Last updated at 13:31, Tuesday, 12 May 2015
When Sean O’Hanlon is asked to pinpoint the surge of form that made his eventual release by Carlisle United something of a surprise, the answer leads not to a training session or a team meeting, but a hospital bed.
It was, the defender says, three nights recuperating from a collapsed lung in the autumn that was the source of the transformation Blues fans saw in the second half of last season.
“In that time you look at your career and yourself,” O’Hanlon says of his convalescence. “Sat in hospital, you even start asking if this is the end. Although professionals will tell you there’s nothing to be concerned about, you do think, ‘what if…’
“It made me think I wanted to get back in the team and make an impression, try and prove the gaffer wrong.”
O’Hanlon was not, in the end, able to convince Keith Curle that he could be part of United’s future but can take some satisfaction from the way he ended Carlisle’s successful relegation battle, fighting his way back from that worrying lung injury.
It happened in the 4-3 defeat to Burton last October. “The ball went up in the air, I ran out at full pace trying to head it away and the striker was standing there with his elbow out,” O’Hanlon says. “I just ran straight into that sharp elbow.
“It managed to pierce a hole in my lung. It actually collapsed during the game. I don’t know how, but I managed to get through about 35 minutes with one lung.”
It was a remarkable act of durability from O’Hanlon which was of a piece with the best of his two-and-a-half Carlisle years. From his debut against Coventry, when he peeled off a red-stained head bandage to cheers after marshalling the Blues to a clean sheet, to another blood-soaked night against Burton this April, the 32-year-old dotted his United career with valiant moments.
There were lesser times, too; dips of form and collective struggles, including 2014’s relegation and a time out of Curle’s favour last term which the manager blamed in part on the centre-half’s commute from Merseyside.
It has been a tough journey in all, which is now over. O’Hanlon is spending the first days of the close-season on a UEFA B Licence coaching course in Blackburn and, he says, “sat by the phone” awaiting his next playing opportunity.
Yet it is clear in a reflective interview that, whatever the challenges, the former MK Dons and Hibernian player will miss Carlisle.
“It’s a family club,” he says. “People have been there for years. Faces around the ground, stewards and so on. You get to know them and you miss them. It seems like it’s gone so quick. I can’t believe three seasons have flown by. I would have liked to stay a bit longer but it’s not to be.”
O’Hanlon, who ended last season with his brave image enhanced by the wearing of a protective headguard, has received many fond messages from supporters.
He is eager to return the compliment. “The away fans especially,” he says. “For me they’re the best in League Two, if not League One as well. I’ve been at clubs like Swindon and MK Dons, but Carlisle’s away fans, the distances they have to travel…unbelievable. I’ll always remember them.”
It was not always so happy last season, particularly when O’Hanlon found himself out of the manager’s plans. “When the gaffer came in he made it clear that he wanted me out,” he says. “Before Christmas he was telling me to find a new club and get some first-team games.
“In that situation, what I do is get my head down and try even harder. I managed to get myself back in the team and performed as well as I could have, in the circumstances.
“I didn’t want to be out of contract or out of a job. My intention was to try and change his mind, by giving my all. That’s what I did – I gave my all – so I have no regrets, even if I knew in the back of my mind that he would want to bring new blood in.”
One of seven players to be released, O’Hanlon now has a considered perspective on events at Brunton Park over an often turbulent final season. He is glad to have avoided the fate of other out-of-favour players, who were dispatched to train separately from the main group at early and late hours and does not have any obvious axe to grind with Curle.
His only objection seems to be the implied criticism of his commuting at the time he was listed for loan. “I think he [Curle] used that as an excuse, as one of the reasons to give me why he wanted me to leave. He found an excuse and blamed the travel.
“I obviously played the second half of the season and was still driving up and down. And there were three or four of us in the car anyway, so I’d only have to drive once a week, plus you’d always stay up the night before, sometimes two nights before. For me it wasn’t an issue. It might have been different if I was driving on my own every day.”
O’Hanlon was far from the only man to be informed he could leave, mid-season, as Curle attempted to shake up the scenery.
What was his view on the boss’s approach towards unwanted players? “It’s obviously a tool managers use. I don’t know whether it’s the right or wrong way. I think he mentioned myself and Sweens [Antony Sweeney] as players he got a positive reaction from. Other players think, ‘there’s nothing I can do so I might as well throw in the towel’.
“It happens in football. The older you get, the more you realise that, even though you’ve been told you can leave, there’s always an injury or suspension around the corner and you’re back in again.
“I was fortunate enough not to be involved in the other [extra training] group, so to speak, so I never had the earlier starts and later finishes. It’s down to the manager’s discretion how he manages the team and squad. He was always very fair and honest with me.”
Yet it was, in a sense, a divided collective and O’Hanlon observed team-mates who were further adrift, such as Billy Paynter and Gary Dicker. “The lads doing the longer sessions, feeling they hadn’t been treated fairly, it was difficult for them. But they’re all professionals and they handled it very well. The spirit, to be fair, was good. It was never broken.
“The most difficult part was actually trying to win a game of football. Once we started doing that, towards the end, you realise how easy it is. But previously it was so difficult.”
As United eventually battled to survival, with O’Hanlon one of their more consistent players during the run-in, they jousted with the future champions Burton in a remarkable, rearguard 1-1 draw. Early that night the centre-half clashed heads with the Brewers’ Denny Johnstone, requiring both men to receive extensive treatment.
“There was only one doctor at the game, so I was in a queue,” says O’Hanlon, of a 15-minute period when Carlisle had to play with 10 men. “He finally got to me 10 minutes later, but because so much blood was coming down he couldn’t really see what he was doing or what he was stitching up.
“He managed to get it done and we were going to dress it, but with it being close to half-time they wanted me on the pitch. But within five minutes, and my next header, it just split it all open again. That was the end of it and they had to get someone else on.”
O’Hanlon, after 90 Carlisle appearances, must now patch himself up after the disappointment of being released. “Clubs probably hold all the cards now, with so many players out of contract” he says. “They’re in no great rush to get you signed up, so it could be a long summer for me – but hopefully not.
“I’ve got nothing to prove now to Keith Curle. It’s a case of proving things to myself and a new manager. The target is get a new club, get in the team and get going again.
“I’m not getting any younger and I’m cherishing every season now. I want to stay at as high a level a possible, whether that’s in the north, south, east, it doesn’t really matter. I still think I’ve got a fair good few years left in me.”
First published at 10:17, Tuesday, 12 May 2015
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk