Gartland took long road to land big prizes
THE offer was €200 a week with the added bonus of a lot less hassle.
Still, the money was just paltry enough for Brian Gartland to feel as if he had to hold out for more. When Shelbourne upped their offer to €300 the following day, he was ready to accept. What followed was a sequence of events that completely transformed the direction of the Dubliner’s career, as well as his life.
It was the summer of 2013 and the defender, then 26, had spent a couple of weeks training with his former club under manager Johnny McDonnell.
His contract with Portadown in the Irish League was up. Before that Gartland had been plodding away with Monaghan United (now defunct) and seemed to be going nowhere. Just another journeyman doing the rounds, racking up the miles and little else. Certainly not medals.
‘If Johnny had offered me anything in the two weeks before I probably would have just signed, I would have been happy to get playing down south because I was sick of travelling,’ Gartland recalls.
When €200 was put to him, his pride wouldn’t allow him accept. ‘I said, “Look, I need a little bit more”, it wasn’t much at all. The next morning he rang me and said he could get me a bit extra, €100 or something.’
Then another phone call, this one from Drogheda United manager Mick Cooke. ‘When I was off the phone from Johnny I had a voicemail from Mick saying, “Look, don’t do anything, I’m trying to build something here”,’ Gartland explains.
Shelbourne and Drogheda were the only options — until a third phone call, one that changed everything. ‘Then I had a voicemail from Stephen Kenny when I was off the phone from Mick. That was the one that was completely out of the blue. I was on the phone to him three, four, five times that day and I said, “Because it’s only three months until the end of the season, I’ll give it a chance”.’
What followed has been unimaginable — four Premier Division titles, one of which was part of the double with the Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup in 2015, two League Cups and a Europa League adventure which will go down in history.
‘And I married a girl around the corner, have a house around the corner, too,’ Gartland says.
Shelbourne and Drogheda? Well they’re mired in the First Division as the centre-back prepares to celebrate his 32nd birthday on the day of his fourth successive FAI Cup showdown with Cork.
The Knocklyon native is a prime example of how Kenny assembled a disparate group of League of Ireland faces and turned them into the dominant force in Irish football. For all the plaudits they have received for their attacking prowess, the make-up of the defence and their ability to stand the test of time tells you all you need to know about the backbone of their success.
Gartland, along with full-backs Sean Gannon and Dane Massey, played in each of the three showpieces against Cork at Lansdowne Road, collecting all four of the league titles over the past five seasons. Each remain firm fix- tures in the starting XI, as does goalkeeper Gary Rogers who arrived in 2015.
Chris Shields and John Mountney are the only two players who preceded Kenny’s arrival. The former finally established himself as a mainstay in midfield over the last eight months, earning himself a nomination on the three-man PFA Ireland Player of the Year shortlist alongside teammates Michael Duffy and Pat Hoban.
Club captain Stephen O’Donnell, while absent for most of this campaign after breaking his leg, is still an influential figure, and all of their stories are similar to Gartland’s — plucked by Kenny and given a platform to achieve.
Take Massey. At 24, he gave up his job as a full-time electrician in Dublin city centre and part-time footballer with Bray Wanderers to chase the dream with Dundalk. Like Gartland, he could have stayed in the capital, in his case a move to Bohemians, and saved himself a thousand trips and more up and down the M1.
Instead he opted for a different route, a road paved with silverware. Likewise Gannon, who lifted two league titles with Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick’s Athletic in 2011 and ’13 respectively but was a peripheral figure for both triumphs. He, too, headed north, tempted by Kenny’s plans. Now 27 years old, the boy who grew up in the shadow of Lansdowne Road in Ringsend has been named the best right-back in the country for the five past seasons.
The signing of goalkeeper Rogers, 37 and with a year extension to his contract already signed, provided the voice of experience. A stalwart of the league-winning Sligo Rovers in 2012, the Meath man has now played over 500 League of Ireland games during a lengthy career which has been bookended with the sort of success to make all the sacrifices worthwhile.
But it is the manager, ultimately, who remains the driving force. ‘He wants to break every single record going,’ Gartland says. ‘The players are the same. This year we had the highest number of clean sheets (29) that we’ve ever had, and the fewest goals (20) conceded [in the league]. We are just trying to get past everything.
‘The likes of Gary Rogers and myself would always be getting onto each other about what we need. We know what the records are. I suppose it’s what you are judged on as a defender but obviously you want to be a part of the team creating records.’
It certainly beats the €300 a week Gartland was going to take.
‘You want to be part of a team creating records’