A Day in the Life: Westmeath's Paul Sharry
May 17, 2013
Westmeath's Paul Sharry and Colm Judge of Louth. INPHO
The 24-year old graduated from DIT last year having completed an honours degree in Leisure Management, and immediately set wracking his brains about what to do in the real world. It was where he and long-term friend Shane Flynn came up with the idea for Next Generation Speed and NGS Fitness.
"Shane is from Mullingar as well, we went to college together and he lived with me," Sharry said.
"Two lads that lived with us as well went abroad to Australia and we came home and put our heads together and came up with this.
"I studied an honours degree in Leisure Management, but the thing that helped me the most was a guy called Karl Gilligan. He is the top Strength and Conditioning coach in Ireland. I studied underneath him for a year in Portabello and then did bits of work experience with him as well. I learned an awful amount under him."
It's something which goes hand and hand with his 'other' life, as a Westmeath Senior Footballer.
"It's far easier to learn something when you have an interest in it. When you have an interest in what you are doing and how you can improve yourself, then when you are learning you are saying I could be doing that instead of this and you pick things up quicker."
It's not just about football skill these days, and Sharry sees a massive shift in the area of Strength and Conditioning in the GAA, since he first got involved with the Westmeath setup under Tomás Ó Flatharta.
"It's after becoming very big. The way football is going, it is changing over and over. Two years ago football looked like it was going the direction of where the biggest team was going to win. Now it looks like the fastest and strongest team is going to win.
"It's not necessarily about carrying an extra five or six kilograms, it's about being as fast as you can, but being as strong as you can with the weight that you have."
Sharry says mixing work and football life is tough, but with Shane just committed to club action with St Loman's it's been made that bit easier.
"It is tough. I'm just very lucky that there is two of us in it. He isn't playing county football at the moment, so if we are struggling or if I have training we can work around it. You take this job this evening and I'll cover for you the next night when you need to be free for club training.
"Regarding starting a business in a recession, a lot of business have helped us out. We've had a lot of features in the local papers and a lot of local businesses around town have given us a huge hand funding for advertising and stuff like that."
Sharry pays particular tribute to the Gaelic Players Association for setting his business on the road.
"The GPA were absolutely massive. They gave a grant for starting out businesses and a business start-up plan. The GPA helped us out an awful lot and we owe them an awful lot of thanks. Siobhan Earley especially."
And he's already giving back to the Westmeath cause, involved with two local hurling teams and the Westmeath Minor hurlers, while two Gaelic Football clubs in Offaly and Cavan along with a Rugby club also benefit from his services.
But far from being one-dimensional in his sporting exploits, Sharry has great sporting prowess with a stint with Shamrock Rovers on the soccer front, with whom he won a League of Ireland title in 2009.
"I started out with Cherry Orchard in Dublin when I was about 16. I played for a year with them and then when I was 17 I went to Shamrock Rovers. I was with their Under 21 team, and then the following year I went up to the first team underneath Pat Scully. I played with them for about two years and then Tomás Ó Flatharta came calling.
"Tomás brought me to play a few under 21 games for Westmeath, and I didn't hear anything from him for a week or two and then he called me in to the Senior squad. I played against Dublin in my first ever game at Croke Park, and that day we got an awful beating. We lost by 5-25 to 0-12 and then the next day was a qualifier against Meath. I started in that game at Cusack Park. We got knocked out in that game.
"Then after that year I said that I couldn't be playing two sports at that high a level, because with Rovers I was pretty much training five nights a week. Then Westmeath were looking for you for another three or four days. There was only so many days in the week, so if I wanted to progress at one sport I felt I had to pick one. I said i'd pick Gaelic because of what the GAA stands for. There were lads there that I had played with since Under 14 county, and you were still getting to play with them and that meant a lot.!"
Sharry has also managed to win an International Aussie Rules medal, despite only ever playing, for the three weeks it took for the International Cup to be completed!
"It's what the Australians are using to promote their sport in other countries. A guy called Ciaran O'Hara whom I'm good friends with now sent me a text one day and asked me to go down for training. Eventually I was selected to go to Australia. I had to do a bit of fundraising then alright."
It was a great chance for him also to link up with his good friend John Heslin who was beginning his AFL career at the time.
"Heslin was just gone out at the time and I hadn't seen him for about five months," Paul said.
"I said this would be a great opportunity, getting to go out there and see him and play a few games while I'm out there. I met up with Heslin in Sydney. iI think we played two or three games in Sydney. For the first rounds the teams we were playing were shocking. They weren't getting a score on us at all and we were hammering them off the pitch.
"In the semi-final we played New Zealand and that was a different standard altogether. The boys were rugby players who were playing Aussie Rules for the craic. They were fairly laying into us! We got to the final in the MCG in Melbourne, and that was fairly cool playing in a stadium that would fit 110,000 people. Myself and Heslin played in that, we played against Papua New Guinea in the final. That was a tough game, it was quick and a lot of hard hits.
"It was just an unbelievable experience to play in that and head out to Australia for the three weeks and get to play in the MCG which not a lot of people will ever get to do. Then obviously I got to spend a lot of time with Heslin who showed me around Richmond."
And what of this weekend's opening round tussle with Carlow in the Leinster Senior Football Championship? Westmeath coming into the game after a loss to Derry in the Allianz FL Division 2 final.
"Carlow would be a team that we would have to be wary of. It's not so long ago since they gave Meath a good run, so you couldn't take them for granted. Championship football always brings another 20 or 30 percent higher than the league.
"You couldn't even chance saying that 'we are going to win this game', because you know they are going to bring something. If you approach it with that attitude at all they will wipe you clean in the first 20 minutes.
"If a team gets the wind behind their sails in the first 20 minutes of the Championship it's going to be very hard to turn things around. We will be expecting a huge challenge on Sunday." Tweet
