Callum O’Hare and Dominic Hyam on Coventry’s promotion push
CALLUM O’Hare reckons he’s a player now. That’s what his Coventry City manager, Mark Robins, says anyway.
If you watch a Coventry game, O’Hare is the one you can’t miss, the player with the white bandage hiding his forehead.
It’s protecting a diagonal gash that needed seven stitches. Over his right eye are three more.
The black eye is fading, but then it has been two weeks since the damage was done by Bolton’s centre-back Aristote Nsiala.
Robins predicts it could be the making of O’Hare.
Before the Bolton game, Robins had told a story from his playing career, recalling a coach telling him “you’re not a proper player until you’ve had ten stitches in your face”.
O’Hare says he’s made the grade.
“I have ten now,” he says. “There’s three above my eye and seven or eight in my forehead, so that’s 10 or 11.”
O’Hare wasn’t expected to play in the home game with League One promotion rivals Portsmouth just three days after the Bolton carve-up, but did and made the winner for Matty Godden.
Last Saturday Robins took pity and left O’Hare on the subs’ bench but he came on and scored in the 2-0 win at Southend.
The Sky Blues were ten league games unbeaten and only second in the table on goal difference from Rotherham before yesterday.
Tremendous
They have successive big promotion games coming up beginning with Rotherham on Tuesday, then Sunderland on Sunday followed by Ipswich away.
For a club with no home, this is turning into a tremendous season with Coventry on the verge of a return to the Championship they left eight years ago.
O’Hare, 21, is playing an increasingly influential part in the Sky Blues’ revival.
He is on loan from Aston Villa for the season, his parent club unsure whether he will make the grade with them and looking for answers from this loan spell and the one he had previously with Carlisle United.
Carlisle’s manager at the time, Steven Pressley, himself a former Coventry boss, raved about O’Hare during his 19 games in the second half of last season.
Robins has been more cautious, not playing O’Hare as much as Villa would have liked until recently.
O’Hare, though, has no doubts he has the magic.
“I look like Harry Potter”, he says, touching the scar that looks every inch an eccentric Hollywood gash.
“When I got home my mum went ‘Ah Cal, it’s going to be all right’.
“I said, ‘Mum, I have a big scar on my head. I look like Harry Potter!”
O’Hare is Birmingham-born and has been with Villa since youth team football.
But his contract is up in June and there are decisions to be made.
Former Villa manager Steve Bruce was a fan of what he can do in midfield, but when he got his chances O’Hare didn’t take them.
He has never started a league game for Villa and played in what have become regarded as reserve teams these days in the FA Cup (twice) and League Cup (three).
His last game for Villa was nearly 14 months ago, a dismal 3-0 home defeat to Swansea in the FA Cup.
The last time he played league football for Villa was the last ten minutes of a 5-0 Championship win over Bristol City on New Year’s Day 2018.
In pre-season O’Hare was very involved by Villa in trips to America and Germany as Bruce’s successor, Dean Smith, began his assessment of him.
Then it was off to Coventry to learn, as it’s turned out, the hard way.
But Villa are not rushing to find out how he’s doing.
“Villa have told me to just keep doing what I am doing, keep getting games and try to get goals and assists,” says O’Hare, whose stats were four goals and seven assists before yesterday.
“I haven’t spoken to Dean Smith but I have spoken to a few of the staff who oversee things and they message me here and there.
“I’m enjoying it with Coventry. Look where we are in the table and we have a real good chance of going up, so you just have to hope you can keep performing to the end of the season.”
Dominant
O’Hare can look dominant at League One level, often a class above.
“I definitely wanted to play against Portsmouth after the head gash because it was one of the biggest games of the sea son,” he says.
So there would seem to be no problem with motivation. Or bravery.
“I said ‘just strap me up and let me get out there’,” is O’Hare’s recollection of how he went back on the field in the
2-1 victory over
Bolton.
“When it happened the ball was in the air and I saw
the defender and checked over my shoulder and thought he was dropping off. “I was just watching the ball and as I headed it, bang, and I thought, ‘Oh no.’
“It didn’t hurt that much but I looked at my arm and it was covered in blood.
“I got up and it was just squirting out. I felt my head and it just had a massive dent in it, and I thought, ‘Jesus, my head’s fallen off here!’.
“But the physio ran on and sorted me out so I could play on.
“I wasn’t in pain so I was happy to play on after they strapped me up, although I was hoping that no-one else went through me.”
Then he got in the dressing room and had a look. Worse
“I thought it was bad but, to be fair, I thought it was going to be a lot worse.
“The doctor and physio did a great job in stitching me back up, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
“They took the staples out and pulled the glue off, and then stitched it up.”
O’Hare is a bit of a mini-Jack Grealish with skill and ability that can make him a solo entertainer.
Where Aston Villa finish up this season will have a say in what they decide about O’Hare. If Villa are relegated back into the Championship then Grealish will be off for a mega fee and there could be an opening for O’Hare.
Stay a Premier League club and Villa have to decide whether to give O’Hare another contract to develop.
But he’s 22 in May and they will be looking for a dividend on their investment sooner rather than later.
Robins, playing the grizzled old veteran, says: “The injury knocked some sense into O’Hare a little bit.”
But then he adds an assessment to go into Villa’s file on O’Hare: “He came off worse but he’s tough and he got up. He has no fear.”
I felt my head and it just had a massive dent in it, and I thought, ‘Jesus, my head’s fallen off here!’ Callum O’Hare