Gaelic Games

‘Nothing changes bar the route’: Padraig O’Hora ready for qualifiers

Mayo defender reflects on giving up football and then falling deeply back in love with it

Padraig O’Hora says Mayo are still focused on their goal of winning the All-Ireland. Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho

Paul Keane
Fri May 13 2022 - 05:00

If he hadn't already been through hell, Padraig O'Hora might have figured he and Mayo had landed in the fiery pits last month. It doesn't get much worse for a Mayo man than losing a Connacht football championship game to Galway. Or so you'd think.

"Nothing changes bar the route," claimed O'Hora, looking to the bigger picture of their annual All-Ireland quest. "It's just a different way to go to the same targets that we set at the start of the year. Nothing has changed in the group."

The Ballina man's nonplussed outlook probably comes from having experienced much tougher tests in his life. Like making it through to the very end of RTÉ's reality TV show Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week in 2020. Of the 28 that began that show, 25 dropped out at various stages.

“It just looked interesting,” said O’Hora of the experience which included long spells of sleep deprivation and what many would consider mild torture. “I am that kind of guy. In very simple terms, that’s my kind of vibe.”

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Having his first child, Caiden - Mila-Rae has since arrived - when he was just out of his teens can’t have been easy either.

“Yeah, it was hectic I suppose, wasn’t it?” smiled the defender of becoming a dad. “It was a bit of a whirlwind at the time. You think you have grown up to some degree, 21, 22 and then you realise fairly quickly that you are not.

“I don’t think that I started to mature until I was 26 or 27 and I have probably still a long way to go yet but look, it was what it was. And I really enjoyed it and I am grateful to have children. A lot of people unfortunately can’t so I am very fortunate in that sense, they are beautiful kids, they are happy, they are healthy. They kind of inspire me and drive me on.”

Or how about trying to mark David Clifford, mano a mano, in the wide open spaces of Croke Park? Now that really does sound like hell. The Kerry genius picked O'Hora's pockets on national league final day and made off with 1-6. Starved of protection, O'Hora fought a losing battle and was criticised afterwards for getting too up close and personal with Clifford.

“It doesn’t bother me too much, to be honest,” said O’Hora. “I suppose if I’d behaved in a manner that I was upset by or disappointed in myself, it would have had an impact on me. But other people’s opinions and perspectives, that weren’t there or weren’t on the field, don’t influence me too much.”

Challenge

O'Hora may yet get another chance to engage with Clifford at Croke Park before the year is out. It's not something that scares him off. If he didn't enjoy the challenge he wouldn't be here. A few years back, long before he made his Mayo debut at the age of 27 in 2020, he'd given up the game completely.

“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, would have had a huge amount of hobbies.

“As the football kind of grew, it overwhelmed everything and I didn’t get to participate in anything else so I felt like a number of years had gone by that had just been given to football.

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

For those couple of years, O’Hora gorged himself on his love of hiking, hill walking and various types of combat sports.

“I did a good bit of training, a good bit of new stuff, woke myself up to a few different things, meditation, mindfulness, a lot more flexibility work, yoga, martial arts,” explained O’Hora. “I kind of came back in fresh to football with a clear head and no expectations and just went from there.”

Typical of just about every footballer who has ever pulled on a Mayo jersey, he has experienced the great and the ghastly in his short time as a senior. The main thing is that it’s all within the realms of fun.

“There is a huge commitment, especially with kids at home, you are factoring your time and you have to be conscious that if you are going to spend a significant amount of your time doing something that you have to enjoy it,” he said.

“Like, I can’t understand somebody who works 39 hours a week in a job they don’t enjoy. It just doesn’t make sense.

“For a while, for me, football wasn’t enjoyable. I removed myself from that and then I enjoyed life and I came back and now I am deeply in love with football again and have been for the last number of years.”

In an interview immediately after last year's All-Ireland semi-final defeat of Dublin, O'Hora gushed that it was the 'best day of my life'. There may be even better ones ahead. The All-Ireland dream is still on, just through the qualifiers.

“I don’t see the value in over-evaluating,” said O’Hora of the defeat to Galway. “I just don’t dwell on it too much. I try not to over-analyse things. You know when you’ve performed well and you know when you haven’t. You know when you’ve made mistakes, you take them on and you learn from them.”

Padraig O’Hora was speaking at the launch of SuperValu’s #CommunityIncludesEveryone campaign.

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