Emmet Malone talks to a reborn George O'Callaghan, who is determined to leave his mark at club and international level as the Eircom League prepares to kick off next Friday
Like a strange take on a Dickens tale, events this week provided an opportunity for George O'Callaghan to reflect on his career; past, present and future. One of the domestic's most exciting talents, the Cork City midfielder spent Sunday night at Citywest where he picked up the award for Eircom League player of the year. Twenty-four hours later he was again at the heart of things as Damien Richardson's side comfortably beat Drogheda in the Setanta Cup. And finally, on Wednesday, he settled in to watch his former team-mate, Kevin Doyle, play his first game for Ireland.
The award is much appreciated acknowledgement of how far he has travelled over the past couple of years, but O'Callaghan knows that the challenge to stay at the top with City is renewed with the start of each and every game. Doyle's debut, meanwhile, served as a reminder of how much further there is to go if he is achieve his real ambitions in the game.
At 26, the Corkman has been a professional footballer for just about a decade now but he dismisses the bulk of that time as having been wasted and talks about rediscovering the game - and himself - towards the tail-end of Pat Dolan's time in charge at Turner's Cross. A blazing row with the former St Patrick's Athletic boss, sparked by his having been dropped from the team, quickly led to an accusation that he was squandering his talent due to a chronic lack of application and what the player now refers to as his taste for "socialising". He reacted angrily, then realised Dolan was right and decided to act. The dispute was to mark the start of a sort of Year Zero for O'Callaghan. He is, he says, a different player now . . . a different person too.
The extent of his talent has rarely been in question but, like many gifted young footballers, O'Callaghan spent far too long deluding himself that that would be enough to see him all the way to the top. A rapid rise followed by a slow decline at Port Vale, combined with unfulfilled ambitions at international level, should have served as a wake-up call, but in the end it took the jolt from Dolan to recognise that things had to change.
His arrival at Vale Park had been something of a fluke. While on a family holiday near Stoke a friend managed to arrange for him to visit the club. As it turned out, the youths and reserves were away so they threw the tall and skinny teenager in with the first team squad to make up the numbers in a game of seven a side. O'Callaghan, he recalls, beat something like five of them on the way to scoring a goal that left a long silence hanging over the training ground. That same afternoon the young Corkman was offered a contract. His progress was swift. He shone in the youth team and stood out in the reserves but first-team opportunities were limited despite some good performances.
"It was frustrating and I wasn't helped by the fact that when I did get in I went away on international duty with under-age sides a couple of times and lost my place. Still, I thought the football side of it was going well and I was enjoying the life . . . a bit too much really. The first-team players I was hanging around with had a very old school mentality, going on the lash on Wednesday nights and at weekends after games, and I was the only one who had come through the youth team set-up.
"I wasn't complaining," he admits. "Stoke was a poor enough place I suppose and there I was, a young lad earning good money playing football. It was a good life but at some point I just lost sight of things a bit."
For a player in his position it would have been hard not to. O'Callaghan was becoming a big fish in a small pond and even became friendly with the club's best-known supporter, Robbie Williams. "He used to play in the testimonials and we had four or five in a couple of years around then so he'd be around the place," recalls O'Callaghan. "The first time we got talking it was after he told me that he'd been playing Championship Manager on his PlayStation and he'd sold me to Leeds United for £6 million."
The pair struck up a friendship and sometimes hung around together. During this time the footballing side of things was going well and O'Callaghan was becoming established as a favourite with the fans. The manager, John Rudge, clearly had plans for the Irishman but then, after a decade and a half in charge, Rudge was sacked and Brian Horton, the former Manchester City boss, arrived. The young Irishman's delicate ball skills were considered surplus to requirements and a bad first meeting between the pair marked the beginning of the end.
A more interested agent might have helped but O'Callaghan had signed with Mel Stein after, ironically enough, being brought by him to meet one of his better-known clients, Paul Gascoigne, and he quickly came to realise that his advisor had bigger fish to fry. Other clubs were interested but, with Dolan in charge at Cork and the club moving forward again, returning home seemed like the best option. Before their run-in over O'Callaghan's social life, the player pretty much picked up where he had left off in England.
Since then, however, he has completely changed his lifestyle, becoming far more conscious of his fitness and giving up alcohol completely. "It's hard because you do feel slightly removed from things," he says. "I don't socialise with the players anymore and sometimes you get a bit of stick for that because it's a bit strange for them but the difference for me is that everyday now I'm fresh for training and I feel I'm playing the best football of my life."
The FAI award was welcome confirmation of just how highly his talent is regarded here and he believes that during the coming year he can benefit personally from the team's continued collective success. "Playing in Europe is particularly important to me because this is a tough league, one where you get very little time on the ball, but in Europe there is more of a chance to do your thing.
"If that goes well this year well then maybe there will be offers worth thinking about, but I think my main ambition is to play for Ireland. We've seen Jason Byrne and Glen Crow win caps while playing in this league so why can't I do the same. Then there's Kevin (Doyle) who has done so well over at Reading and is in the Irish team now. I certainly don't mean to take anything away from him but I do look at him and think, 'well, if he can do it, why not me?'"
Losing last year's cup final two weeks after securing the league hurt and when he refers to the players having gone into the game "in the wrong state of mind", the parallels with Roy Keane start to become too glaring to ignore anymore. It is impossible, though, to detect any hint in O'Callaghan's voice of reproach for those team-mates who have not chosen his own particular path.
There was an involuntary split with his manager last year too, although in this instance it was Dolan who departed in controversial circumstances. He still calls two or three times a week, though, to check on how his former player is doing, offering support and guidance whenever it is needed.
"He's still very special to me," says O'Callaghan, "like a father figure but then I've been lucky with Damien taking over. The pair of them are very different in one way and very similar in another. Pat's far more of a worrier while Damien's more laid back but they're both very caring people who have helped me a lot."
It was Richardson who talked him into staying when Drogheda United offered to more than double his money and Richardson too, still stung by Doyle's cut-price exit to Reading, who then persuaded him to drop his demand for a get-out clause in his new contract. "Look," he says, "if I'd wanted to go I could easily have let my contract run out at the end of the season and then walked. Drogheda were interested and so were other clubs in England. But I love it here at Cork City and I want to be part of things as we try to go on from last year and establish ourselves as the country's top team by winning the league again."
He may be happy with his present situation, but O'Callaghan still remains firmly focused on where his future might lie. "I've only just started looking after myself, doing things right and I feel I have a lot of years left in me," he says. "If the right offer comes then sure, I'd like to go but I believe the club deserves to get a fee for me after the way it saved my career and I have Damien's word that he won't stand in my way. That's good enough for me."
