Traitors' star Sam built his character with local sport clubs
Sam Omukoro has been a familiar face on the sporting scene in Athlone since his early years, playing both Gaelic football and soccer and building a disposition and work ethic.
Those traits served him in his starring role on the Irish version of the international hit tv series, The Traitors, recently.
Now aged 28, Sam has become familiar to people across Ireland after appearing on the tv show where he spent ten highly competitive days in Slane Castle among multiple cameras, taking on unusual missions, making friendships and analysing his suspicions of his fellow co-stars.
However, long before he became a household name through the RTE 1 tv series, Sam was simply a young Athlone boy who loved sport.
Sam emigrated to Ireland with his family from Nigeria, when he was six years old, and has no memory of his birth country.
“I started off in Mosney when my family came to Ireland and we lived there for a few years before we moved to Dublin, and then later to Athlone,” said Sam to the Westmeath Independent this week.
He was around ten years old then, going to school in Clonbonny NS, and at the time soccer was his number one sport.
“That’s what I played all the time,” he said.
He had joined Willow Park and the pre-teen Sam made an immediate impression on the pitch.
“I think I scored a goal on my debut from centre-back,” he remembered.
That performance also helped encourage him that he was also suited to Gaelic football.
Sam joined Athlone GAA and initially found himself between the posts in goal.
“In goal, was the first position I was in, but it wasn’t for me long-term,” he said laughing.
Sam played underage football with Athlone GAA from under-10s upwards, progressing through the under-11s and under-12s before being moved outfield at under-14 level.
“I found my niche there, at midfield, and I continued on and became more involved in Gaelic,” he said.
As Sam's Gaelic and soccer playing developed with the two clubs, he started studying at Marist College, and took up a place on the Gaelic team there, which put him in the position in his early teens as being a member of three Athlone football clubs!
“I think playing with the different clubs helped better my skills as time went along,” he said.
There were championship successes along the way, including under-14 and under-16 titles, and he also became involved with Westmeath at minor level, and lined out in Croke Park on a couple of occasions.
“I was young playing senior football for the Marist, and I was about sixteen years old playing minors,” he said.
Sam worked with different well-known coaches throughout his football years, including in Willow Park; David McGuinness and Declan Holohan, and in GAA with Jim Rigney, Joe Fallon and the late Davey Allen among others.
“I prioritised football in those younger days, football was all of my life,” he said.
Sam remembers one period when he had something going on sportswise for 14 consecutive days without a break.
“It was intense, and I was a bit burnt out but it was my life and ambition, and I couldn’t see beyond that,” said Sam, who admits his academic work didn’t always balance with sport.
However, he also describes himself as a “late bloomer,” academically, when he went to GMIT, to study Business Information Systems and spent four years living in Galway.
While studying, his connection with football remained strong and he was regularly travelling home to Athlone for training. It was another example of the commitment which had characterised his sporting life since childhood.
Sam’s working life eventually developed in a completely different direction, and in recent times he has worked in Information Technology, with the HSE which saw him based at the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar and covering HSE sites across Westmeath and into Longford. He has since moved into a data analyst role with the HSE and now mostly works from home.
Last year, Sam and his partner, Odesa, sat down to watch the Irish version of The Traitors on RTE 1 and, like many viewers, became hooked.
“We watched the first series through to the finale and loved it and I began thinking that the programme was something I would love to get involved in,” he said.
Sam’s sporting background had given him a competitive nature, and he decided to take a chance and apply for the second series of The Traitors.
“I threw in an application and thought I’d go in there and try winning it,” he said.
He had forgotten about it and a couple of months later, while on holiday in Tenerife, Sam checked his emails over breakfast and discovered that the programmers wanted him for a Zoom call.
An interview followed, and sometime later another email arrived, offering him the chance of taking part in the next round of applications. After making the cut, he signed strict confidentiality agreements, and he had to keep it a tight secret from everyone except his mother and partner.
Sam began filming with the rest of the participants on The Traitors last March at Slane Castle.
“I’d only known Slane Castle for going to concerts,” he said. “I never thought I’d find myself going through the door.”
The filming schedule was demanding, beginning around 7.30 or 8am with missions, meals, and the round table discussion all forming part of very long days.
Sam has kept up a strength training lifestyle, but he went further and prepared himself more physically before going on the show because he knew the missions would involve plenty of running and action.
“I wanted to stand out in the missions, so I had myself prepped going into it,” he said.
Physical preparation was only one part of the challenge. The other was the mental game and Sam and everyone else were watching each other.
“You’re reading constantly 24-7,” Sam explained. “You’re scanning body language and everything, and it was like being out on a pitch.”
His approach was deliberately measured, and Sam wasn’t one of the most vocal contestants from the outset.
“That was deliberate,” he said. “I thought, speak up, but not be too vocal. I had my moments and I picked my moments.”
It was Sam’s first experience of how a major television production works. Yet amid all the suspicion and strategy, he made friendships and alliances with people he had only just met.
“When you’re spending hours and hours with people, you start to build a bond and friendships very quickly, but I also had to be aware that I was in competition against everyone,” he said.
After ten days, Sam’s time on the show came to an end, but his experience was far from finished. He emerged from the Slane Castle show with a much wider public profile and a taste for television.
When asked if he would do The Traitors again, his answer was immediate.
“Yeah, I would do it again. Absolutely, I’d do it,” he said. “It was definitely worth doing, and I think anyone should try it, if they would like to. It was really worth it for me.”