Jason Sherlock doesn’t specify exactly when he felt like a loser, a sporting “failure” full of “regret” and “animosity”, except to say it was around the time of all those best wishes for a happy retirement.
Now 12 years on from his time as a Dublin footballer, and nine years after playing his last club game, Sherlock is looking back in far more positive terms. It’s not just about the winning after all, an end note Sherlock is now keen to share.
“I think, like all sports people, you have a lot of regret when you finish, a lot of animosity,” he says. “It’s quite an emotional time, and I was no different. The vast majority of sports people don’t retire on their terms. In terms of results, but also in terms how much more they think they have to offer, and I was certainly one of those. My self-worth, when I finished... I felt like a loser, I felt like I didn’t have any tools to bring with me into my non-sporting life.”
Well, it turns out he did. With the support and counsel of the Gaelic Players Association, Sherlock completed an MBA in DCU, “and that was really valuable to me, both personally, to reflect on my career, and to see the kind of tools I could bring forward”.
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Sherlock wasn’t finished with football either. In 2015 Dublin manager Jim Gavin brought him in as forwards coach, a role he played through Dublin’s five-in-a-row to 2019 as they became a scoring machine.
Being back within that team environment, as winning as it was, helped him see things from a different perspective: “I lost a lot more matches than I won, like most people, and would have seen my career pretty much as a failure. I won an All-Ireland in 1995, but I played for another 14 seasons.
“It’s not until you reflect on it, a bit more appropriately, you understand the value. It’s not the medals or the cups you win, it’s about the experiences and the sacrifices and the strategic preparation you put into trying to perform, and the comradeship you make, the teamwork you create. These are the things I was able to reflect on and bring into the next phase of my life.”
He was hardly a failure – as well as the 1995 All-Ireland title, Sherlock won seven Leinster championships, three county club titles with Na Fianna, made 110 appearances and scored 31 goals for UCD in the League of Ireland, them made 31 appearances and scored eight goals for Shamrock Rovers.
Still it’s too often a silent conversation. Former Irish rugby captain Brian O’Driscoll spoke last week about the need to pre-empt feelings around his retirement, such was the cliff edge he felt might be coming.
For Sherlock part of the deal is setting himself new challenges. He’s fronting the Sport Ireland campaign Workout What Works for You, aimed specifically at men over the age of 45, two-thirds of which don’t get enough daily exercise, according to The Irish Sport Monitor.
Now 46, Sherlock has also engaged in the coaching of other sports, including golf, and last month was linked with the vacant position of Monaghan football manager after Séamus McEnaney stepped down. While that process stalled Sherlock is clearly keen to resume an intercounty role at some point.
“It’s fair to say that certainly it was something I explored, and the one thing I would say is that anyone I met from a Monaghan perspective, both players, officials, and people that had been connected with Monaghan GAA, they all care about Monaghan deeply and I personally would like to see them progress.
“I’ve been very lucky to have experienced a lot from the GAA, both as a player and as a coach, so from my perspective it’s about trying to explore what will work for me, or where I might add value as well. I’ve not been involved since I finished up with Dublin in 2019, so I am always going to be open to explore getting involved in certain capacities.”
There are echoes of Gavin in the way Sherlock talks about any future coaching or management role, and the philosophy around developing people and not just players.
“Like anything you do or any sports event, it’s about how you reflect on it. How did that happen? Why did that happen? What were the conditions that allowed it to happen? That’s just the way my mind works. I apply that to any conversation with any sports person I meet that has ambitions to succeed or perform at a high level.
“I can appreciate there is maybe a different world when it comes to professional sport versus amateur sport, but any time I would work with a player it was always be around trying to help them grow as an individual and [then] you might see improvement in them as a player.”
Sherlock was just 19 when he became the darling of the Hill during Dublin’s All-Ireland winning run in 1995, and sees some comparisons now in the frenzy around Kerry’s David Clifford. Still, Sherlock’s was and always will be a different time and place.
“He [Clifford] seems like someone who has the mindset to complement the technical skills. His performance in the All-Ireland final was exquisite.
“It was great for me, because I probably didn’t know any better. I’d like to think that David might have a support network around him that might assist him, and I hope he progresses better than I did. So I’d be obviously watching on with interest, how he does perform when the pressure is on, and that responsibility is on his shoulders.”
