Waterford’s Graham Coughlan: ‘A lot of my pals are on building sites, this is a privileged position’

Manchester United had survived a mighty fright against League Two Newport County in the FA Cup – throwing away a two-goal lead but ultimately winning 4-2 – and afterwards United manager Erik ten Hag went looking for his opposite number.

Ten Hag found Graham Coughlan conducting a TV interview by the side of the pitch, which he interrupted to hand over a £300 bottle of red wine that had been handpicked by Alex Ferguson. Coughlan thanked him but said he didn’t drink red wine and preferred Budweiser. Ten Hag insisted he keep it and the beer company saw an opportunity to deliver a truck of Budweiser to Newport the following week.

“I am a basic man,” says Coughlan. The word doesn’t describe his achievements. On Sunday he leads Waterford FC into a first FAI Cup final for 22 years, a remarkable epilogue to a league season his player Conan Noonan this week described as a “miracle”. Coughlan was appointed to the Waterford job in May, arriving to a moribund team marooned at the bottom of the table, winless in the first 14 games of the season.

Only Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers took more points from the moment of Coughlan’s arrival, however, and Waterford finished three points clear of even the relegation play-off in seventh place. Coughlan makes his means of turning it all around sound disarmingly simple.

He says he “stripped things back to basics”, simplifying the game plan to accentuate Waterford’s strengths, namely Tommy Lonergan and Pádraig Amond, who finished first and second in the scoring charts respectively. He also put a much greater premium on hard work, increasing the players’ running load and ratcheting up the intensity of training sessions.

“He wants his teams to show his character, and he is always demanding and never happy,” says Amond. “We like being aggressive and being on the front foot, and that’s what suits the group: we are mirroring what the manager is like as a player and a person.”

“Red hair and freckles: we are a nation of fiery people,” says Coughlan.

“When you look at a team in Graham’s image,” says Joe Dunne, who spent three years living with Coughlan while working as his assistant at Bristol Rovers, Mansfield Town, and Newport, “you have to understand his principles and morals are of the highest order, and that comes from his upbringing in Ireland. He passes that on to his team.” Dunne repeats a mantra of Coughlan’s, that there is no job too big or too small for anybody.

Born in 1974, Coughlan grew up in flats in Dublin’s south inner city, first Mercer House and then Marrowbone Lane. He says the family couldn’t afford a football so his grandfather, Eddie Corrigan, would bundle up the daily newspaper and kick it with him along the veranda of the flats complex. Coughlan practised his volleys by having his grandfather push him on the swings and toss the paper ball in the air to kick as he was swinging forward.

Coughlan mapped the city from the back of his grandfather’s bike. His grandfather took him to Croke Park for Dubs matches, Lansdowne Road for rugby internationals, and to Dalymount Park to watch the Ireland soccer team. The staple sojourns were to follow Shelbourne and St Patrick’s Athletic. “I don’t think I ever paid into a League of Ireland match,” he says. “I’d hop over walls or sneak under gates. If there was a way into a match, my granda knew it. It was just a great life.”

[ A football team sponsored by art at the centre of Waterford preparations for FAI Cup finalOpens in new window ]

He moved to Clondalkin and went to Deansrath Community College, where he was among the Manchester United fans suffering the gloating of the kids who gloried in Liverpool’s supremacy. He played football with Cherry Orchard and made a Leinster Senior League debut at only 15. “The senior lads looked after you,” says Coughlan. “They’d clip you around the ear and kick you up the arse when you need it. The honesty, the hard work: those basics come from where we grew up.”

He signed for Blackburn Rovers in 1995, just after they had been crowned Premier League champions, shortly before Damien Duff moved over, too. Unlike Duff, Coughlan didn’t make an impact on Blackburn’s first team, and found a stable landing at Livingston, from where he joined Plymouth Argyle, then coached by Paul Sturrock. Plymouth rose from the equivalent of League Two to the Championship, with Coughlan a virtual ever-present at centre-back. Sturrock left Plymouth in 2004 for an ill-fated stint at Southampton, and after returning to work at Sheffield Wednesday later that year, he signed Coughlan the following season.

In 2007, Coughlan’s brother Shane died tragically in Dublin at the age of just 18, drowning in the Grand Canal. He is reluctant to speak about his brother, saying it still affects his parents, Tommy and Eilish.

