Is this what we have been reduced to?

Limerick 4 Dundalk 1... no more believable if you were there to witness it.

This must be rock bottom for a team so racked by injuries that most of the players on the pitch were not first choice for the position they were in, or were in the wrong position.

Chris Bennion - second choice at the moment to Niall Gallagher
Niall Gallagher - fit, and playing well, but always under threat from "Benno"

John Flanagan, injured and out indefinitely. Replaced by Stephen Quigley.
Stephen Quigley, an extremely able replacement for Flano, until an injury rules him out of action.
Robbie Dunne, gives his all but is just not a natural in the position.

Ben Whelehan, injured and out for another couple of weeks. Replaced by Thomas McGauley.
Thomas McGauley, good replacement for Ben until he was involved in a car accident and then had a honeymoon to go on, all of which ruled him out for about a month. Now on his way back to fitness.
Paul Marney, covered for McGauley until he also received an injury.
David Crawley, covering in central defence but not as comfortable there as at left full, and arguably not deserving of his place in the team in either position.

Aidan Lynch, just back from injury and again leaving the pitch limping badly.
Vinny Perth (yes, you read right!) covering for Lynch in defence.

David Crawley, forced to leave his position at left full to cover the central defence.
James Hand, coping quite well with covering for David in his absence, arguably deserving to retain that place going forward.

Bad enough to lose a player or two, but to lose an entire defence and then an entire set of replacements is more than bad luck.


These problems have translated into a bad string of performances and, naturally from that, a bad set of results.

The bad results have had a serious impact on morale at the club, more significant an impact than I would personally have hoped for after the past season and a half. Fans are starting to give up hope of promotion, although we are still within sight of the finishing post with more than a full round of games remaining. Some are also starting to criticise performances, which in some cases is quite justified. Others are questioning Gills capability of gaining us promotion, allowing a short run to cloud their memories of a long term improvement at the club and in the team. Then there are the few that have decided that they feel justified in taking their frustrations out on the players, by shouting abuse at them during games. This to me is unacceptable, ignorant and cruel. The players are already disheartened by results, performances and enforced changes to the team. The players who seem to be attracting the lion's share of this treatment are those who put in most effort week after week, are most disheartened anyway and are most affected by the abuse.

Please, please, please, try to remain supportive through this difficult time and help the players to get back on track to earn the promotion we have already deserved once and been denied.

Amazing times, scary times...

Dundalk FC finally seems to be heading in the right direction, heading uphill in a way that lilywhites had been hoping and working for throughout all of the years since it became apparent exactly how speedily the club was being dragged downhill.

One person/group of people after another seemed to come in promising the earth and delivering destructive chaos. How things change!

The club now has dragged itself (kicking and screaming admittedly!) onto the right track.

Off the field, the right people have come in to run the club as it needs to be run. As a functioning, potentially successful, business.

On the field, the right people have come in to run the team as it needs to be run. As a functioning, already successful, squad.

John Gill is being hailed as a saviour, a messiah, exactly the medicine required after the preceeding string of management choices. He is the opposite of Jim Gannon in every way – positive, professional (actually professional, rather than Gannon style!), respectful (and therefore respected!), energetic, enthusiastic and a great ambassador for the club. His sidekick Gerry Scully seems to mirror and complement John perfectly, this management team seems to have what it takes.

He has assembled a group of players who work hard, work together and do whatever it takes to achieve results. What's more, they seem to love every single second of it! A group of players who seem to take pride in pulling on the white (or black) shirt each week and going out to represent a club with a glorious past who ache for an even more impressive future.

Gerry Matthews has come in and is doing those things necessary to turn the club around that are outside John Gill's reach. He is working closely with the people at the club who can most help him and is achieving results in almost every area.

Colin Toner was taken on to run the bar. And he has certainly been running things. The improvements were the start – a paint job, a covered smoking area, friendly staff. The Lilywhite Lounge is now a place that people want to be, and this has combined with increased match attendances to result in a packed bar after every single game. Colin is a worker, leaves no stone unturned and makes people feel welcome in the bar. This is reflected in the rest of the bar staff and has made a noticeable difference to the club.

These are just some of the many changes taking place at the club, there are too many to mention without boring any reader!

