Aiming to be amongst the top 0.01%

Damian McCarney


Manor Farm, Dromore Youths, Cootehill Harps, Carrick Rovers, Belvedere and Malahide - a decent journeyman footballer could look back on playing for this list of clubs with a degree of pride. At just 14, Oisin McEntee has already togged out for all these teams, and he’s just added another to the list: the Republic of Ireland.
“It was an amazing feeling,” the Shercock lad tells The Celt of representing his country, “you can’t really describe it. It doesn’t really get to you until the Irish jersey gets put on.”
So was he nervous anticipating such a major step up?
“Not really,” says Oisin, sounding much more mature than his years would merit. “I thought about it a lot and the minute you get on the pitch you’re grand - the nerves just go out of you.
“On the way you have music on and you visualise what you are going to do; think of the different situations in the match.”
Ireland faced Poland at Blackrock Celtic’s ground, and while they suffered an early setback, going a goal down, they mounted a second half comeback which saw them emerge 3-1 victors (Marc Walsh’s finish after a lightning counterattack for the third, nonchalantly smashing the ball into the top corner, is worth checking out on the FAI website).
Considering the Poles were “all strong, big and good on the ball”, Oisin was thrilled by the win.
What about the lad he was marking?
“He was probably wider than me,” Oisin jokes. “I was a bit taller than him, but he was a bit stronger. It was a good battle.”
Oisin’s family - parents Mickey, Kaye and sister Breffni - were in the stands to share in his finest achievement to date.
“They let him keep the jersey,” enthused Mickey. “He wants more, he says. He’s adamant he wants to claim that position when he’s U16. People say he’s very lucky. It’s nothing to do with luck. It’s all to do with his mother, and maybe myself to a lesser extent, pushing him, encouraging him. He does put in the work. He works very hard. His athletic background would have helped him massively - he’s a fantastic engine.”
The athletic background of which Mickey speaks is Oisin’s spell with Shercock Athletic Club where he won a couple of All Irelands. Understandably, Mickey cites his speed as his best attribute. He’s not only an accomplished athlete, but a polished GAA footballer too.
That won’t come as a huge surprise to those who remember his father, Mickey briefly sparkling for a workaday Cavan outfit in the mid-1980s before taking the plane for New York, where he played for the Cavan exiles. Coincidentally Mickey was in the States last weekend for the 25th anniversary celebrations of them winning the New York Championships.
Now, along with Jodie Clarke, Mickey coaches with Shercock’s juvenile set-up and was chuffed last year to help guide them to both the U13 and U14 championships, with Oisin putting his engine to good effect in bossing midfield.
The proud Gael in Mickey is difficult to suppress; he clearly wonders what could have been for Oisin had he not had his head turned by soccer.
“When his mother took him down to a little field here when he was under 8s to play soccer, I thought - okay that’ll be a bit of craic - there’ll be no more about that, and he’ll just get back into Gaelic. But he just fell in love with it, and played Gaelic alongside it. I did think to myself, where’s all this going? I knew I couldn’t dig my heels in on it, because then he could just turn completely.
“While I took great pride in seeing him win the Championships last year at U13 and U14, but to see him play the soccer in an All Ireland final, was massive. So I just have to put my Gaelic feelings aside, and let him go his own path.
“I get equal joy out of watching him whatever he does, even the athletics, it’s great. Definitely I’d love to see him wear a blue jersey at some stage, but who knows? If it happened, it happened. I wouldn’t be too upset about it [if he didn’t], but I’d love to see him do it. Even to win an Intermediate for Shercock would be just as nice.”
To fully commit to soccer, Shercock GFC had to be sacrificed; as did his Carrickmacross school’s charge to this year’s Rannafast Cup.
“They won it on Friday and he was going off to the Irish camp for the week - so that’s the down side of it,” says Mickey. “You couldn’t train three or four times a week with a Gaelic team, then expect to go out in that Dublin league, it wouldn’t be possible. Then with the Junior Cert and all that you have to make a decision.”
The medals Oisin’s won with Shercock offer some consolation.
“It was great to win it with my friends,” says Oisin. “It’s tough to leave it; and the school as well. I’ve a lot of friends in school and I couldn’t do it this year. I felt like I was disappointing them. It’s tough, but you have to deal with it.”
Dealing with it is no doubt made much easier by representing Ireland. Oisin’s rise to international level has been a few years in the making. He got his first break when playing for Carrickmacross Rovers in the Foyle Cup up in Derry. It was there Oisin caught the eye of Manchester United’s scout Walter Murphy, and he’s since been over to Manchester a couple of times and played some trial games.
“They don’t give you much feedback,” explains Mickey, “the scout will go around year to year, check him out and see how he’s doing. We would have met the scout last Thursday at the game, and they would say we’ll be in contact with you and all that, but you don’t read too much into that.
“The one thing about going over to United is that everyone wants to have a look at you. He’s been over at Stoke three times already, Villa and he’s going to Leicester now and Brighton.”
In acknowledgement that soccer scouts are predominantly Dubs, the McEntees moved Oisin two years ago to Cillian Sheridan’s old club, Belvedere.
“We were advised that to compete with the best he’s got to play against the best,” says Mickey.
With Belvedere, Oisin won the U14 All Ireland, beating Cherry Orchard in the final. This year he’s moved to Malahide United where things are continuing to go well.
However, the commitments involved at this level requires a gruelling enough schedule for a teenager who has Junior Certs looming large in 2016: Malahide once a week for training, another evening training with the regional FAI Emerging Talent programme in Dundalk’s Oriel Park, and then back to the capital on Saturdays for a match in the Dublin District School Boy League, U15 Elite Division. Mickey is driver-in-chief.
But soccer parents also face a more serious quandary than the mileage. To give their son the best opportunity of making it, they have to offer support and encouragement, whilst mindful that they could well be setting their son up for a fall in a career where so very few make the professional grade.
Mickey’s spent long enough shooting the breeze with other soccer-parents to know of the many youths who spent a year or two with big-name English teams only for the dream to go stale and now they’re back home trying to break into a League of Ireland team.
“It’s 0.01% that make it,” accepts Mickey. “That thing’s always at the back of your head - Jesus, what are we going to do if he comes back [without a contract]? But the thing is, right now he’s enjoying it. You can lay in bed thinking two or three years down the line, but that’s the wrong thing to do, because we’re enjoying it as well. The thing is to stay in the moment - stay in the present. Watch him train tonight, watch him play Saturday. That’ll be enough.
“You can’t help your mind racing off to him running on to Anfield or running onto Old Trafford, but you have to snap out of that. Definitely last Thursday was a fantastic reality check for me and Kay and Breffni, his sister to watch him walk out behind the captain of the Irish team, playing in an International - the national anthem, the whole nine yards - it was fantastic, classic, classic. Then to come from a one nil deficit, and to win it, was great.”
The Celt asks Oisin if he’s letting himself dream of what might happen?
“Yeah, yeah. I feel like I can make the most of it if I put my heart into it.”
All going well, the coming years could shape up like this for Oisin:
“Hopefully I’ll make the Irish squad a few more times for all the different places they’re going - they’re going to Scotland and Holland after Christmas, and hopefully I’ll get signed for a club in England.”
Dreaming big - and why not?