When Callum O’Hare stepped up his rehabilitation from a serious knee injury last August, Coventry’s physios recognised the need to temper his enthusiasm. After eight monotonous months, he was inevitably excited to tie the laces on his boots and hit the grass. He felt “fresh out of the jailhouse” after countless days spent watching teammates train from an exercise bike in the gym, but was told to expect a fine if he began kicking balls too soon upon his return.
“The staff know how much I love football,” he says. “If there’s a ball in front of me, I’ll always play with it, no matter what it is: a tennis ball, a little floater – anything. Or I’ll make socks into a ball. They were like: ‘You’re not quite at the stage to be kicking balls.’ My first jog around the pitch, one of the players tried to pass me the ball and I just had to leave it. It was heartbreaking. ‘Sorry, I can’t.’”
O’Hare, who spent 303 days on the sidelines, including Coventry’s Championship playoff final defeat last season, talks with the same eagerness about wanting to reach an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, a stage he has graced only as a 12-year-old representing his Solihull district side. “It wasn’t a full pitch, so it wasn’t the same.” How did he fare? “Oh, we won, we won – we won 4-1 … though it wasn’t a real game,” O’Hare says, laughing at himself.
Coventry, who won the Cup in 1987, visit Wolves on Saturday as the lowest-ranked team left in the competition.
O’Hare makes warm company over half an hour of conversation, taking in his journey from playing for Binbrook under-sevens to learning from Jack Grealish and John Terry at Aston Villa and aiming to reach the top flight with Coventry this season. He is almost incredulous at the suggestion that the days honing his skills with his dad, Brendan, at Bentley Heath Park, round the corner from the family home where he lives with his parents and two siblings, are likely long gone. He smiles and shakes his head.
“Until my injury, if I had a bad game we’d be going to the park the day after, it didn’t matter how tired I was. When I was younger, my dad was the coach for my Sunday league team. We went unbeaten so obviously he thinks he’s Pep Guardiola now. He never wants to let it go, so I’m just like: ‘Come on then.’ It is good fun. We go down and have a good laugh and after it you feel better.”
His dad called on Monday, a scheduled day off for the players, but O’Hare was busy. “He was like: ‘I’m going to the park.’ I said: ‘I can’t, I’m already here [at training].’ I came in to do some shooting practice. He was fuming.”
Coventry, led admirably by Mark Robins, are eighth in the second tier, primed for another shot at the playoffs after losing on penalties at Wembley last May. O’Hare was in the stands, powerless to affect proceedings. Being told he had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and the subsequent recovery, he says, was the hardest time of his life.
“When I was stuck in bed for two months, couldn’t move, that was just horrible,” he says. “I couldn’t do anything – even going to the toilet was like a mad exercise. When I started to come back and the boys were playing all the big games, the semi-finals and at Wembley, I was just sat there thinking: ‘What I would do to play in this in front of everyone.’”
O’Hare spent 15 years at Villa, where he made four appearances, before joining Coventry on loan in 2019-20 and signing permanently the following season. “When I was there [at Villa] I lived in digs with [former academy defender] Liam Hailey. He’s a Wolves season ticket holder. We speak all the time and he messaged me as soon the draw came out. He sent me the eyes emoji and I replied saying: ‘Yeah, I’ll see you soon.’ Hopefully he won’t go home happy.”
There is footballing pedigree in the family. O’Hare’s uncle, the former Birmingham captain Ian Clarkson, was in the stands at St Andrew’s working for BBC Radio West Midlands when O’Hare capped the scoring in a 4-2 comeback victory almost two years ago. O’Hare celebrated his goal by donning a pair of sunglasses sent his way by a Coventry supporter and the images went viral.
“It was a boiling hot day and when we were celebrating someone has thrown them and everyone was trying to jump on me but I saw the glasses and I was like: ‘I have to put these on.’”
Growing up, local rivalries extended to Gaelic football. He and Grealish played for the same GAA team, John Mitchel’s, and O’Hare twice represented Warwickshire at Croke Park. “I didn’t play with Jack at Gaelic, but his games would often be just an hour after so you would stay and watch their games. He was a proper player.”
O’Hare’s expert technique was spotted by an eagle-eyed Coventry supporter when he punched the ball away after equalising against Leicester in January. “My mum and dad said the same,” he says, smiling. “I always pass the ball if it’s in my hands like a Gaelic pass. I pick the ball up doing the same thing; I’ll flick it up into my hands. It’s just natural.”
While O’Hare was a youngster at Villa, his older brother, Keiran, was playing for the same Coventry youth team as James Maddison. O’Hare’s younger sister, Alliyah, is a world champion Irish dancer. “She’s like the Messi of Irish dancing,” the 25-year-old says. “She has won eight world championships and she has one coming up this month so she could get her ninth. Well, she will get her ninth one – she is unbelievable. It’s annoying because she is often banging downstairs practising when I’m trying to relax but I let her off because she’s always winning.”
O’Hare hopes to be a winner at Molineux on Saturday. Are Coventry’s players dreaming about the prospect of making it into the last four? “Yeah, of course,” he says. “Wolves are in the Premier League but I reckon they are doing the same. They’re probably saying: ‘We’re playing Coventry, we’re one game from Wembley.’ You win the game and you’re at Wembley: what more do you want from one match?
“Everyone is buzzing and we cannot wait. Hopefully we can go out and put a performance on – but the main thing is to win.”
