Throughout August and early September Sport for Business will be identifying Ireland’s sporting Wild Geese.
We will highlight those from our island who are playing an important role in the management of international sport. They will come from a wide variety of sports and fulfil a variety of roles.
We want your help in identifying who they might be and why they should get credit within the Irish sporting and business community.
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Conor O’Shea is Director of Rugby with Harlequins in the Aviva Premiership. He feels more of a home bird because of his regular appearances on television but his career has been firmly based within the UK.
A graduate of Terenure College in Dublin, UCD and DIT he played for Lansdowne, Leinster and 35 times for Ireland before moving to the UK in 2001 for a role with London Irish. Since then he has served as National Academy Director for the English Rugby Football Union and as National Director of the English Institute of Sport.
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Fergus Connolly is Director of Elite Performance with the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL. Originally from Scotstown in County Monaghan he studied at the University of Limerick before embarking on a career in performance sport that has touched down at Dublin GAA, Liverpool FC, the New York Knicks, Harlequins Rugby alongside Conor O’Shea, Munster Rugby and more.
Hailed as a key back room team member in Dublin’s last All Ireland triumph in 2013 he is now charged with helping the 49ers to a first SuperBowl success in 20 years.
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Donal Walsh has been Vice President of USA Rugby Sevens during a period in which the game has caught the imagination of his adopted nation. A native of Kildare and having played Rugby at Rockwell College, he embarked on a career in the business of sport with spells helping to organise events like the Winter Olympics in the US and Italy as well as a spell with the US Tennis Association.
He has also been a key influencer on College Rugby in the US where it has long had its strongest foothold. There are 1,000 colleges now fielding men’s teams and 600 fielding women’s.
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Neil Carney is one of those Wild Geese that keeps taking flight. In recent weeks he has returned to his Galway home after a two year stint as Director of Venue Management at the first ever European Olympics in Azerbaijan. That involved the management of 400 personnel for an event that was hailed as a logistics masterclass.
Prior to that he had been involved over nearly three years in the management of the London Olympic Games. He has also served in venue management as Operations Director of the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Galway and the Special Olympics World Games held in Dublin in 2003. In 2007 he flew further with roles at the Asian Games in Doha. It is a good weekend for Carney to come home as he will enjoy watch Galway in the All Ireland Hurling Championship, the journey to which he has been avidly following from afar.
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Aidan Lyons is Vice President for Fan Centric Marketing at the NFL. He has been in charge of American Football’s reach out to fans through digital media for the past six years and has overseen the most exciting period of change that sport has seen.
Stadiums are no longer limited to those who are physically present, but for those who are the experience is now richer and more enjoyable than ever.
Lyons has spent all his working life in the US since winning a soccer scholarship to the New York Institute of Technology.
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Tony Bass is Secretary of the European Board of the GAA. It’s a voluntary position but one which takes him across Europe and back to Dublin in a variety of capacities. He works across different areas of public administration across the EU and is currently on a project to establish a school of Public Administration in Montenegro.
Bass has always had strong links to Europe, he now lives in the Netherlands, having previously served as a Press Officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and as an adviser in the Departments of Finance and the Marine.
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Ricky Simms has been managing the affairs of Usain Bolt since he first came across him as a 15 year old Junior champion in 2002. His Pace Management also handles the management of Mo Farah and a total of 50 athletes at the very top of their game. If it was a country it would have finished 15th at the London 2012 Olympic Games and has just had another week to remember at the World Athletics Championships.
Simms is based in Monaco though now though his roots are firmly in Milford, Donegal where he says that Bolt will visit before his retirement. Simms spoke to Sport for Business back in 2012 and gave some rare insight into the management of such a high achieving group.
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Lúcás O’Ceallacháin is the Development Director for United World Wrestling in Lausanne. His Irish name belies a lifetime of travel having been a rugby development officer in Finland and Russia, an international player with Kazakhstan and General Manager of the Irish Olympic Handball Association which he left in 2013.
O’Ceallacháin is ambitious and rarely takes no for an answer. Wrestling is one of the most storied and traditional sports there is and yet it has recently had to fend off the threat of removal from the Olympics. A campaign promoting Women’s wrestling caught the attention of IOC President Thomas Bach and there will be more changes in the sport coming up ahead off and out of next years Olympics.
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Nikki Symmons has successfully transitioned from one of Ireland’s greatest ever players to become Digital Media Coordinator at the International Hockey Federation. Capped over 200 times for Ireland in Hockey, as well as playing cricket to international level she has also found time to be a special needs assistant at St Andrews College; an ambassador for Arthritis Ireland, a condition she has suffered from since her youth, Adidas and Bering; and even a TV presenter on Ireland’s Fittest Family in 2013
She completed a AISTS Masters Programme as part of ‘rebooting’ her life as her hockey career began to wind down and worked into media through knocking on doors, doing a good job when the opportunity arose and making progress every step of the way. She now coordinates all Hockey’s official social media channels around major events.
