Oisin McConville says his media career will be on hold while he's managing the Wicklow footballers.
The Armagh All-Ireland winner was confirmed as the new Wicklow boss earlier this month. He had become omnipresent in the Gaelic football media over recent years, appearing on several podcasts, including the BBC's GAA Social, Second Captains, The Irish Examiner's football show, and RTÉ's GAA podcast, along with the Sunday Game and BBC NI's championship coverage.
"I have to go all in with Wicklow," McConville told RTÉ Radio One's Sunday Sport.
"I've seen football from almost every side: as a player, as a pundit, as a manager, as a coach. I have a fair idea that it was a lot easier talking about it than it is affecting it first hand. The two probably don't go together. So, it's all in."
29 May 2022; Jordan Hayes of Offaly in action against Malachy Stone, left, and Pádraig O'Toole of Wicklow during the Tailteann Cup Round 1 match between Offaly and Wicklow at O'Connor Park in Tullamore, Offaly. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
McConville said he had "had an initial conversation with Wicklow, probably a number of years ago".
"Just purely for family reasons, it wasn't a runner," he explained.
"That was resurrected this year, but by the time it was resurrected, I'd already agreed to go in with Ray Dempsey into Mayo, should he have been able to get across the line. Obviously, that didn't happen, and the Wicklow thing was resurrected again.
"It was done fairly quickly after that. With all of these things, there's a process. I'd be accepting that there were a lot of worthy candidates who had a shout for that job.
"Going into Wicklow, there's a serious opportunity for us to improve quickly. Everything seemed to fit, and align. That's how I ended up there."
McConville said he hopes to have his backroom team confirmed this coming week.
"I do think that there is a hunger for success [in Wicklow]," he said.
"I don't think they're happy that they've languishing around Division 4 for some time, with little patches of improvement getting into Division 3. The consistency and sustainability has not been there. That's the thing to work on.
"I'm not going to say this is a long-term project because inter-county managers don't get to fulfil long-term projects.
"If my aims going into Wicklow are not promotion and winning the Tailteann Cup, I might as well stay in Cross because both of those are tangible for teams like Wicklow."
See Also: Stephen O'Keeffe Man Of The Match As Ballygunner Make History
