set-up for a while. Then I transferred to Tallaght, and things became too hard travelling up and down from Dublin to train. I just couldn’t do it. Eventually, I moved up this way altogether.
‘I finished up hurling and then had a bad ankle break playing football for Blessington. I was over the Junior As as kind of a player/manager. I got a bad, bad break and ended up with plates and screws in the ankle. That kind of finished me sport wise. I went more into the coaching side of things then. I would have coached Blessington Minors and Junior As, then the Blessington Seniors for a couple of years. I was with the Wicklow ladies in 2008, 09 and 10. I was with Hollywood Seniors for a few years and then back to the Wicklow ladies for a few years and now with St Pat’s,’ he said.
That trip down memory lane complete, we turn our attention to the very exciting job at hand in Dunbur Park.
‘There is huge potential. I’m not even going to attempt to name the number of players with St Pat’s who have inter-county experience. There is a wealth of experience there and it’s about bringing the whole lot together.
‘There’s a great crop of underage coming through as well and it’s about getting them back on the playing pitch and getting that mix of experience and youth working. Tinahely have been the masters of that over the last six years. They’ve mixed their inter-county experience in with their wealth of youth coming through. There are always a couple of new names coming onto that Tinahely team,’ he said.
O’Rourke compares Tinahely to the Dublin men’s team in terms of their dominance in Wicklow. But he also says that the Wicklow town side came very close to unseating the champions only a few short years ago in Aughrim in a county final and, had victory transpired that day as it did for the club’s Intermediates, he wonders how the landscape of Wicklow ladies club football would have changed.
‘Tinahely are the Dublin of ladies football in Wicklow and my job is to bring St Pat’s up to that level. It’s not so long ago that St Pat’s did compete strongly with them, in Aughrim. The St Pat’s Intermediate side won their championships and the Seniors were very unlucky not to get over the line against Tinahely in the Senior. Who knows what way things would have gone if that had happened? It was case of just a few minutes of football between St Pat’s and Tinahely becoming champions,’ he said.
Ladies football is in a very healthy state, says O’Rourke, both in Wicklow and across the county. He says there are now three or four teams with serious ambition of winning the championship and competing against the best on their day.
‘There is huge potential in St Pat’s ladies. Obviously, there are other clubs stepping up now as well. Blessington have that experience running through their team, some great inter-county experience.
‘Baltinglass stepped back up a bit again in 2020, AGB will never too far away. Ladies football in the county is getting strong, in fairness ladies football across the country is getting strong,’ he said.
Bray Emmets’ rise from Intermediate was credited to some extent to Covid-19 in terms of players returning from abroad and boosting the ranks. Mick O’Rourke agreed.
‘What Covid does as well, when you’re a manager, one thing you’re not worried about come the summer is the number of girls who are heading away on J1 visas or travelling because Covid has held that off. Hopefully this year sees the back of Covid and then God helps us in 2022 because everyone will be gone off on J1 visas,’ he joked.
O’Rourke is very excited about the future of ladies football in Wicklow and points to the fact that new clubs like Rathnew starting out can only be hugely positive for the game overall. And, when it comes to positivity, he says that there is a real buzz around the county when it comes to ladies football, a feeling he picked up on big time when he began making his phonecalls to the parents of young players who he hopes will play big roles in the resurgence of St Patrick’s ladies in 2021.
For now, though, he is very excited about the adventure ahead and delighted with the backroom team he has surrounded himself with.
‘Really, really looking forward to it. I’ve got a great backroom team. That’s a huge thing for me, the people that you have around you. It was the same when I was with the county ladies. They’re your support, they’re your strength. When the tough days come, they’re the ones you need there.
‘I’ve brought Shay Dunne in. Shay was with me with the Wicklow ladies as the S&C coach. Shay is obviously a St Pat’s man. I have Don Griffin; I have Barry Dunne and Sharon Jenkinson. And then Catherine Fox will be my female liaison officer and admin person. I have a good team there.
‘There’s also a good management team being set up with the Intermediates as well because it’s important that both teams move forward and get success because the Senior team will only ever be as strong as the Intermediates are pushing them,’ he added.