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?!