The effect that these changes have had is the most important thing.

People are enjoying going to matches... anybody who has been going to matches for the past 10 years knows exactly how massive a change THAT is, and the crowds speak for themselves. Away matches are now also attracting decent numbers of travelling fans – most notably, the Oriel Travel Club heading to Limerick on a Friday afternoon/evening with an almost full bus of fans. Perhaps even more pleasantly surprising was the number of fans who made their way to Limerick independently!

Fans take their positions in the “choir” about 30 minutes before kick off! I remember arriving at Oriel Park 30 mins before kick off not so long ago and having to wait to get in because the gates hadn't been opened yet! There is a buzz about the ground as early as half an hour before the game is due to start, an air of expectancy has replaced the negatively charged atmosphere of previous games. When the game is over, the fans show no intentions of leaving. Requests at big away games for Dundalk fans to remain in the ground after full time have been met with cheers. The team respond well to this, returning to the pitch in Oriel to cool down in what looks like an excuse to acknowledge the fans once more, an action that is much appreciated by the vocal support.

Things haven't really started fantastically well on the pitch this season, performances have yet to reach their optimum levels and the players are well aware of this. But the big differences are that, firstly the results have been better with the team remaining unbeaten having played everybody else in the league, and secondly that the fans are now optimistically betting on an unbeaten run in the league this season as opposed to calls at this stage last year for the manager to resign. What a difference a year makes!

I have been supporting Dundalk FC since the 1987/88 season, when the team won the double. I was lucky enough to attend the cup final where John Cleary scored the only goal to take the cup back to Dundalk. I was in Tolka Park in 2002, on the amazing day where we beat the odds as well as Bohemians to take the cup home (being relegated a week later took the shine off that one slightly). There have been some amazing times in the almost 20 years that I have called myself a lilywhite. But none of those compares to the climax to last season (despite the best efforts of the FAI to take the shine off it!) I never felt so proud (and I have never been ashamed) to wear the Dundalk shirt as I did the night of the second away match in Galway. We brought an amazing number of fans to the other side of the country on a Friday night, they sang their hearts out for every minute that they were in the ground and were applauded by the stewards after the final whistle. I have never seen that before! The team played their socks off to earn a victory that seemed, at the time, to matter a great deal in our efforts to earn promotion (little did we know that it didn't mean a thing). That was one of the most amazing nights in my footballing memory, and I will never forget it.

This season has taken up where last season left off in terms of support, attitude and fan base. It has followed on in standards on the pitch from the middle of the season and will reach, at least, the levels attained at the end of last season by the end of the year. It is only a matter of time.

36 games is a hell of a long run, and to do a quarter of that without conceding a single defeat is an amazing achievement. We need to up the ante slightly though, we need to be more convincing on the pitch and aim to win more of our games (while ensuring that we don't take our foot off the pedal in terms of not coneding defeat). Something tells me that this is all part of the plan though, that John Gill, Gerry Scully and the rest of their team are well aware of where they are and where they need to be. We have made a great start to the season, and we now have something that we never had throughout last season. Our fate is in our hands – the only team that can beat us IS us. That is a scarily wonderful feeling, to finally be in control of our destiny. We need to ensure that we stay united throughout the club and continue to push towards our common goal. That goal is to win the division (convincingly), to earn promotion (fairly) and to throw last years's shambles back at the FAI by showing them how wrong they were to exclude us from their choices for this year's Premier Division. It will be hard, but how much satisfaction will there be in proving that Mr Delaney and his yes men were as wrong as we said they were?!

Ding Ding as Drogheda United take on Meath Co Council

Vincent Hoey has started a campaign. But it's a bullying campaign. He wants to blackmail Meath County Councillors into doing what he, and his shady financial backers, ask. No questions asked, no delays, just do it.

He wants them to ignore the fact that the plans he is trying to force through are not just for the amazing stadium and sporting facilities that he has predicted will be built. He wants to bury the rest of the plans in what he seems to think is an offer Meath Co Co cannot refuse.

How grateful I am that the Councillors appear to be standing firm against this tirade!

It is very public knowledge that the plan for the stadium is a trojan horse. The developers see this as a loss leader. What price a stadium of any size in exchange for 5,000 homes in one of Dublin's biggest suburbs and commuter belts. I'm sure that they are seeing euro signs having witnessed the success of other such developments around the country.

