More glory on horizon if Kenny wants
LONG after he’d tucked in his flapping white shirt, put away the microphone and allowed his heartbeat return to normal, a composed Stephen Kenny arrived in the press room at the Aviva Stadium, with an old friend — the FAI Cup.
The Dubliner is more familiar than most managers with the fine silver trophy having contested eight finals since his breakthrough year with Longford Town in 2001.
He knows the highs, and lows, which follow the final whistle in the FAI Cup.
Euphoria, as he experienced yesterday, is also close to agony, especially in tight finals as this one was, and against a familiar foe in Cork City.
‘We’ve won and lost Cup finals here. When you lose, it’s a lonely place,’ he said.
‘We’ve a reception for the players in the Ballymascanlon Hotel tonight and a civic event in Dundalk tomorrow. It would be difficult to face going up the road without it [the trophy]. I couldn’t bear thinking about it.’
Kenny’s body of work as manager won’t be accurately assessed until his career is run. Just turned 47, he has many miles yet to travel and more fields to conquer.
A thinker, a planner, Kenny is already coveting a long adventure in European combat next summer when Dundalk return to the Champions League preliminaries.
He is right in his assessment that the primary UEFA club competition offers a more straightforward route to the Europa League group stage with its back-door benefits and is eager to repeat the heroics of 2016 when Dundalk’s Euro season stretched into December.
No one would bet against him achieving more, not when he’s in the position to hold on to the players he wants, but also spend when he feels the need.
Dundalk splurged out a decent five-figure fee to Oldham for Patrick McEleney in July and were rewarded when the returning prodigal son helped get them over the line in the League and whose rare header decide a tight Cup final yesterday.
With upwards of €850,000 to come as champions, plus whatever greenbacks the club’s US owners have in their pockets, Kenny should have a stronger hand to deal from next year.
Not that he sees cash as the key to the club’s success.
‘We’ve built a team with young Irish players, not from the top teams,’ he said.
‘Just because we’ve US investment, that’s irrelevant. It might help us retain players, in the past we’ve lost them all,’ he said.
Kenny has now overseen the capture of six major trophies — four League and two FAI Cups — in his six years as Dundalk manager. That total rises to eight if you include two League Cup wins, a competition Kenny has taken seriously.
By coincidence, he has won the same number of trophies as Jim McLaughlin, who is widely regarded as the finest manager not only in Dundalk’s history, but also over the League of Ireland’s 98 years.
McLaughlin gathered three Leagues and three FAI Cups, as well as two League Cups, in a seven-year reign at Oriel from 1974 to 1983.
Already, many Dundalk diehards feel Kenny’s feats hold that more credence, as he has won two doubles for the Lilywhites, to McLaughlin’s one, and travelled that bit further in Europe too.
‘I know Jim and his family, well. The trophy count is not something that motivates me. It’s just trying to create big moments, the European nights, days like today. That’s the motivation,’ said Kenny.
Should those ‘big moments’ continue in 2019, and beyond, then Kenny will eclipse McLaughlin, in the Dundalk Hall of Fame, and may well threaten his all-time status too.
Dundalk’s win completed a grand slam of doubles for Irish clubs as they followed Bohemians (U19s), Finn Harps (U17s), St Patrick’s Athletic (U15s) and the women of Wexford Youths as serial winners this season.
Of the five, it is Kenny’s Dundalk who set the highest standards.