Walsh credited O’Mahony with reviving and prolonging his career when he took over Galway in 1997. Some 13 months later they were All-Ireland champions and over the next seven years Walsh would win another All-Ireland, three more Connacht titles and three All-Stars, in 1998, 2001 and 2003, before retiring in 2004, the same year that O’Mahony left Galway.
“He was very calm and measured, very strategic. He knew what he was getting into,” said Walsh of O’Mahony’s Galway appointment. “He had his homework done on the older fellas and he knew what was coming through. He was able to bond all that. Sometimes it was no harm to have someone come in and do that because like most counties there is always someone giving out about something and if you don’t get the results you have west, north, city, all this sort of rubbish. He was the right man to come in and do it.”
Walsh said O’Mahony brought a ‘wow’ factor to preparation elements at the time.
“The first man you saw coming in was Mick Byrne [physio role] who was known from the TV and Italia ’90, he had Eddie O’Sullivan [former Irish rugby head coach] coming in with tailored training programmes, Tommie Gorman [RTÉ correspondent] doing the video analysis, his voice was on that. Johnno just left no stone unturned.”
Under O’Mahony, Galway players had their first exposure to psychology through Bill Cogan, a Scot who worked in human resources in Digital in Galway.
“Where we were coming from we were half laughing at it,” said Walsh. “But at the same time he would have made a difference to different people so Johnno was of a mindset, if something was brought in to help two or three people, but not to help everybody, he did it.”
Walsh recalled former Irish rugby captain Keith Wood guesting at a training camp in Maynooth prior to the 1998 All-Ireland final and the efforts O’Mahony went to get Wood over from London where he was playing at the time.
“Keith had featured in the ‘Living with Lions’ documentary and Johnno wanted him to speak to us on leadership, he tried to get him for the semi-final, he even had the guards going to Wood’s home place in Killaloe. He couldn’t make it for the semi-final but he was there before the final. We were all surprised to see him come into the room.”
Walsh recalled O’Mahony’s knowledge of opponents and the lengths he would go to source information in an era when footage wasn’t as widely available.
“He had spies everywhere, up in trees, looking out over hedges. He was able to tell us everything. Any inch he could find, he would find it.”
The early and middle parts of Walsh’s career were plagued with injuries to the point where he’d resolved that his inter-county involvement was over in 1996.
Walsh didn’t play for Galway in 1997 but O’Mahony (below) enticed him back with a guarantee that he would be ‘minded and managed’ through any pain he had. “I made no secret of this, that with all the injuries that I went through for eight or nine years, by the start of 1997, with a child on the way, I said I just wasn’t going back,” recalled Walsh.
“That was until Johnno came in and made the phone call, he wanted to meet up. I knew by talking to him he just seemed to be years ahead of his time.”
As a manager himself, first of Sligo and then of Galway, Walsh says he took a lot from O’Mahony. “He was a springboard for me all the time. I always sounded him out to see how he did things and was there names he used in the past worth me going after again,” said Walsh.
“The first thing for me was his man management, he definitely prolonged my career because of it. That’s why I would always say the person is as important as the player. You just need to get the best out of individual for what they’ve got. That was John’s strength. He will be greatly missed.”
