Connolly longing for even bigger nights in group stages

CLUB General Manager Martin Connolly sees no reason why Dundalk cannot go all the way to the Champions League group stages following the side’s heroics over BATE Borisov last week.

After a night which he described as the greatest in the club’s history, Connolly joined around 120 or so Lilywhites supporters at Oriel Park on Friday morning for the Champions League play-off draw which paired Dundalk with Polish champions Legia Warsaw.

While his role means he has to be more focused on the logistical aspects of things rather than on the field matters, he insists Stephen Kenny’s brilliance has everyone at the club dreaming of more special nights ahead.

‘Why can’t we?,’ he said when asked if Dundalk could now go the whole way to the Champions League group stages.

‘When you’ve a manager like Stephen Kenny he won’t let you think that you can’t do it. Look at what we’ve achieved so far in such a short space of time and we’re very sure that the journey hasn’t ended yet.’

Asked for a reaction to the draw, Connolly said he hoped the Irish sporting public, together with the large Polish community in Ireland, would combine to create a memorable atmosphere at the first leg in the Aviva Stadium on Wednesday August 17th.

‘You’ve got to be happy with it,’ he said about the pairing.

‘You have one eye on the fact about what draw will get people into the Aviva Stadium and what draw is winnable. When you have Stephen Kenny as man-manager any draw is winnable but on the opposite side of things you’d imagine that the Polish community in Ireland and the way they travel in numbers that we’ll have a substantial away crowd in the Aviva. ‘As I’ve said a couple of times, we’re not going to fill the Aviva Stadium with Dundalk supporters along so we’d appeal to every soccer supporter in the country get behind us on this and come up to the Aviva and support us.’ It had been revealed before the draw that Dundalk would be playing their home leg at the Aviva rather than Tallaght and Connolly revealed that such a venue was almost a necessity for what he described as the biggest football match ever to be staged in Ireland.

‘Tallaght probably was an option to be honest but there would have needed to be a lot of work done in Tallaght but the timescale and turnaround would have really put us under a lot of pressure with everything else that is going on in the place. It would have been just an added pressure that we probably didn’t need.

‘The Aviva was a cleaner option and now when you see the numbers that you could be dealing with it looks to be justified. It’s not an FAI gig, it’s a UEFA gig. It was a wee bit scary yesterday. We spent the afternoon meeting with UEFA and some of the guidelines that have to be met are unreal.

‘We just need to emphasise this is now the biggest soccer game that was every played in Ireland, certainly involving a domestic team, but possibly ever. One of the things UEFA did point out to us is that this is bigger than a Euro Qualifier, bigger than a World Cup qualifier and bigger than a Euro play-off. For example, in a normal game in the Aviva you might have 10 cameras but for our next game you have to have 14.

‘It’s going to be a massive operation and we can’t emphasise enough how big it’s going to be.’

It’ll be big all right but if Kenny and co have their way there will be plenty more big nights in store for Dundalk FC.