For Sligo’s Eamonn O’Hara, pain of losing in 2010 outweighs memories of Connacht title

On Sunday, Sligo contest the Connacht final for the first time in eight years. They will be looking for what would be a fourth provincial title and their first since 2007.

Although that triumph is a treasured memory for Eamonn O’Hara, who had also won an All Star in 2002 and played with the county up until 2013, he says that to this day it is outweighed by the final three years later when they lost to Roscommon.

“I was absolutely disgusted. The way I looked at it is that our team would have been different if we had won two. There was always talk of the ‘75 team. They had a Connacht and some wonderful players but they hadn’t won more than one.

“We played in a few Connacht finals so for us only to win one and particularly to lose that one — I’d say the disappointment that year outweighed the happiness in ‘07.”

Seán Moran: League’s championship promise may be clouding but it remains bright at the top

---

Malachy Clerkin: The GAA should make more of St Patrick’s Day - and more of its intercounty stars

---

Sports Review 2023: Mary Hannigan picks the best quotes from the sporting year

---

GAA happy that GAAGo has ‘bedded in well’ as 2024 season launches

---

He believes that after major wins over Galway and Mayo, Sligo lost focus maybe as a result of being firm favourites going into the final against Roscommon, which they would lose by a point.

“Roscommon had us lined up nicely for an ambush and that’s exactly what happened. We kicked some bad wides that day.

“Mentally we weren’t there — one fellah coming late to the bus at a meeting point. That wouldn’t have happened before the semi-final. You could see in hindsight that we had got a bit loose. One guy wearing a different top.

“Small stuff but Sligo can’t afford to be even slightly off. We needed everything to be right and that’s what we hung our hat on — preparing perfectly.”

‘Very competitive’

O’Hara is concerned about the weekend’s final in Castlebar, as Sligo haven’t so far been exposed to top-level opposition but hopeful that the county will be competitive and able to build on the occasion.

Sixteen years ago, victory came as the culmination of some striking performances in the championship that decade.

Liberated by the newly introduced All-Ireland qualifier system, which began in 2001, Sligo reeled off a number of significant results against formidable teams. “We were very competitive in that era,” he says.

That’s no exaggeration. In 2001, they beat Mick O’Dwyer’s Kildare, who were outgoing Leinster champions. A year later, again in Croke Park, they defeated Tyrone who would win the next year’s All-Ireland and took Armagh, who went to be champions that season, to a replay along the way.

A few years later, having apparently stalled, Sligo picked the trail again, this time in their provincial championship, under the management of Tommy Breheny, a former selector who took over for two years, winning Connacht and causing surprise by walking away later that year.

O’Hara says that everything about the year was geared towards winning the province, a journey that began with a trip across the Atlantic.

“We had no fear of Galway in the final and had already beaten Roscommon in the Hyde. Everything was aligned for us. All year, our focus was on winning the Connacht title. It wasn’t vintage Galway in terms of the team but they definitely had big names from their All-Ireland winning team — Joyce, Fallon, Savage — even if they were coming to the end of their era.”

Sligo came out on top, he believes, because of the quality of their teamwork and belief in each other.

“I scored the goal and it was a great day for me personally but I remember more the collective effort — everyone doing their job on the day. It was probably the first time we could look back and say, ‘you did that right’ and ‘every other year we didn’t do that right’.

“All these little pieces came together. We took the scores when they came and even if we missed a couple of chances, that didn’t come back to haunt us. It was an outpouring of relief.”

Kerry era

Perhaps subconsciously they regarded it as a destination. Just as their predecessors in 1975 ran into the propellers of a Kerry team in the first year of what would become an era, they didn’t survive the next outing.

“After winning Connacht we celebrated and then in Croke Park came up against a good Cork team, who got to that year’s final.

“They were physically better than us albeit that when you look at the game again — and we have done so often — we missed 1-3 in the first five minutes. Great opportunities to get scores on the board, scores that we had been taking all year in previous games.

“We left them behind us on the day and eventually Cork just squeezed the life out of us.”

O’Hara has been involved with Sligo’s extraordinary underage emergence. As a selector with Dessie Sloyan, he contributed to the county’s first under-20 Connacht title last year, which was just recently turned into two-in-a-row under the management of Paul Henry, who has been involved with the cohort since they were a development squad.

On a big weekend for Sligo football, the under-20s face Kerry in an All-Ireland semi-final on Saturday.

O’Hara is positive about the future.

“We have to manage the transition and we’re in Division Three so there will be opportunities. I think that group can win another under-20. There will be 10 still available and from what I know of underage and college football in the past few years, I think they’ve every chance.”