James O'Connor explains why he swapped Ballyhale Shamrocks for Midleton

NEW Midleton coach James O’Connor is inspired rather than intimidated by the fact that he is linking up with the reigning county hurling champions.

The Lismore native, who played for Waterford in the 1990s, takes over from Ben O’Connor, who stepped down before Christmas having helped the club to a first Co-op SuperStores Premier SHC title in eight years.

He comes to the club on the back of two years as manager of Ballyhale Shamrocks. With them, they won two Kilkenny titles and they were only denied an All-Ireland club title last month by a late Ballygunner goal.

O’Connor had intended to take time out after leaving Ballyhale, but a talk with Ger Fitzgerald – Midleton’s manager last year, who is a selector this year after swapping roles with Stephen Kane – changed his mind.

“I did know there was a vacancy there but I was concentrating on the job at hand,” O’Connor says.

“Once the All-Ireland was over, Ger Fitz rang me one evening to know if I was willing to meet up and have a chat. At the time, I said, ‘My head is all over the place at the moment, leave me alone! Come back to me in a week and we’ll chat then.’ 

In fairness to Ger, he did and he rang me a week later and I said I’d be happy to meet up. Again, we were only going to have a general chat about it, there was nothing on paper or anything like that.

“We met up and had a good talk. I liked what I heard and they seemed to have a very progressive attitude in that they wanted to kick on and do better and get back to a county final again for the coming year.

They have a lot of good young players coming through and they wanted an experienced hand in there to deal with it. As it was going on, I was getting more and more interested.

“We left it that night with me going away to think about it, there was nothing agreed but it was a case of seeing how I felt and I told him I’d go back to him in three or four days. I had a good think about it and I watched a couple of matches that they played last year in the championship.

“My first thoughts after leaving Ballyhale was that I’d put in two good years and I was going to take a bit of time out and relax and settle down again, ready if something came up next year.

“But I always think that things happen for a reason. This popped up out of nowhere and I was thinking that I could have been kicking myself six months later if I didn’t have a go and take the opportunity to see what they were like. I said I’d have a crack off it, go in for 12 months and we’d see.”

And, while the prospect of coming into a team at the top of the tree could be considered daunting, it’s the same scenario as when O’Connor arrived in Ballyhale two years ago, succeeding Henry Shefflin.

“My big thing with Midleton was, ‘Are they capable of winning a county?’ and they answered that question last year,” he says.

“Where most fellas might be turned off by that, I was actually turned on by it. I had the same scenario in Ballyhale, where a lot of fellas would be half-reluctant to go in there in case they couldn’t do it again but I’d see it differently – they did it last year, so there’s no reason why they can’t do it again this year.”

PEDIGREE

In Ballyhale, O’Connor was the manager as well as the coach but he is glad to be able to just focus on the coaching now that he is back in East Cork, where he has previously enjoyed success with Carrigtwohill (2011 SHC) and Fr O’Neills (2019 PIHC and Munster Club IHC).

“Obviously, there’s less work and there’s less time on the phone ringing people and this and that,” he says.

“When I was in Ballyhale, I was doing the manager’s job and I was also doing the coaching, though I had a couple of very good selectors with me and I was able to give a lot of the managerial duties to them.

“If you were to ask me which I prefer, I would say the coaching side because you’re out there with the players, you have a job to do and you just do it. On the managing side, you’re dealing with day-to-day problems.”

There’s little or no bedding-in time as Midleton open their RedFM Hurling League Division 1 Group A campaign at home to Douglas on Sunday at 12 noon.

“That’s the only downside to this,” O’Connor says, “I only had a couple of weeks off and I’m back into it again.

In saying that, sometimes a change is as good as a rest. I’m excited to get back in there and see why they’re like, training-wise and the rest.

“We’ll be back into the matches soon, you’ll have the long evenings opening up again and it’ll be very interesting going forward.”