Australia-bound Frazer keen to wave goodbye to Ards on a high
JONNY Frazer says the Ards players aren’t disheartened by their bottom of the table status but admits they must start finding consistency to move away from relegation trouble.
Frazer leaves for Australia at the end of this month and wants to go with Ards on the way up rather than looking down under in every sense.
Today they host Warrenpoint Town in a crucial fixture. Despite poor results Ards have not been cut adrift with the relegation fight as intriguing as the chase to become champions. Just nine points separate seventh-placed Glentoran and Ards, who have shown they can earn big results having defeated Linfield.
“We have been unlucky with injuries but also we haven’t been playing well at the right times,” said Frazer. “We have delivered good performances against Linfield and the big teams but when it comes to the crunch games against Newry, Warrenpoint, Dungannon and Institute we have been dropping points when last season we were winning.
“I have been here a year and a half and against Newry recently when we lost 2-0 it was our worst performance in my time.
“We aren’t down or disheartened though because the manager Colin Nixon has been keeping it upbeat in training and now we have a big match against Warrenpoint and we need to win that.
“We are better than the position we are in but we need to start picking up points. Our problem is consistency. We feel we can beat anyone on our day and have shown that. When we have everyone fit and are on our game nobody likes playing Ards.
“I don’t want the club to get relegated whether I’m leaving or not and I don’t want to be leaving when we are bottom. The good thing is that there’s not much between the teams in the bottom half and no one is being cut adrift at this stage.”
THERE are no hard borders in football, Pat Fenlon being a prime example, amid the Brexit wrangling, that everything is possible. Of all the boyhood football dreams he could have imagined growing up on Dublin’s tough north side, not even in his wildest would he have seen himself being cheered wildly on an open top bus ride along Belfast’s Shankill Road.
This is a story of an enduring affinity and mutual affection between a football man, a club and its supporters, remarkable for the diametrically different backgrounds and traditions that became interwoven in the creation of a Linfield legend. Small in stature, he carved out a giant reputation as a midfield genius in Trevor Anderson’s swashbuckling mid-Nineties side.
And now, two decades after he left as a player, Pat Fenlon is back at Windsor Park as Linfield’s newly-appointed general manager.
His job description and avowed aim is to make the club as successful off the pitch as he did on the field in his 1990s trophy-laden spell, topped by a league and cup double in his first season, with the ultimate aim of taking the Blues fulltime. So no pressure then.
The fit is such a natural one, you wonder why they didn’t think of it sooner.
You can just picture the raised eyebrows and sharp intake of excited breath in the Linfield boardroom when they opened the letter of application, postmarked Dublin.
The temptation must have been to lift the phone immediately and ask, ‘When can you start?’
But fair employment procedure decreed that even a favourite son was required to engage in a rigorous interview and presentation process, at the end of which he landed the job on his considerable merits and not just on his football CV. For the past 20 years he has been running a successful cleaning business in Dublin, bringing that acumen and his experience as general manager of Waterford in a conscious change of direction to the commercial side of the game.
In a glittering career as player and manager, the 49-year-old has amassed 10 league titles, north and south, numerous cups and personal accolades.
As a boss, he has directed Shelbourne, Derry City, Bohemians, Hibs in Scotland, Shamrock Rovers, who he supported as a boy, Waterford and the Republic U23s.
Yet he is keen to point out that his Windsor Park remit does not extend to the playing side.
Seated in his new office, next to David Healy’s, with its photographic
❝ I wasn’t oblivious to what was going on with the Troubles but I just wanted to play
reminders of past and present Linfield glories, he insists: “David (right) is the main man on the football side and he is doing a fantastic job. I have no input there.
“My role is different, working to develop a strategy for the future direction of the club over the next five to 10 years. We will be looking to maximise our fantastic facilities at Windsor and the new Midgely Park with its 4G pitch and state of the art training set-up. There are income and commercial targets to be met and we also want to explore a full-time football aspect.
“When you look around Windsor Park it is completely different to when I was first here. It’s a huge opportunity to progress the club. It’s a great time for Linfield to try and develop and it’s something for me to get my teeth into.”
It is to a new Northern Ireland, as well as a new Windsor, he has returned.
The age-old ‘no Catholics’ signing taboo at Windsor had been well and truly broken by the time he arrived from Bohemians in still troubled times in 1994.
But as the first Dublin Catholic to sign for the Blues and a significant, for then, £25,000 transfer fee to justify, eyes were upon him, north and south.
Linfield supporters, by then, were less interested in what foot a player metaphorically kicked with and more on how he used his feet on the field of play. Unfazed by the symbolism of his signing, Fenlon was determined he would win over the most demanding crowd in Irish football by doing his talking on the pitch. He did not make an immediate impact.
“I arrived with a bit of an injury and didn’t play well in my first few games,” he recalls. “But gradually my form improved and the turning point came in a game against Cliftonville when I scored a rare headed goal.
“Trevor subbed me soon after and the crowd went ballistic at him. As I trooped off, Trevor whispered to me, ‘You’ve arrived now, that’s them showing they appreciate you as a player’.
“It was a great piece of management by Trevor, taking stick from the fans to big me up with them.”
And so began a mutual love affair with those fans who immortalised their new hero in song and affectionately nicknamed him Billy.
Surreal is a word that crops up frequently in our conversation.
Like when he recalls that open top bus ride on the Shankill to celebrate the 1994 double. His goal against Glentoran on a dramatic last day of the league had secured the title for Linfield and a week later, he scored the second goal in a 2-0 Irish Cup final win over Bangor.
“I’m looking at the crowds