By DARAGH SMALL
Leaving the Clare setup was the most difficult decision he has had to make and only the right job could have coaxed him back into the game so soon after.
But just across the border, Galway have been brewing for a number of years in the Ladies Football ranks and Evan Talty wants to try his hand in the TG4 All-Ireland Senior Championship as a head coach now.
“To be honest, when I left Clare, I felt I just completely needed a break emotionally from Gaelic games, and timewise, I needed to put a bit more time into my businesses,” said entrepreneur Talty.
“I had a couple of offers to go in with teams and I declined them. And then Maghnus Breathnach and Fiona Wynne touched base. I met them and it was probably one of the only projects that would tempt me to get back in straight away.”
The 37-year-old still plays club football with Kilmurry-Ibrickane, having experienced some great days in the green and red jersey.
He won nine Clare Senior Football Championship titles, as well as two Munster club titles in 2004 and 2009. The Banner outfit went all the way to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day in 2010, before losing against Antrim’s St Gall’s in the decider.
Talty was also part of the Clare team when the late, great Páidí Ó Sé was manager in 2007.
All the while, Talty and his family were starting on the road towards a business for the future. And finally, in late 2009, Wild Irish Seaweeds was created.
“We’d set it up out of our kitchen here and we just started off doing bits and pieces, going to various farmers’ markets and small shows around the country,” says Talty.
“We had no staff and no building. It was just really an idea to see where it was going to go but it started to grow, then over the years we built a factory here and taken on employees and started to export.
“We export to about 25 countries globally in the food ingredients market now. And we have clients such as Nestlé, Lidl, Aldi, lots of big multi-nationals. We have 15 staff here at the moment and we probably have a turnover in excess of €1million a year. So it’s grown quite nicely over the last 10 years or so.”
Together with his father, Gerard, Evan Talty previously appeared on RTE’s Dragon’s Den, looking for an investment of €50,000 for five percent of their company.
The five Dragons were blown away by the brilliant opportunity and Alison Cowzer invested. Wild Irish Seaweeds has grown rapidly since.
“I’m just looking out the window here, we're literally 500 yards from the edge of the water here in Quilty,” Talty says.
“And there’s a huge history of seaweed harvesting and seaweed processing in my family, going back probably 80 years back to my grandfather’s time. But also in the locality of West Clare, it was a real hub for seaweed harvesting.
“So it’s something that’s probably in our DNA in West Clare. It was kind of tradition meets innovation. So when we set it up in 2009, the industry was probably dead here in West Clare, it was gone, people were into building and stuff.
“We decided we would try and rejuvenate the industry and try and keep a few of our footballers at home.”
Talty has since gone on to set up a business mentoring platform, 1Door, while he also devoted some of his time to the GPA in the shape of a business development consultancy role.
“I would have gone through the process of trying to raise money and all that kind of stuff with Wild Irish Seaweed. So I have a good bit of experience in it,” said Talty.
“At the time, with the GPA, there were a few guys involved there. And they looked to roll out some business development programmes for inter-county players who were hoping to set up their own businesses, or even explore setting up their own businesses and maybe try and get access to some funding to build a website or to develop products.
“I would have done that for the bones of a year back two to three years ago. It would have involved going everywhere from Donegal to Cork to Dublin and meeting county hurlers and footballers and setting them on the right path, in terms of how they can go about setting up their own businesses.”
While he continues to run Wild Irish Seaweeds, Talty’s latest venture is iGAACoach.
This is a platform for GAA coaches where they provide the materials for coaches; like session planning tools and tactics boards, along with other products that coaches use.
But they also offer coach consultancy workshops, where they deliver coach education workshops, and they also work with coaches on a one-to-one consultancy basis.
And soon, on the sidelines, Talty will be looking to help unlock the real potential of a Galway team backed by the all-conquering Kilkerrin-Clonberne players.
“I do think Galway have a fantastic team group of players and even looking at Kilkerrin-Clonberne the other day, like they're a fantastic group,” said Talty.
“I thought it was a really exciting opportunity, and I did mull over it and I thought the draw of working with such quality players, I just couldn’t turn it down. They’ve some brilliant players.
“And I think what Meath have shown is the playing field is quite level there. When you look at Meath, Kerry, Dublin, Donegal, Cork, Mayo, there’s nothing in it, it will be a really exciting championship.
“For me, it will probably be a step up from an intermediate team to a senior team. The other side of it was the lure of just being able to coach was huge for me.
“I couldn’t put the time and effort back into management. The lure of going back as just a coach and really being able to focus on the football side of it was a huge thing for me.”
