High standards: TJ O’Leary with Chelsea boss Emma Hayes

Published: 4 July, 2013
by CATHERINE ETOE

ONE of the borough’s brightest coaching talents will have one eye on the Uefa Women’s European Championships in Sweden when it kicks off on Wednesday.

That’s because some of the players he has been working with are starring in the competition.

TJ O’Leary, 25, has been coaching at youth level since joining Camden Council’s sports development team as a 16-year-old.

But this season the former Reddot midfielder has added a new string to his bow by joining the coaching staff of FA Women’s Super League side Chelsea Ladies.

Chelsea boss Emma Hayes, a former Parliament Hill School pupil who has managed and coached professional women’s teams in America, gave O’Leary a chance to volunteer at the club last year.

And the Queen’s Crescent-based coach, who has already passed his Uefa B Licence, performed so well that she signed him up for her first full season in charge.

“I’m loving it and it’s taken me out of my comfort zone,” he says.

“I’ve done a lot of work at youth level and I know I can improve them. But these are professionals and the gap for improvement is so small that you are almost facilitating the sessions.”

Hayes believes he is doing more than that when he oversees a weekly technical session at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground for internationals such as Sweden’s Sofia Jakobsson, Brazil’s Ester and England’s Eni Aluko.

“He’s a very good technical coach,” says Hayes. “He’s a student of the game and doesn’t just come to absorb ideas, he brings a lot and is playing an important role.”

O’Leary, who was brought up in Maitland Park, also helps run a weekly squad session under Hayes’s direction and supports the team on match days.

“The standard is very high,” he says. “It’s high tempo and it’s where I need to be if I want to work towards my Uefa A Licence because I need to work with top standard players.”

O’Leary joined Camden Council after his GCSEs and still gets a lot of satisfaction from his day job as a sports development officer and NVQ assessor.

He also mentors coaches at Kentish Town FC, where he oversees their youth set-up, and says he would one day like to run a professional men’s academy side.

But now that he has seen the set-up at Chelsea Ladies, the former St Dominic’s School pupil hasn’t ruled out a future role in the women’s game.

“A few people have seen me on television and think I’m doing well, especially coming from Talacre,” he says.

“I’d like to take the Under-21s next season and be responsible for them and, in the future, I would like to coach a team of my own in the WSL.”