I wasn’t enjoying football but now my love for it is back in a big way

PADRAIG O’HORA got out but he was pulled back in by the sheer love of the game.

It wasn’t always that way for the cult Mayo star with the bun in his hair, but now he’s “deeply in love” with Gaelic football again.

Back in 2017, the Ballina Stephenites man walked away from football, and he stayed away for two years. It had become all consuming and he’d lost touch with a lot of the things he loved to do.

O’hora, who has two young children and has appeared on RTE’S ‘Ultimate Hell Week,’ where he first showed his mental and physical fortitude to the nation, is not your average inter-county footballer. By his own admission he “wasn’t great” as a minor and was lucky to be starting on the Mayo team.

He went on to play under-21 for Mayo, but that was another short lived journey, the same as his minor one, both ended quickly by Roscommon.

“I suppose I had a weird old route [into inter-county football] really in comparison to most,” said O’hora, speaking as Supervalu launched their sponsorship of the All-ireland football Championship.

“I stepped away from football for two years prior to coming in. I Went back to hobbies like martial arts, hiking, climbing, stuff like that. I Got back to the club scene and got a chance with James Horan, left.

“Just before that I went on RTE’S ‘Ultimate Hell Week’ with the guys and that played into it too I suppose – kind of like a perfect storm.”

In his two years out of inter-county football, O’hora kept himself busy.

He said: “I done a good bit of training, a good bit of new stuff. I woke myself up to a few different bits – meditation, mindfulness, a lot more flexibility work, yoga, martial arts.

“I kind of came in fresh to football with a clear head and no expectations and just went from there. I don’t know how it kind of snowballed from there. I was just kind of going week by week.”

O’hora has rediscovered his gra for the game in recent years, even if he watches very little of it. He is more a man of action than a student of the game.

But there was a time when he’d had enough of football: “Very simply, I just kind of fell out of love for it, to be honest,” he said. “As a youngster I would have played a lot of different sports. I would have had a huge amount of hobbies.

“As the football kind of grew, it was overbearing everything. I didn’t get to participate in anything else.

“I felt like a number of years had gone by that had been just given to football.

“I just felt like I had lost touch with everything else so I decided to take a year or two out.

“I didn’t know how long I was going to take out. I just decided to stop and went to try them few bits and pieces I used to enjoy and got back to that.

“As the year, year and a half mark rolled on, I was still involved in the club.

“The club supported me in a lot of the community work I am involved in - fundraisers.

“They were still there for me – in fairness to them. So, that kind of kept me close to the club.

“A lot of my friends are there too, so I kept going to games and I got pulled back in by the love.”

HE’S A CULT HERO AT MAYO & O’HORA SAYS HE IS HAPPY WITH A CAREER PATH THAT WENT FULL CIRCLE