‘Everything we achieved was history-making’
In the final part of our series about the greatest years in Drogheda United’s history, Paul Doolin tells Marcus Cavaroli about what the league title meant to him and reflects on the club’s dramatic plunge to examinership.
MANY Drogheda United supporters will tell you that Drogheda’s FAI Cup triumph in Lansdowne Road was their most cherished memory - but for Paul Doolin the league crown of 2007 topped the lot.
For more than two decades the Boynesiders had drifted between the two tiers, struggling to keep afloat any year they operated in the Premier Division - but the Dubliner took Drogheda to another level.
There are still critics out there today who maintain that all the success came because the club had the biggest budget, but taking Doolin’s five-year reign as a whole that certainly wasn’t the case.
‘People say it was easy at Drogheda - you had money - but I think that’s a disgrace because when I started the club was at the bottom of the league,’ said Doolin.
‘We used to have to hoist up the floodlights for training. They were likes the ones you see on the roads when you’re working at night time and we had four of those - and that was great coming from where we had been previously.
‘Then the club wanted to go full-time and I signed players and it started from there, and from the time we went full-time and started to be successful it was an absolutely brilliant time.’
The start of the 2007 season was extremely challenging as the squad was decimated by injuries, and at one time Jason Gavin, Dan Connor, Damian Lynch, Brian Shelley, Shane Barrett, Declan O’Brien, Graham Gartland, Aidan O’Keeffe, James Keddy and Andrew Hageman were all out of action at the same time.
Nevertheless, Drogheda still managed to make a successful defence of their Setanta Sports Cup title, memorably defeating Linfield in a shootout at Windsor Park as keeper Mikko Vilmunen saved two of the penalties.
Once again there was European football to look forward to and Drogheda started out with a routine 4-1 aggregate win over Libertas of San Marino.
The trip to the tiny republic, situated in the north east of Italy and with a population almost identical to Drogheda’s, was much more memorable than the away leg itself, which finished 1-1, but thankfully they got the job done second time around in Dalymount Park.
Next up in Europe was a mouth-watering joust with Helsingborgs, who had a certain Henrik Larsson leading their attack.
The former Celtic legend duly scored in the 1-1 draw at Dalymount and the Swedes were in a different class in the second leg as they coasted to a 3-0 win. Helsingborgs scored eight goals in the next round and then came out of the group stage before being knocked out by PSV Eindhoven.
Doolin admitted the game in Scandinavia was the most disappointing of Drogheda’s 12 European games under his tutelage as it was the only one where his team were comfortably out-played. Another round of European football while maintaining their challenge for the title would have been a huge challenge, however.
That push for league honours had reached a pivotal point, with St Patrick’s, Bohemians and Cork City all still in the race along with the Drogs. Shamrock Rovers had long since dropped out of the race and Dundalk were in the First Division of course!
Doolin, who was always highly regarded as a coach, now had to manage - and he didn’t hold back.
‘There are always players who have their views about the manager, whether he is a good manager or coach, and I had no qualms about that, but the club had supported me all the way and I wasn’t going to let anything or anyone blocks us from what we were trying to do,’ he said.
‘They could say they liked me or not, but I was there to do a job, they weren’t going to get away with anything and they could never say that the club wasn’t run properly.
‘You’d fall out with people along the way, but everybody was aiming for the same thing and everything we aimed for we achieved.
‘We’d won the Setanta Cup again in May, but mid-way through the campaign the league was very tight. It was a strong league - it’s not as strong now in my opinion - and there were a lot of really good players. We had a meeting and we said a few things.’
There was no sign of a Helsingborgs hangover after returning from Sweden, though - quite the reverse and the Boynesiders soon went on a five-match winning run, culminating in that famous night against Cork in United Park when summer signing Guy Bates once again proved his worth.
‘When Guy arrived he was a good lad, a cheerful type of a man and a very good player, although he could have been fitter, and he scored some really important goals for us,’ Doolin recalled.
‘The one against Cork [to win the league] was a brilliant goal. I remember it was 1-1, and if it stayed that way we still had a few games to go to get the two points we needed, but myself and John Carroll were making a substitution with a few minutes to go.
‘We wanted to bring on Tony Grant and it was a toss-up between Eamon Zayed and Guy who would be taken off. Eamon came off, Guy stayed on and the rest is history!
‘Over 33 games it’s a long season and you have to be at it all the time. For me the league is great. If you get the two of them [League and Cup] you’re doing well, but I think the league was the one that was the most important to me.’
It wasn’t just about trophies, though - Doolin wanted his team to be respected and congratulated for the way they played, just as Stephen Kenny said many times about his Dundalk team.
‘You could be right that we played our best football in Europe, but some of the goals we scored over the years at United Park and the football that created those goals was unbelievable,’ said the former Drogheda boss.
‘The pitch was so small and you couldn’t really move, but Matt and Dinny worked on it and the surface was brilliant. Our football in United Park was absolutely top-drawer and the team didn’t really get the credit for it, in my opinion. Forget about winning trophies, it was the way they did it.
‘When I hear managers now saying they’ve got a four-year plan - the Dundalks, Linfields, Shamrock Rovers and Pats all have history and managers say we have to find our way.
‘When you look at Drogheda, a small club, everything we did was history-making. The first to win the FAI Cup, the first southern team to win the Setanta Cup, the first team to retain the Setanta Cup and the first to win the Setanta Cup with the league title at the end.
‘Nobody else has taken a team from second bottom to the top and I give great credit to the players, staff and myself for taking that club from where it was to practically knocking Dynamo Kiev out of the Champions League.’
Given his less successful spells with UCD and Cork City, it was his time with Drogheda that shaped Doolin’s managerial career, paving the way for his promotion to work with international teams, and he’s never forgotten that.
‘It was an absolutely brilliant time,’ he said. ‘I remember when I went to Cork City and I came up to play in United Park and somebody wrote in the programme that avoiding relegation was better than all the success we had. I don’t really understand that.
‘The one thing nobody could say was that I was disrespectful to Drogheda or the town. I always knew how to behave and the players always knew and they were very, very good. How could anyone say that that was better than those successful years?
‘From that day in United Park when we beat Bohs 2-0 [in 2003] it was only that way [up]. All the way, all the way - the five years I was there. They never had it before and they haven’t had it since.
‘I understand it’s different times now, but it was a great time and I really enjoyed it.’