Brian Hogan: ‘I didn’t harbour any aspiration of building a managerial career’

On a podcast during the pandemic Brian Hogan was asked if he had any desire to be a manager. The proposition was not new for him, or unusual for somebody with All-Ireland medals pinned to their chest, and the question would come and go in his mind, even when nobody was asking. His intercounty career had expired seven years earlier and he was a few months shy of his 40th birthday; in life, there is a season for everything.

Anyway, no was the answer. “I don’t have any huge, burning desire to throw myself into that,” Hogan said. In that year, 2021, he had been pulled on board as a selector with the O’Loughlin Gaels under-15s, but that was a frictionless environment with a forgiving schedule. In the fairground of management it was the carousel with the rocking horses.

As a final answer, “No” had very little traction. His mind turned, slowly, like a cruise ship; before he knew it he was facing open water. “I didn’t say to myself that I wanted to be the manager, but I guess I always knew that was the potential,” Hogan says now.

“I certainly didn’t harbour any aspiration of building a managerial career. I know some of the [Kilkenny] lads have gone down that route and have done really well.

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“I just enjoy being involved in the club. As my wife says, that seems to be where I’m at my happiest, or at my most comfortable, when I’m inside in John’s Park.”

Whatever else he had done in his hurling life, this was new. Hogan spent 10 years playing for the most successful manager in the history of hurling, but nobody in that dressingroom saw it as internship, and Brian Cody did not behave like a tutor. In any case, he was inimitable. Cody’s management style was indivisible from his personality. Maybe the only lesson was that he wasn’t trying to ape anybody else.

“You couldn’t be in that environment for over a decade and not absorb something or be influenced by a character as strong as Brian. Whether consciously or subconsciously we’ve all been influenced by him,” Hogan says.

“But the trick, certainly for me, was to understand what my leadership style or management style was. It’s not a copy and paste job. You’re not being true to yourself then, and it becomes forced or fake. I think it’s understanding what I’m about.”

Was this a good time? When would be a better time? Before the club approached him Hogan had already committed to a Masters in Business Administration in Dublin City University. Every Thursday he was required to be on campus in the northside of Dublin for lectures between 2pm-9pm.

Outside of that there were regular assignments to be handed up and a big project to be delivered during the summer. On top of that were his wife, two boys, a day job as a commercial director with an international healthcare company; and the club. For most of us our days leak into the earth like the public water system and we have no idea where time goes. To get from day-to-day Hogan plugged the leaks.

“I was conscious that I didn’t want to do this [senior manager] and then not give myself fully to it. Nigel Skehan was there with me. We looked at the calendar and mapped everything out. We’d both be quite organised,” Hogan says.

“The way I structured the wider management team was to have pods rather than individuals. Whether you were on the medical side, or the S&C (strength and conditioning) or the coaching, it wasn’t down to one person. If somebody was caught somebody else was there.”

Those were the things he could control. Everything else was a bungee jump without the harness. Mark Bergin, their veteran forward and leading scorer, said during the week that Hogan gave “an awful lot of responsibility over to the players”. It was a conscious devolution of power.

During the summer they travelled the country playing challenge games. Hogan wanted to expose the players to different styles of play and challenge them to figure stuff out on the hoof. In the All-Ireland semi-final they trailed Cushendall by eight points after the opening quarter and all the rehearsals were over.

“To a large degree there’s a helplessness there [watching that]. I’m not for one minute going to take credit for any tactical correction that was made. It was down to the players,” Hogan says.

“You try to set yourself up and prepare as best you can but then you get a situation where you’re hit with 1-5 before you know what’s going on. What do you do in that situation? You trust in each other and start breaking the game down into every single play.

“I’m very much of the view that you have to let the lads have the freedom to make mistakes. They’re making decisions in real time.

“You do have to accept that there will be mistakes and that’s okay. But it’s about having the composure to be able to say, ‘What’s going on here? Where’s the space? Why are we under so much pressure?’

