Kilcoyne living the dream from the sideline

It's not every day you hear Ray Dempsey and Kevin O’Neill compared to Eric Cantona and David Beckham.

Only a Knockmore man would say such a thing. And there are few more passionate Knockmore men than Aidan Kilcoyne.

Growing up watching the Saffron and Blue conquer Mayo and Connacht meant that “it wasn’t David Beckham and Eric Cantona, it was Ray Dempsey and Kevin O’Neill. That’s kind of the impact that football has on Knockmore.”

“There isn’t really anything else. Everyone who is in it is just immersed in it,” Kilcoyne tells The Mayo News.

“That’s what it means, it means there is a next generation of people wanting to be Darren McHale, wanting to be Aidan Orme, wanting to be Billy Ruane. That’s what it means.”

He looked up to O’Neill as a young buck and filled his scoring boots for years with Mayo and Knockmore before a horror knee injury forced him to play in goal.

He then moved into coaching, first with the GMIT and later with the Longford seniors.

Based on the east coast for years, the father-of-two came back to where it all began when he moved home from Lexilip twelve months ago.

“It was something that I always wanted to do,” says Kilcoyne, who works in Dublin two days a week with Befair.

Ray Dempsey left big shoes to fill after he stepped down. Thankfully, Kilcoyne found another man interested in filling them.

“I spoke to John [Brogan] and he was interested in it as well, and we actually thought it might work the best for both of us,” Kilcoyne explains

“Both of us are kind of young, both with young families, and actually maybe sharing the load a little bit might actually make it a bit more feasible for us. To be fair, it’s been brilliant. I’ve really enjoyed working with John. He’s probably one of the best coaches in Mayo, and some of the trainings that he puts on, and no disrespect to any previous managers that I’ve worked under, but I’d love to be training, I’d love to be doing the training session he puts on. It’s incredible.”

Probably one of the best coaches in Mayo? Now there’s a bold remark.

Kilcoyne elaborates: “Every night there’s something different. You’re constantly being challenged, whether it’s when we do have the ball, when we don’t have the ball. Everything is set up ready to go, there’s no hanging around. It’s just ‘bang, bang, bang’ straight in.

“The drills and the session plans, they just make you think all the time, but there’s always a theme running through them. He just has an encyclopaedic knowledge of really good drills and things like that.”

Having selectors Tony McDonnell and Pat Kelly still on board from the Dempsey era alongside Dessie Sloyan and Niall Gillespie has brought a blend of freshness and familiarity to a club searching for their eleventh senior county title.

“We can’t be anyone else, we can’t be Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola,” says Kilcoyne, returning to soccer metaphors.

“We have to be who we are and we’ve just stuck to our principles. We’ve stuck to what we’re about, we’ve stuck to what we believe in and thankfully we’ve managed to turn it around and our performance levels have been building with each game and we’re really excited about the opportunity to play in a county final.”