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Move a ‘no-brainer’ says new Rovers recruit Hoare

Seán Hoare was delighted to sign a three-year deal with Shamrock Rovers after leaving Dundalk. Photo: Sportsfile Expand

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Seán Hoare was delighted to sign a three-year deal with Shamrock Rovers after leaving Dundalk. Photo: Sportsfile

Seán Hoare was delighted to sign a three-year deal with Shamrock Rovers after leaving Dundalk. Photo: Sportsfile

Seán Hoare was delighted to sign a three-year deal with Shamrock Rovers after leaving Dundalk. Photo: Sportsfile

Daniel McDonnell Twitter Email

When Seán Hoare considered his options at the end of last season, there were two contracts to consider.

There was a one-year deal on the table from his then employer, Dundalk, and a four-year contract offer from newly-crowned champions Shamrock Rovers. It didn’t present a difficult decision.

Hoare, who turned 27 earlier this week, has a partner and ambitions of buying a house in the next stage of his life. The idea of joining Rovers was already attractive to him but the competing terms and conditions removed any debate.

He asked Dundalk boss Filippo Giovagnoli what he would advise a loved one to do in that scenario and the Italian really couldn’t argue with him. They shook hands before last week’s President’s Cup encounter between the sides.

“With the uncertainty that was going on in Dundalk. I had to look after myself and my own future,” said Hoare ahead of tonight’s Tallaght showdown with his first senior club, St Patrick’s Athletic.

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“Length of contract was a big thing for me. In my personal life I’m not just looking after myself. I’m getting on a bit, I’m 27. I need to start thinking of myself. It was a no-brainer.

“Filippo understood. He was kind of expecting it, the way things were being run in the background. He was expecting a call to tell him I was moving on elsewhere. The other night, I shook his hand and said ‘Well done.’ There’s no bad blood there. He knows what’s going on in the background as well. Put it this way, I said to him ‘Do you see your son making this decision?’ And he understood. With his business hat, he couldn’t advise me to stay.”

The strategy driven from above was to hand out one-year deals to existing players whereas Rovers were willing to offer long term security to Hoare and Seán Gannon.

Dundalk chairman Bill Hulsizer was centrally involved in this process, although Hoare said he did not deal with him directly.

His swansong for the Louth club was a Europa League goal against Arsenal. The football aspect of that run was enjoyable, yet Hoare admitted that events off the park were beginning to have an impact - although he did enjoy working with Giovagnoli after his shock arrival during a well-documented period of turbulence around Vinny Perth’s exit.

“It’s hard to do your stuff on the pitch when there is so much crap going on in the background. But to be honest, I would have come here anyway. They’d just become such a force in the last couple of years, so I couldn’t turn it down,” he continued.

“It wasn’t anything to do with the management. The lads in charge, Filippo, Giuseppe (Rossi) and Shane (Keegan), everyone is so nice. Everyone was great. It’s just what was going on in the background.

“You could still enjoy training, obviously we were playing in the Europa League and you couldn’t not enjoy that. That was brilliant. Just when it comes to the end of season and you are out of contract, and you still don’t really know what’s going on, you have to then secure your own future.

“I’ve a partner now and I have things I want to do in life. I want to try and secure a house for myself; just milestones in my own life that I want to get through. You can’t do that going on year-by-year contracts.”

Was he offended? Not when so many others were in the same boat.

“If they were offering three or four-year deals to everyone, then I’d have probably felt different,” he replies.

“It wasn’t just me. That was their business model. Fair enough. It just didn’t suit me. I didn’t take it personally.”

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Rovers boss Stephen Bradley was delighted to get the deal done, feeling that Hoare’s versatility to operate across their back three made him a perfect fit.

The Hoops are strong in that department with Roberto Lopes, Lee Grace, Liam Scales and Joey O’Brien already in situ, although Lopes will miss games due to international duty with Cape Verde.

Hoare’s recruitment excites Bradley. “He’s everything we look for in a defender,” he said.

“We tried to get him a few years back when he was leaving Pat’s and we obviously missed out.

“It’s someone I’ve kept in contact with and really liked from afar for quite some time. All his attributes suit how we play.”

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