By John Harrington

New Offaly senior football team manager, John Maughan, is pleased with the backroom team he has assembled to help him.

Ballyboden St. Enda’s club-man, Mark Fee, is the team’s football coach, former Cavan footballer Dermot Sheridan is their strength and conditioning coach while Edenderry club-man Kevin Guing and Maughan’s fellow Mayo native, Gerry O’Malley, are both team selectors.

“I was very happy with them,” said Maughan at the 2019 championship draw in RTÉ last night. 

“Dermot Sheridan is a Sigerson Cup winner with DCU in 2010, Sigerson Cup winner with Sligo IT in 2005 and is involved in coaching in DCU for the last number of years. Played full-back for Cavan.

“Gerry O’Malley, he won an All-Ireland club with my hometown Crossmolina, he lives outside Ferbane for the last 14 years.”

Maughan has a very impressive management CV that includes two spells with Mayo and stints with Clare, Fermanagh, and Roscommon, but he’s been out of the inter-county game for the past 10 years so his appointment to the Offaly job came somewhat out of left-field.

So why has he returned after a such a long time away from the inter-county scene?

“I don’t know, I suppose I had no intention of going back to be quite honest with you,” admitted Maughan. “The last number of years I’d been coaching young fellas in Castlebar for five or six years.

“I was with a junior club down the road from me for the last two years, my brother’s the chairman down there and I was giving a dig out. There’s just something about it, I have the energy for it.

“I didn’t think I’d get the opportunity and yeah, it tickled my fancy right now and family-wise, my kids are kind of scattered and yeah, just a fear of sitting in front of the TV every evening. It frightened me!”