Greville Arms staff bid farewell to departing manager

When you go in to the Greville Arms Hotel, you will know many of the faces, the people who have worked there for years, many of them with John Cochrane, the general manager who has recently announced his retirement. It is a good sign of any workplace that there are lots long-serving staff.

Louise Murtagh, marketing and customer service manager, and Declan Murphy, bar manager, are two of those staff at the Greville (17 years and “close on 30 years” of service respectively), and they agreed to a request from the Westmeath Examiner to speak on behalf of their colleagues, past and present, about Mr Cochrane.

Declan said: “For all the years that I’ve worked here under John Cochrane, I’ve always found him to be very efficient, very professional in what he does, very approachable – if there was anything you ever wanted, he’d always have your back. We’d work together; it wasn’t the case that he was behind us driving us, he was working alongside us all the time. He’d bring you along with him.

“He has his little mannerisms, he was probably ‘the most organised – but never panic’ [laughs]. We will never hear the words ringing around the hotel again, ‘go go go go go go’. That was when things were getting a little bit under pressure.

“He was the ultimate professional in his work. He’d have a word for everyone coming into the place.

“His love was probably here and football, and I think his pride and joy was the time Westmeath won the Leinster championship, and the Greville Arms was across the jersey. That was a brilliant year for everybody in Westmeath, but particularly here at the hotel. I remember that night well when they came back. It was a brilliant night. It was crazy, hectic, call it what you like, but you just went around with a smile on your face, because everybody was just happy.”

Louise and Declan said that Leinster championship homecoming was a major highlight of John’s time at the Greville; and the others were the fleadhanna of 2022 and 2023. “They were brilliant weeks, and huge organisation went into it from John’s point of view; everything went off smoothly. The reason the second year was better was down to the planning that went into the first year, and that was John making a few trips to Drogheda to experience the fleadh having a look to see what was going on there.”

“He wasn’t just the boss, he was a mentor and a friend, I started at 16 and he’s been there from day one,” said Louise. Asked what the main lesson she had learned from John was, Louise said: “Be confident and believe in yourself.” Declan added: “He was the kind of a man that would put the arm around you and encourage you, and there was nothing he would ask you to do that he wasn’t prepared to do himself. “We might have cursed him a few times, but shur!”