This development, in itself, may not be such a bad thing. Building double Meath's planned new developments in one roll of the dice may not spell disaster by itself. However, the plans are to build a small town without any regard for the provision of water supply, sewage treatment, schools, shopping facilities or any of the other necessities of living. Somehow I don't think the luxury item that is a sports centre will make up for the lack of essentials.

This is not something that Meath Co Co should consider for even one moment in its current format. I am sure that they are also aware that similar pressure was previously put on Louth Co Co, who refused to bow to a slightly less public campaign.

This time though it's worse. This time the Chairman of a "well run" football club - a club labelled the blueprint of how football clubs in this country should be run - has taken what many see as a step too far. In a desperate plea to avoid losing the financial backing that this club would now perish without, he is asking Drogheda fans to persecute Meath Co Councillors using a contact list that he has compiled for them. His accusation, which he hopes fans will repeat on his behalf, is that if permission is not given for these plans to go ahead then the newly dubbed Meath football team will not survive. Funny that this club's self appointed title until recently was "the pride of County Louth"! This was also quite a claim for a club who have one major trophy to their name in their entire history!

What makes Vincent Hoey think that he has the right to ride roughshod over the planning laws of this country?
Does he not realise that he is doing a hell of a lot of dirty work for his club's investors? Is the return really worth it?
He seems very willing to gloss over the unsavoury aspects of this entire affair, but he needs to be confronted on them.

Drogheda went full time with the backing of these investors. The club boasted about how they were going to have a new stadium built for them by these "money men". A number of years back, when Drogheda United faced bankruptcy, the FAI bailed them out by buying United Park. The club continued to have free use of the ground, and the ground continued to increase in value as property boomed in this country and in particular in Dublin suburbs. When these investors got on board, the FAI then sold the ground back to the club at the same price they had paid for it, despite the fact that the ground was now worth many times more.

Interestingly, the return of the ground to the club coincided rather neatly with the arrival of the money men. But what could property developers possibly want with United Park - a prime development location with easy access to Drogheda town and also to the M1 link to Dundalk, Dublin and Belfast?

The deal was then made - the developers would build Drogheda Utd a new stadium outside the town in exchange for United Park. Hardly a new scenario, this has happened elsewhere in the country before now. The trouble seems to be when greed developed. Instead of building a new stadium for the club, why not a massive complex with other money making facilities also available? The bigger the better, the more fuss that could be made about this facility then the less attention would be given to the housing development being smuggled in behind.

Drogheda United FC made a huge miscalculation.
They thought that they could bank on investors, ignoring the fact that the investors had their own agenda and that a LOI football club is not a way to make a fast buck.
They thought that they could bank on increased income through increased gates, merchandising and revenue, ignoring the fact that in football these are things that can never be banked on.
They thought that they could bank on the sway of an eircom League soccer club in one of Ireland's biggest GAA heartlands, ignoring the fact that Meath people do not have short enough memories to forget that Drogheda claimed to be a Louth club until they were seeking permission to build in Meath.
And the biggest error in judgement of all?
They thought that they could pull the wool over all of our eyes, and are now reacting in the most immature of ways since their bluff has been called.

Good on the Meath County Councillors. The vast majority of LOI fans in this country are behind you and want you to do the right thing. Stand firm, and show Vincent Hoey and the rest of Drogheda Utd FC that bullying does not pay!

Dundalk scrape 3-2 win against Harps

The first game of the season was a hard fought win at Oriel Park against Harps. It wasn't pretty, but it was effective. The lilywhites did what they had to do to get 3 points. Performances will need to improve from here if promotion is to be won at the end of the year, but this team makes it look as though that is highly likely to happen. Players are still finding their feet, and when things start to settle then Dundalk FC will be a force to be reckoned with.

Results elsewhere were not exactly as we would have expected, which means two things.
One - everybody will probably beat everybody else, which means teams will drop points and that means that if we win our games our destiny is in our own control.
Two - This is going to be a very competitive league, ie there are going to be no runaway winners as there have been in previous years.

It is going to be a battle to the end, but then again that is the kind of battle that Dundalk FC seems to relish!