New CEO’s aim is simple: ‘improve the football club’

INCOMING Dundalk FC chief executive Mal Brannigan insists his main objective is to ‘improve the football club.’

The former Sheffield Utd managing director, who has also worked at Hull City, Derby County and Everton, was perhaps the most vocal of the top table at Sunday’s Q&A with supporters at the YDC.

Brannigan – who officially starts employment on Monday - will look after the day to day affairs at Oriel Park on behalf of the club’s new owners. He revealed to The Argus after meeting with fans that as well as helping Stephen Kenny to improve the side on the pitch, he would also be looking to improve revenue streams off it.

Asked the objectives he had been set by the new ownership group, Brannigan said: ‘It’s to improve the football club.

‘It’s a successful club already so how do you improve that? That will be helping the manager, helping staff here and looking at it from a slightly different angle.

‘Whether it’s a benefit or otherwise, I don’t have Dundalk running through my blood yet so I will see it with a different pair of eyes to everyone else who has a little bit more emotion attached. I’ll see how we can improve infrastructure for fans both home and away, the infrastructure of the club itself as a business and then how we integrate ourselves more potentially within the community.’

Brannigan said he felt there were plenty of opportunities to capitalise on, however, describing the underutilised YDC as ‘a gift’.

‘If you look at the building we’re in at the moment, it’s hardly being used. I think this is a phenomenal infrastructure.

‘The first time I walked around here was with Martin Connolly and I said to him it’s a gift and it is because it’s something that will improve this football club enormously if we get it right and the use of it right.

‘It’s important to have off field income streams coming into the club and the YDC is one of the examples of where we can get that coming from,’ he said.

While no major plans were announced for Oriel Park on Sunday, Brannigan said it was important to make changes to improve attendances.

‘I’m very aware that we’re probably not a great ground to come to if you’re an away fan so how do we improve that and how do we get the facilities better for them so there aren’t any excuses for them not to come here?

‘It’s healthy to have an away contingent at football grounds so we’ll look at that. We’ll look at how we interact more with the community whether that’s with schools or girls football, which was something that came up this evening. There’s lots of positives and there’s lots of opportunities that we can tap into at some point.’

Asked where he would like to see new staff added, if they were, Brannigan said he was still weighing up what was needed at the club.

‘I think the first thing to do is to talk to all the staff that are currently here and see what talents they have and see where they would like to see themselves within the football club and utilise that as much as possible.

‘From there I’ll know where we have to improve on.’