New Longford Town boss Stephen Henderson says he was left feeling “drained” after his second spell in charge of Cobh Ramblers.
Henderson is back in the dugout after a three-and-a-half-year break from management.
He says he needed the break after a tough time with the Cork side, which came to an end in June 2019.
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Asked if he missed management during his time out of the game, he replied: “No, I needed a break to be brutally honest. Ramblers was a very difficult club at the time.
“Things have come on well down there. But at the time the Sheriff was calling to the gate two or three times a week.
“There was a lot of work going on in the background that wasn’t football related.
“It drained me, I was knackered, not just from trying to put a competitive team on the pitch, but from trying to help keep the club on the road.
“It got the better of me and I needed the break.”
Henderson didn’t leave the game altogether, however.
“I started an academy and was working with 18-year-olds playing in the League of Ireland, doing sessions, and it went down as far as eight (year olds),” he said.
“These 18-eight-year-old children, I owe a huge gratitude to.
“They enthused me again, to see these little kids coming in, awkward, and after three or four months seeing them turn into little football players, seeing their little faces coming and leaving.
“That’s what football is all about to me.
“You never fall out of love with football. There are people involved in the game who can suck the life out of you. But the game never does anything to you.
“When you go back to your roots and your basics, these are the people who give you that injection again.
“I’m forever grateful to those young kids and their parents for trusting me to help them along their journeys. They helped me more than I helped them.
“At the start I didn’t miss it, but as I went on in the coaching I needed to have a match at the end of the day. Thank God Longord have provided that for me.”
Henderson led Cobh to the final of the 2018 EA Sports Cup, where they lost to Derry City at the Brandywell. He managed Waterford between his two spells at Ramblers.
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