THEY say you should never go back, but the circumstances were much different when Donegal came calling to Sean O’Kane this time.
The Strabane man was approached last year, by Davy McLaughlin, the Donegal senior ladies manager, to get involved in his set-up.
O’Kane, who is employed as a full-time coach in his native Tyrone, had a look at the Donegal girls in National League defat to Mayo.
He took, as he says, ‘a gamble’, but so far it’s paid off and this Saturday – a month after capturing the Ulster Championship – they take on Armagh in an All-Ireland senior quarter-final.
“I just said I’d take a year out of men’s football to give it a go at the start to see how it went and now I’m in my second year,” O’Kane told Donegal Sport Hub.
“It’s been good. They’re a good, committed bunch of girls.
“It’s been very enjoyable. We took a gamble, but we knew what they were capable of – and they’ve proved that all year. They are a really good squad.”
It is 12 years now since O’Kane was last involved in Donegal – then with the senior men.
Donegal was in a state of distress at the time, following Mickey Moran’s abdication of the throne after an All-Ireland quarter-final replay to Dublin.
A failure to find a manager meant that Brian McEniff, who was also County Chairman at the time, returned for another shot at the role.
He called up O’Kane, but it didn’t last long.
In the middle of February, just weeks into his role as the team’s coach, O’Kane walked away, citing ‘internal difficulties’ as his reasons.
It’s clear that those weeks in 2003 still trouble.
O’Kane said: “I was only in for a short period.
“It needed revamped and it probably wasn’t until Jim McGuinness came as manager in many years afterwards that it got that revamp.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault as such, but people didn’t believe in it. The thing was set up very late that year.
“It often depends on how players respond to management. In Donegal there wasn’t as much respect as you’d have had in other counties.
“When Jim came in as manager – he was actually a part of that panel and was at Jordanstown at the time – he put a big emphasis on that.”
O’Kane had been at Dungloe in 2002, where he assisted Joe Neely as the Rosses side won an All-Ireland Comortas Peile na Gaeltachta crown.
O’Kane played on the Tyrone minor team that won the 1973 All-Ireland and is highly thought of in his native county, with whom he won an All-Ireland Junior Women’s title in 1999 and took the Ulster senior crown in 2000.
O’Kane believes that this batch of Donegal players can keep their odyssey going.
He said: “They’re in an All-Ireland quarter-final and have a realistic chance of winning the game. We’ll give it one hell of a fight. If we can get the same performance that we got in the Ulster final then we’ll be very, very close.”
O’Kane has been taken by the endeavour of this squad.
Standing at the Centre of Excellence in Convoy, where they now train, O’Kane said: “We were here some nights until well after 11 o clock, sometimes close to midnight, simply because we had to.
“You look at the likes of Nicole McLaughlin who is coming up from Thurles and her parents are lifting her off a bus to take her to training.
“They’ve bought into everything. We didn’t put a gun to their heads. We expressed to them what they could do. The League final was a disappointment, but the Ulster final was the one that we wanted – and we got it.”
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