‘I couldn’t face it - I wanted it so bad’

ON what was undoubtedly the biggest night in the club’s history, Dundalk FC co-owner Andy Connolly missed most of the key moments in last Tuesday’s victory over BATE Borisov.

The local businessman, who took over the running of the club four years ago alongside his FastFix partner Paul Brown, couldn’t bare to watch as Stephen Kenny’s side took a 2-0 lead against the Belarusians early in the second half at Tallaght Stadium.

Despite that advantage, he knew a BATE away goal would undo all of Dundalk’s good work up until then and as a result spent a good part of the evening racing over and back from the Maldron Hotel opposite the ground.

It was only when Robbie Benson struck a minute from time that a by now absolutely soaked Connolly could relax but despite the obvious turmoil he went through over an epic 90 minutes, he insists he is absolutely living the dream right now.

‘I walked over to the Maldron and back 20 times in the last 10 minutes and I got soaked doing it because it never stopped raining,’ he told The Argus on Friday morning after the club were paired with Legia Warsaw in the fourth qualifying round. ‘I couldn’t face it because I wanted it so bad. ‘Not for me and not for anyone else but football is a give. You don’t expect to get anything back from football. We didn’t go into this to get anything back. We went into this to make Dundalk a force to be reckoned with and I think we’ve done that,’ he said.

Connolly said he still had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming about how far the club had come.

‘I’m living the dream. Myself and Paul are living the dream. Where would you ever believe that a small town like Dundalk in the Republic of Ireland will be, at worst, competing in the Europa League every second Thursday night up until the first week of December.

‘Think about it. You have to pinch yourself. We’ll all be coming home from work on a Thursday night with the rain pelting down on the windows and heading back out to watch a Europa League game and not just any Europa League game but Dundalk in the Europa League.

‘That’s at least. It might be the Champions League yet and hopefully it is.’

Andy was full of praise for manager Stephen Kenny, who he and Brown had identified as the right man to lead the club forward out of the doldrums at the end of a 2012 campaign which only saw the Lilywhites survive relegation courtesy of a play-off victory over Waterford Utd.

Despite running the hugely successful FastFix, he said landing the 44-year-old Dubliner was his greatest piece of business ever.

‘At the end of the day that was a job on its own to entice Stephen Kenny and it has to be one of the major achievements of me and Paul Brown throughout our business life. It has to be.

‘It’s a major achievement for the town and for the country. People watched that game the other night from all over the country and it gave them the option to go and see a Champions League game now in Dublin.’

Reacting to the draw, Connolly said he was pleased to see the opposition were in an easily accessible city and pointed out that despite the many millions Dundalk are reported to have won to date the club would not be receiving any of that until the end of this year.

‘Logistically, Poland has a massive population here so we should be able to get scheduled flights that suit us all and Stephen in particularly.

‘The situation logistically regarding trying to get into Belarus and into Iceland at the times that we wanted to and were available just wasn’t available to us so we had to go and charter flights and that costs massive money. We just don’t have that.

‘We have to borrow that money at the moment to get us through the group stages. Remember that even if we go out in this round we have another three away games and on top of that we’re going to be missing out on the revenue of gates here which we hope would be made up from the group games that we get but it’s hard and it’s not easy.’

Still, by Connolly’s own admission they’re great problems to have.

Like every other Dundalk supporter, he is living the dream and no matter how many times he pinches himself it is very, very real.