TIMING IS KEY in any professional football career, and the door to the Premier League never stays open for long for any young player.
It is a cruel world and the margins between ‘making it’, and not, can be as thin as a matter of weeks.
Three weeks at the back-end of the 2008-09 season were to define the career of Dubliner Craig Mahon, as he was released from Wigan Athletic by manager Steve Bruce.
The former Lourdes Celtic man signed for the Latics on a YTS contract in 2006, but after three years at the club, the Manchester United legend decided he was surplus to requirements.
“Bruce and reserve team boss Keith Berchin called me in and told me I wasn’t being kept on,” Mahon tells The42.
“They both said I had enough to make a career as a professional, but they were looking to go in a difference direction.
“I think with the situation Wigan were in then, as a Premier League side, they could look to buy a winger if they needed to. Maybe the youth set up wasn’t as much of a priority.
“But a few weeks later, Bruce was gone and Roberto Martinez came in and that is always something I think about. Would he have given me a chance?
“When I look at the way Martinez’s teams play, I would have suited that.
“There are moments in football where you think about what ifs, but that’s the big one for me. If I could have stayed on, and been given a chance by Martinez, things could have been very different.
I suppose it was a bit of sliding doors moment very early in my career.”
The news rocked Mahon, who had signed his first professional contract at the start of the season, and trained with the first team, either side of a loan spell at League Two side Accrington Stanley.
“I got so much from working and training in that environment, alongside the likes of Antonio Valencia, Emile Heskey and Chris Kirkland.
“The Irish lads in the side were always great as well. Kevin Kilbane and Graham Kavanagh would chat to me a lot, see how I was getting on, and offer advice.”
Mahon was faced with a decision that has faced hundreds of Irish players released from English league sides – to return to, or stick it out in England, as he had planned?
“It had been a hard few years of work at Wigan.
“I had found it very hard at first, and cried almost every night for the first six months in my digs and worried about what I was missing back in Dublin.
“I knew I had to make a decision, and quick, so I decided to give it another year. Bruce had said I could make a career in England, and I wanted to stick with it.”
However the initial shock was something that the 19-year-old struggled with, finding it difficult to tell his family what had happened.
I was embarrassed to ring home and tell them that I’d been let go.
“Everyone had been so proud of me going over to England and that first phone call to my parents was very difficult.”
The Mahon family is one with football running through it, with Craig’s uncle Alan Mahon and cousin Andy Reid – then at Sunderland – offering advice on the next stage.
“I spoke to both Alan and Andy about the situation and they were both really positive.
“Alan had always encouraged me to have an education alongside football, and he told me to make use of the coaching badges I had got at Wigan.”
After leaving Wigan, Mahon embarked on four season stint across the fringes of the English league system, with spells at Salford City, Burscough and Vauxhall Motors.
The demands of non-league football meant Mahon kept his youth coaching role with the Wigan Athletic Community Trust, as he looked to balance football, work and travelling across England’s north west.
“There was a lot on, of course, and physically it involved a lot of driving.
But I kept positive, as for me I was doing two jobs that I loved and kept me playing football.”
For a player that had already experienced his own football sliding doors moment, he found himself in the right place at the right time in the final weeks of the 2012-13 season.
“Towards the end of the season, Vauxhall played against Chester and I had really good game.
“Then at the end of the season, I got a phone call from manager Neil Young asking if I’d be interested in joining and I jumped at the chance, as it meant playing Conference again.”
Mahon has gone on to be an indispensable member of the Chester side, through some difficult times at the club, including a reformation in 2010, after the previous club Chester City went under.
With over 200 appearances under his belt, the 29-year-old has come full circle and is relishing the chance to pass on his experience to the club’s younger players — these days playing in the National League North (the sixth tier of English football).
“I have been through the lot at Chester. Going from part-time to full-time, to hybrid and back to part-time.
“I try to use that experience to help the younger lads. To show them how professional football is dog eat dog and it requires mental strength and a willingness to work your nuts off every day.
“There are not many industries that you can be told from one day to the next that you are not wanted, but that’s football.”
Despite being intertwined with his time at Wigan, Mahon fondly remembers playing for Ireland at underage level in the 2007-08 season, alongside future internationals Harry Arter and Cillian Sheridan.
“To pull on that shirt and represent Ireland at any level is brilliant,” he says.
“I remember my first game, at U18, at St Pat’s in Inchicore it was even more special. Being from Drimnagh and representing Ireland – with all my family there – just across the canal, was something else.
My caps went home with my mam and dad and they’ve stayed up on the wall ever since.
With cousin Andy taking over the reins as Ireland U18 boss earlier this year, Mahon is confident he can provide the same advice to Irish future stars as he did to him.
“I always keep an eye on Ireland, and with Andy in charge, even more so,” he adds.
“Playing for Ireland is such a proud moment and he will make them well aware of that.
“As for me, I will be watching on, as I always do. It is something I always have done, whether it’s X Factor or the Olympics, if there is any Irish person in it, I am right behind them.”
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