These are busy times for Jonny Bonner, but the Buncrana man is hoping that home comforts will ease the pressure.
Bonner has recently launched his new business – JB Fitness and Performance – and successfully completed his UEFA ‘B’ licence as well as sitting his exams at Carlow IT, not to mention getting back to fitness himself after suffering a hamstring injury last month.
The Finn Harps midfielder is to return home permanently to Buncrana again having finished his exams in Carlow and will complete the final year of his Sports Performance and Coaching course at Letterkenny Institute of Technology next year.
Bonner has a big interest in coaching, but the 26-year-old still has a long playing career ahead of him.
He came on as a second-half substitute against Galway United on Friday night after sitting idle for five weeks. In the 22nd minute of the north west derby against Derry City in March, Bonner pulled his hamstring as he stretched to keep the ball in play.
“It was the match I was looking forward to, being a Buncrana man,” Bonner says.
“It was mad. I just over-stretched and was trying to keep it in play. I just felt the pop and it was sore straight away. It was especially disappointing for it to happen at Maginn – I live just a couple of minutes away and had a lot of family and friends at the game – but it was more sickening because I was just coming back to full fitness and into the swing of things again.”
BJ Banda came on for Bonner and was instrumental in the 2-0 win over Derry that night, scoring the first and having a big part in the second, netted by Michael Funston.
But the form went awry thereafter and Harps haven’t won since – and Barry Molloy’s goal in Friday’s 2-1 loss to Galway United was their first goal since, too. It has been a frustrating watch for Bonner.
“It’s just annoying not to be getting the results,” Bonner says.
“You just wish that you could be in there. I’d love to have been in there, fighting for a place and trying to do something. Five weeks out was a long time for the head. The head could be gone going to training and doing your own running and stuff.”
Harps fell to the bottom of the League with a 3-0 defeat to Bray Wanderers ten days ago and, following Friday’s loss in Galway, Ollie Horgan’s team are now three points adrift at the basement.
“Friday was a killer in Galway,” Bonner says. “When you concede in the 92nd minute you’ve just got no time to even get the chance of getting a goal back.
“We know well what the story is and we know we have to be getting points off the teams around us, even getting a draw. We need that and we just have to get that. You could play a 10 out of 10 game against Dundalk or Cork and still get nothing out of them. They could beat anyone off the park, so it’s the games against the teams around us that will make or break us.
“We’re just worried now about getting a point on the board and getting a bit of momentum. We need something to get us off the bottom and up the table a bit. But we’re not far away at the minute. The League is so tight and I think it’ll stay that way until the end of the season.”
JB Fitness and Performance, where Bonner does strength and conditions classes and holds personal training sessions, opened at Lisfannon Business Park and Bonner is piecing his own jigsaw – ‘work, play and education’, as he calls it – together.
He says: “I’m enjoying it now and it’s great to be back home again. I’m glad to be home and able to train all the time with Harps. The college course is a long process, but I passed my UEFA ‘B’ licence during the week there. We had four blocks and had the final assessment in March. We had to do match analysis, make up training sessions and look at recommendations for improvement, I did an assessment on the Harps-Bray game. I’m glad to be finished that now and looking forward to going to LyIT next year and juggling the work, play and education – it’s working out well so far.”
Bonner is in his second spell at Harps now, having been at Wexford Youths for a couple of spells. Proximity to Carlow, where he was studying, was key to signing at Ferrycarrig Park and he was part of the Wexford panel in 2015 that won the First Division, although he left the club for the second half of that year and spent time at Letterkenny Rovers in the Ulster Senior League.
Last year, he impressed in the top flight with Youths before being snapped up by Horgan in the winter. He had previously played under Horgan with the Irish Schools team and the Ulster Schools.
He says: “It was a big decision to come back up to Harps and it wasn’t one that was just made in a couple of days. I had to weigh up all my options, but I’m happy now that I made the decision I did.
“Hopefully now we can stay injury free and start climbing up a bit. It has been hard lately, but we’re not far away and I think we can still get a couple of wins.”
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