ROWING: Tony O'Connor, one of Ireland's most decorated oarsmen, has been appointed assistant national coach and confirmed yesterday that this will involve him stepping away from the sport as a competitor.

O'Connor (33), won gold with Gearoid Towey in the lightweight pair at the World Championships in Lucerne last year, and also has two silver (1996 and 1997) and two bronze (1994 and 1999) World Championship medals, both won in the lightweight pair with Neville Maxwell.

With Maxwell he jointly holds the record for senior national titles, at 21, and he competed in lightweight four crews in the Olympics in 1996, where the crew he stroked missed out on a medal by less than a second and a half, and in 2000, where the challenge ended in disappointment, as did his bid for a medal this year in Seville with Towey.

The new position of assistant coach arises as part of a revamp of the management structures in Irish rowing which is set to move a step further this weekend when Thor Nilsen is likely to be appointed to head up the coaching side.

The septuagenarian Norwegian, who coached Sam Lynch to two gold and one silver medal in the last three World Championships, and also guided Towey and O'Connor in the last two years, held a similar post for the Irish Amateur Rowing Union in the 1990s. He will meet IARU officials this weekend in Limerick, where he will address a multi-sport meeting at the NCTC.

O'Connor's initial appointment will be until the end of the year, and while he said yesterday that he felt it was proper that the position would then be advertised, the clear aim is to keep him involved on a permanent basis. His decision to step away from competition is on the understanding that it does work out. "I would see it as a full-time occupation," he says.

A good communicator, O'Connor says he does not see his new role as exclusively involved with the elite group of which he has been part for close on a decade. "I would see myself on the road for 50 per cent of the time," he says. "Going to clubs. Spreading the gospel."

A vocal critic of the management structures in the past, which he saw as amateurish, he continuously stressed that the elite worked in a professional environment and felt divorced from the sport here. Yesterday he said he hoped to lessen the isolation of the international athletes and said he would be trying to make the link between the elite and home base.

He also wants to learn as much about coaching as he can. His coaching experience is limited to schools and colleges level - he coached crews from both Trinity and UCD and also at King's Hospital and George Watson College in Edinburgh, when he was based there with fiancée Sinead Jennings - but says he has found it "more fulfilling" than competing.

The best thing about it, he says, is the chance "to instil a sense of love of the sport. I would rather coach a crew to a win than win myself," he adds.

Could it be difficult to be officially coaching Jennings, herself a World Championship gold medallist in 2001? "Well she's my fiancée first and foremost. That's more important than our coaching relationship - I'm coaching her at the moment. If I can make her a better athlete I am going to do it.

"Whether she listens to me is another question," he adds, tongue in cheek. They are due to marry next year, and he cites Paula Radcliffe and Jackie Joyner-Kersee as successful women athletes with husbands as coaches.

On the wider front, O'Connor has no doubt that while the international successes of recent years have been achieved by a relatively small group, the process can be widened to involve more athletes, including women and heavyweights - even if the latter have to be stolen away from the GAA! A wider group could include athletes whose primary focus would be on their club, but who would be given a programme by the international coaches and would be expected to follow it without constant supervision.

He has no doubt about the reserves of talent. "There is a hell of a lot more of it out there," he concludes.