Sligo manager Cathal Corey pictured at the Connacht Championship launch.
By Cian O'Connell
Coaching, getting teams ready, making small little tweaks in an effort to improve are challenges Cathal Corey has always embraced.
Operating on the inter-county stage, though, was an itch Corey simply wanted to scratch. Corey, a nephew of Brian McIver, was close to getting the Donegal job last winter, but the Tyrone native was subsequently delighted to answer Sligo's call.
What Corey has found is a collection of experienced and emerging players, who face an awkward assignment in Ruislip on Sunday against London.
"There is definitely talent," Corey says about Sligo where significant work has been carried out at underage and Post Primary level during the past decade.
Corey wants Sligo to play with abandon and the stirring manner of their Allianz Football League Division Three comeback win over Derry to preserve their status at that level hinted at a willingness to attack.
"We'd be working away with them there and encouraging them to play that type of football," Corey explains.
"We haven't asked everybody sit inside the '45, we're asking players to express themselves. We're allowing them to see, you know football is all about dangerous forwards and being fit to do the business whenever you are four, five points down. "From the Derry match we would take a bit of confidence that the players know when to play and we're hoping that will continue over in London.
"Going to London, playing London in London will be a bit of pressure for the whole team. We'd have players that would have been there the last time, you know Ross and Charlie, Neil Ewing, Niall Murphy, Pat Hughes, they were over the last time Sligo played London and lost the game so they know how much that hurts too. So you'd be hoping their experience would help us get over the line this time."
That Sligo survived in Division Three represented a satisfactory spring according to Corey. "We set out just to stay there," Corey admits. "I suppose with Mark Breheny going and Brendan Egan going you knew you'd lost your six and 11.
Cathal Corey is enjoying his first senior inter-county managerial role with Sligo.
“So it was finding people to replace them. The division was tough with Armagh, Fermanagh and Longford all tough sides. Nobody likes going to them.
"Westmeath is a good football side, Offaly has that tradition. We couldn't look anywhere and see there's two points, there's two points.
"We just knew it was going to be tough and out of the seven games we managed to get a result in four of them by playing new players and taking in new players. We were happy to do that.
"The Derry game became more like a Championship game than a League game. With 10 minutes to go, Offaly were six points up and we were three points down. At that stage we're well in Division Four.
"Just for the fellas, especially the younger players - Paddy O'Connor and Liam Gaughan to score two goals in that environment was really satisfactory. You see the young players developing and becoming leaders in that situation. So that was good you know."
When Donegal opted for Bonner, Corey took a call from Sligo shortly after. "I had went for the Donegal job and I was very close to getting that," Corey says. "Declan got it. I think it was the next night I got a phone call, asking would I be interested in Sligo.
"So at that stage my mind was kind of fixed on that type of management so I went and met Sligo and got it then and just started then.
“Declan Bonner is in there. He’d worked with the Under 21s and minors, he’d got great results with both. If you’re honest, Declan probably, he’d done the ground work, he did deserve the go at it. I had no complaints at all.
“I wouldn’t swap now, I’m delighted with where I’m at now. I’ve got to know all the fellas, the Sligo fellas are nice, there are no egos in the dressing room, everyone works hard. They’re a fantastic bunch of fellas to be managing and to be working with. I really really am enjoying it.
Former Derry manager Eamonn Coleman.
"Travelling can be a wee bit long at times, but that’s part and parcel. After we won the Derry game everything seemed brilliant. You would have travelled 100 times further to get the result."
A playing and coaching career working alongside decorated figures in the sport such as Eamonn Coleman, Jim McGuinness, and Tony Scullion offered nuggets of insight and inspiration.
"Eamonn Coleman managed Kildress in his time too," Corey says. "Fr Sean Hegarty, when he managed Armagh actually would have managed Kildress too.
"Jim McGuinness when he came and trained Kildress for me then in 2003. He was down training Kildress minors in Grade 3 at that time.
"I just would have met up with Jim, just got know him, and we always would have worked together with different teams.
"So, we would always have been talking football then. I would have gone up to the Glenties then, Jim would have been playing then, and I would have been managing.
"Then he got the Under 21 job, and I would have stayed on in Glenties then whenever he went to the seniors."
Corey recalls playing under Coleman. "He was good, a good character," Corey remarks about the legendary Derry manager.
"He wouldn’t have been well into tactics or stuff like that, but he would have been a good character and ‘blood and guts’ kind of thing. But the big personality and a nice man to have around the place too.
"They had won the All-Ireland the year before, when they came into Kildress the next year. He was still managing Derry, but he came in to help Kildress.
Cathal Corey worked alongside former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness with Naomh Conaill.
He was actually in Kildress, the first team he maybe managed in 1977, he was working with a fella called Mickey Kane, and Mickey took him to Kildress and it was Eamonn Coleman’s first time at that time. He got to a county semi-final, the furthest Kildress ever got in senior."
A couple of decades later in 1994 Coleman was in charge of Kildress, while also managing Derry. "He was with us in 1994," Corey recalls. "Gary was injured that year, he used to come up and train with Kildress to try to get him back.
"Then in 1994, Down beat them in Celtic Park and that was the end of him then. It’s hard to believe he’s dead too. He was a nice man."
Having been exposed to such sporting minds Corey acknowledges the pressing need to be adapatble.
"If I were to look back and play the way Eamonn Coleman played or the way Fr Sean Hegarty, or even the way Jim played now, it’s all changed now," Corey states.
"Defenders need to be more responsible for the man they’re marking now. Players have worked out, patience around blanket defences, and players will be more patient and not give it away.
"They’re starting to shoot, and better shooting from distance now, not play a ball through the blanket. Now players will kick it over from 45 yards.
"Then they’ll draw the blanket out and start working through. I just think football has changed. Even if Jim McGuinness was back now, he’d have to come with a different plan. It just keeps evolving. I think the man marking is coming back into it a bit more than blanket defences."
On the long and winding road from Tyrone to Sligo a couple of times a week Corey will talk and think about the sport. Valuable lessons can always be learned, but the Kildress native is ready, willing, and able to make a mark with Sligo.