Brian Laws, then the Wednesday manager, granted Coughlan compassionate leave to go to his brother’s funeral. The club rang Coughlan afterwards to check on his availability for the next game and Coughlan requested some more time to grieve. When he returned to work the following week, Coughlan was informed that he did not have a future at the club and he was free to leave. Football is too often a callous business.

[ Graham Coughlan signs multiyear deal to stick with WaterfordOpens in new window ]

He wound down his playing career at Southend, once again under Sturrock, who opened a door into management. On a Sunday afternoon in June, on the eve of pre-season, Sturrock rang Coughlan, gave him a postcode, and told him to be there the following morning. When Coughlan arrived, Sturrock tossed him a whistle and a stopwatch and told him to lead the training session. The instruction was to put a smile on the players’ faces. Coughlan walked out to the group, not knowing how many were there, and put on a session. He became Sturrock’s assistant and then forged his own managerial path.

Sturrock is the chief influence on Coughlan’s coaching career, and when the BBC contacted Coughlan about contributing to a radio documentary about Sturrock a few years ago, he rearranged the week’s schedule and changed the players’ day off to ensure he would be available to contribute. For all he learned from Sturrock, Coughlan admits that not all of his mentor’s tricks and quiddities would work today.

He recalls one episode from their days at Sheffield Wednesday, when the squad were in the slough of poor results at home as players struggled to perform in front of 30,000 expectant fans. Sturrock demanded all the players assemble in the canteen one Friday afternoon ahead of a home game. With the players gathered in confusion, Sturrock kicked open the door like John Wayne, cradling a crate of beer in his arms. He dropped the beer on the table and told his players that nobody would leave until they had finished every drop. “If you can’t play sober,” he said, “then you can play pissed.” The booze was drained and Coughlan scored the next day in a 2-1 win.

Coughlan returned to Ireland for a few weeks earlier this year, with the intention of taking a break from football and spending more time with his parents after more than 30 years away from home. Waterford got wind of his return, however, and Coughlan couldn’t resist the SOS call.

“When you are out of the game you miss it, and when you are in it you want a break,” he says. “That’s the side of the game I can never work out.” He delivered a few home truths to his Waterford players in their first meeting together, stressing that they were playing for their careers, as relegation follows a professional footballer around.

“I hammer those words to the players regularly: it’s the best job in the world,” says Coughlan. “A lot of my pals are on building sites, carrying scaffolding. They look at you every week and they say, ‘Wow, I wish I was doing that job’, and I bet you don’t look at them and wish you were doing their job. [I tell my players] Make sure you carry on with your job, there’s lots of people wanting to take your place. I try to make them realise the privileged position they are in. Fortunately, this dressing room got it, and they value their work and their professionalism.

“I wasn’t happy with the standards they were adhering to every day, I wasn’t happy with where they were in the league, and there was a reason why: they had come away from the standards. I was trying to find that reason. So I was trying to make one or two of them angry, trying to prod the bear, and get a reaction.”

The crucial turning point was a home game against Drogheda, which Waterford won with a highly contentious 94th-minute penalty. That the squad’s first win of the season came in the game’s final minute persuaded the players that Coughlan’s greater demands on fitness and standards in general were paying off, ensuring buy-in from that moment forth. That the season’s hinge rested on a fortunate penalty call underlines that football is a fickle and contingent business.

In his characteristically brusque manner, Coughlan says the cup final is solely about winning, because nobody remembers the losers. He believes his players deserve better concrete success than finishing seventh in the league, which, when removed from the context of their turnaround, doesn’t scream glory. He is also highly motivated to, in his own words, “achieve”. He says he is haunted by the fact he didn’t play in the Premier League or Champions League with Blackburn, and is haunted too by the fact he didn’t win a senior international cap with Ireland.

“If I was good enough I would have played, so I didn’t,” he says. “That haunts you. You live with that for the whole of your career.”

Derry City stand in the way of Waterford lifting the FAI Cup. Coughlan’s parents will be at the Aviva Stadium for the final, sitting with his old assistant Joe Dunne. His wife and children, who are still living in Sheffield while Coughlan has based himself in Tramore, will be at the game too. In a testament to the esteem in which he is held, there are 44 people associated with the clubs at which he has previously worked travelling over for the game, too.

Coughlan has busied himself in the usual work this week and says he doesn’t expect to be nervous, but admits he doesn’t know how he will react when he walks out at the Aviva Stadium, and when he hears the national anthem.

“There’s a number of people that are not with us, absent friends,” he says. “I just want to make my family and those really proud on Sunday.”