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Pierce O’Callaghan has been the Director of Sport and a driving force behind the European Olympic Games that took place in Baku earlier in the summer. After starting his career in financial services he went back to University at night to complete a degree in sports management.
That sparked a career change which has brought him to roles in Scottish, British and European Athletics prior to Azerbaijan, as well as his own sports management and event consultancy in his native Galway. He worked on strategy when London won the right to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships which may be a next port of call for this seasoned sports traveller.
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Aine Power is legal counsel in Lausanne with the Federation Equestrian International. She had previously filled the same role in the International Boxing Association after leaving Dublin law firm McCann Fitzgerald in 2010 to complete the FIFA Masters course.
A graduate of the University of Limerick, Power is a native of Kilkenny and an ardent supporter of her counties hurling team. She is also a powerful advocate for the sport within her now global network of contacts in the sports industry.
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Jamie Boag has been the Team Director for the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing Team for the last two Volvo Ocean Races, winning the most recent renewal. Himself and partner Ian Walker are credited with bringing high end sailing to the Middle East where it has now firmly laid anchor.
He also manages a Marine Sports Consultancy business in Singapore which has an international roster of clients.
Originally from Bangor in County Down he started out his working life in aviation and equities investment but has since found a business home for his sporting passion on the water.
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Brian Mahony is Director of Global Projects at the International Triathlon Union, the world governing body for the sport. Responsible for strategic planning and campaign management, Mahony has been at the forefront of many of ITU’s significant innovations during his 11 years at the organisation.
A first class honours graduate in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Limerick saw him enter his working life at Boeing but a switch to the strategy of sport has paid dividends for what is perhaps the world’s fastest growing sport at the moment.
Mahony was instrumental in the introduction and formation of the World Triathlon Series which is broadcast live and on-demand across 160 nations to a cumulative audience in excess of 170 million.
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Peter Breen is Head of Media and Communications with the International Cricket Board. Having swapped Donnybrook for Dubai in moving from Leinster Rugby, Breen now has responsibility for ensuring smooth media relations around global events such as this year’s Cricket World Cup.
Before his ten years as PR manager at Leinster, he had served in a similar role with the irish Cricket Union so this was in some ways a return to ‘home’ at least in sporting terms.
As a young nine-year-old boy he was at Hillsborough Football Ground as 92 Liverpool fans lost their lives.
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Cliodhna Guy is the Legal Director of the International Boxing Association AIBA. She previously worked for four years in the legal department of the FAI and as a doping control officer with the Irish Turf Club.
Very highly regarded by those with whom she has worked in the past Guy is one of a number of administrators working in Switzerland and building a strong reputation across multiple sporting disciplines. She has also been an adviser on legal and disciplinary matters to the Paralympic Council of Ireland.
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Des Ryan is Head of Sports Medicine and Athletic Development at Arsenal Football Club in the Premier League. Galway by birth his career in sports fitness started at Connacht before he became Fitness Education Manager at the IRFU.
Ryan has maintained his connection to Ireland, addressing the GAA Annual Coaching Conference earlier this year and bringing Jerry Flannery over to Arsenal to advance his own strength and conditioning credentials.
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David Courell is Director of Operational Delivery with the British Paralympic Association. Originally from Castlebar and educated at UCD, Courell was a management consultant at Deloitte in London before going on extended secondment to play a key role as Programme and Business then Venue Operations Manager with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
He joined the British Paralympic Association in 2013 and his project management and planning skills are a key element in the preparations of Team GB heading to Rio in 2016.
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John Furlong was the CEO of the bid team and the organising committee for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Born in Tipperary and educated at St Vincent’s CBS in Glasnevin he emigrated to Canada in 1969 and in 2009 was named by the Globe and Mail as one of the 25 most transformational characters in Canadian history.
He maintains a career as an inspirational speaker on issues of teamwork and leadership and recently took up the role of Executive Director with the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer club.
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Noel Mooney is the Marketing Manager for UEFA. Based in Switzerland he regularly travels the full 54 nations that make up European Soccer’s governing body delivering support across a range of areas from digital marketing to fan engagement, sponsorship to match day experience.
He has been with UEFA since 2012 when he left a role as Marketing manager for the FAI and head of the John Giles Foundation. A Limerick native he played as goalkeeper for Limerick FC in his playing days and makes regular trips back home to stay in touch with grassroots soccer.
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