Aidan O’Rourke has explained how he was more than happy to reorganise his life to take up the opportunity to work with a top county in Donegal.
O’Rourke is settling into his role as new manager Paddy Carr’s coach having just endured a difficult season with Down, where he worked under James McCartan for the second time.
The former Armagh star has also managed Louth and coached with his native county under Kieran McGeeney, having previously worked with him in Kildare.
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His most recent involvement with Down was his first at senior inter-county level in a number of years having passed up other opportunities in the meantime, most notably the Roscommon manager’s job in 2018.
“I stepped away from coaching at county level five or six years ago because my kids are at a certain age and I was heavily involved in club and coaching at that level and academy squads in Armagh,” he said.
“It was coming towards the period where I was thinking about getting involved again, taking offers seriously rather than allowing them to pass by.
“The opportunity to coach a team at this level with this potential is not something you can pass up very easily and I suppose it is worth making life changes to accommodate.”
The process to find Declan Bonner’s successor in Donegal was inordinately long with Carr and O’Rourke finally appointed on October 24, more than three months after Bonner had stepped down.
“I am not privy to the full process. When I had a conversation with Paddy about getting involved it was something that really excited me. Beyond that it is difficult to comment really.
“The nature of county football at the moment, it is just getting more and more difficult to get people to commit to it for a variety of reasons.
“First of all, there is the demand of time, you have to change your life really to commit to doing this and that is not something that everybody is able to do, to have the flexibility or ability to make that choice so that is really important factor in all of this.
“There are other pressures too; the whole social media aspect, expectations. It is nice to have an easy life sometimes rather than put yourself out there for disappointment, ridicule and all those things.”
Although Donegal swept to Ulster titles in Bonner’s first two seasons in 2018 and ‘19 with a more expansive style of football than had been associated with previous regimes, there was growing disenchantment locally at how the team went about its business in more recent years, culminating in the defeat to Derry in this year’s provincial final.
O’Rourke insists that Donegal have the personnel to play a more eye-catching brand - but not at any cost.
“There is huge potential in this team to play a variety of ways I think and that takes a bit of work and reengineering, I suppose, in terms of mind-sets.
“I firmly believe that there is room for kicking the ball in the game and it is becoming more and more impactful to kick the ball at the right time.
“To kick the ball constantly, you are an idiot because ultimately teams are going to turn you over but if there are moments in the game where it is right to kick the ball, out of defence or into the forward line, you first of all have to have the understanding that is the right time, you have to be able to see it, you have to have the skills to execute it and that is the whole cake that has to be baked and it will take a bit of time.”
He added: “Ultimately, in any field sport you have to be able to defend well or you are not going to win as many games as you want to.
“You have to defend well but the rest of it comes down to your own decision-making and your use of the ball, particularly in our sport - the quicker you can use the ball, the more opportunities you can create, the more choices you have.
“If you are slow with the ball, then your choices become very narrow, very quickly.”
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