“There are certain things you can do [from the sideline] but it’s not a computer game either. People are saying I look calm on the line, but inside I’m tied up in knots, like anyone else. The most difficult thing to do is to make a change when the momentum has gone against you. It’s a horrible place to be as a player.”

The only other time that O’Loughlin’s reached the All-Ireland final, 13 years ago, they had that experience. They led Clarinbridge by five points just before half-time and ended up losing by 12, swept out on a riptide.

“I was never able to watch that match back. It was a funny time for me because it was the lowest point [of my career] followed six months later by the highest point [captaining Kilkenny to win the All-Ireland]. I remember sitting in a pub, crying into a pint, and very quickly Brian [Cody] ringing me to come back in and get back up on the horse with Kilkenny,” Hogan says.

“At the time I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t go back in.’ But in hindsight, Brian was right. There was no value in sitting at home and thinking about it and wallowing in self-pity. I played in the next National League match against Waterford (10 days later) and I actually got man of the match. I had plenty of frustration and anger to let out.”

Hogan’s career with O’Loughlin’s is mapped out in county finals. In the 1990s, when he was a teenager, the club had dropped down to junior, but when they won their first senior title in 2001 Hogan was their young centre back. Two years later they won it again, beating Young Irelands in a replay; on both days he marked DJ Carey.

“In the early stages of my career I wouldn’t have had the complete self-belief in my ability that some other guys would have had,” Hogan says. “I would have had a tendency to build up guys, the guys I was marking. It was a way for me to prevent complacency setting in.”

When they reached the 2015 county final against Clara, though, an extraordinary situation arose: Hogan’s direct opponent was his youngest brother, Keith. When Hogan was eight or nine the family left St John’s parish in the city and moved to Clara.

Hogan and his other brother Barry continued to attend the school where they had started and kept playing for O’Loughlin Gaels, but Keith was born in Clara, and that became the centre of his childhood world. In the 2015 county final he was the Clara captain and centre-forward.

“Of all the boys I had to mark in county finals, marking the brother was the most uncomfortable for sure. Neither of us enjoyed it,” Hogan recalls.

“Neither of us hurled as well as we would have liked because of the nature of it. It was one of those things that you tried to park on the day. We both understood it. My parents were up in the stand and they couldn’t cheer for either side – even though they would be O’Loughlin’s people. There was that dynamic to it.

“We had come up against each other in one or two league matches the previous year and they had moved Keith, but I knew we were going to be up against each other in the county final.

“It probably would have been a win for us if they had switched him somewhere else in the forward line and tried to avoid that matchup. He was one of the key men for them. We didn’t hold back. There was pulling and dragging, put it like that. We cancelled each other out to a degree.”

A year later O’Loughlin’s reached the county final again and won it; Hogan was captain; Huw Lawlor and Paddy Deegan started as they meant to go on. “That was a breakout moment for Paddy and Huw against Ballyhale. The two lads really stood up,” Hogan says.

“They were only young lads, 19 and 18. Huw was marking TJ [Reid] and Paddy was playing midfield on Henry [Shefflin]. Even before a ball was thrown in they didn’t take a backward step.”

Only two starters from the 2011 All-Ireland final, Bergin and Stephen Murphy, will be on the O’Loughlin’s team this weekend; two others, Alan O’Brien and Alan Geogheghan, are part of the management team. In Hogan’s mind the link is tenuous; meaningless.

[ Bergin and O’Loughlin Gaels hoping to complete a Kilkenny clean sweep ]

“That match is my memory. That’s my experience. That’s not the current bunch’s experience. The lads don’t need that baggage or disappointment. It is what it is. It’s part of the club’s history. It’s a final we lost. You lick your wounds,” Hogan says.

“The current bunch, who are driving the senior set-up now, have known nothing but winning. There’s a number of the team that have won everything – under-14, under-16, minor, U-21 and now senior. Those lads are coming from a completely different mindset than the older generation that I would have started with.”

Still. They needed a manager. He changed his mind.

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