20-PAGE PULLOUT
Stephen Kenny’s departure from Oriel Park rocked an entire town, but the roller-coaster journey Dundalk’s Special One took the club and supporters on will never be forgotten. The Ireland manager-elect speaks to
James Rogers about his stunning six-year spell on the Carrick Road
James Rogers: Let’s go back to the beginning… how close were you to not coming to Dundalk in the first place?
Stephen Kenny: That’s a long time ago now but the club wasn’t in a great position. Things were quite bleak and there was a history of wages not being paid and from my point of view I knew it would be very hard to attract a player to that environment. There was no getting away from the fact that it was going to be a tough job from the pitch, to the facilities, to the commute for anyone not from the locality. We were going to train nearly every day so it was going to be a huge commitment.
One of the attractions obviously was that it was a traditional football town and a traditional football club and my feeling was that if I could have a degree of success that it would grow. Sometimes it’s good to take over a club at a low point if there is that dormant support. You don’t have to look at what’s there, you look at what the potential could be. It can be quite aspirational and if I was to think pragmatically and make my decision based on logic you probably wouldn’t take the job.
JR: Did you see it as a risk for you because after what happened at Rovers, obviously if two jobs in-a-row hadn’t worked out then any manager might have struggled to come back to that?
SK: Oh I did but I only lost four matches at Rovers so I had no issue with that. My record had been pretty exceptional and that’s why Rovers paid a pretty substantial transfer fee to Derry. Of course it was a risk though. There’s no doubt it was but at the time Ciaran Bond, Andy Connolly and Paul Brown came to my house and we had a frank conversation. They showed a commitment by saying they had a list of one really.
They were genuine supporters of the club and had great enthusiasm. It just got me at a period of time where in my 20 years of managing I hadn’t been out of work for more than a week or two so I hadn’t really known what it was like. They got me at a time where I just felt, like any tradesman, you need to work.
It was a massive commitment for me because it meant I was going to be away from home a lot. I had a family of four young children at the time but I don’t really do things by half measures so I knew I’d have to be away a lot if we were going to be successful. That was a huge decision but obviously one that has worked well.
JR: Even that first year could you ever have imagined a situation where you were challenging?
SK: Well first of all getting players was difficult. Someone close to me said people aren’t going to commute four days a week, plus a match for what you’re offering. They suggested I’d have to train twice a week in the AUL and twice in Dundalk or something like that and even speaking to players initially the commitment didn’t equate to what you’d be paying people but to me it was all or nothing. If I was going to commit and move, I wasn’t going to go through the motions. There was no compromise for anyone. If you’re in, you’re all in.
JR: At the time you had assemble basically an entire squad. The players you ended up signing - Pat Hoban, Dane Massey, Andy Boyle, Richie Towell - these were obviously players you had in your head and you had obviously seen something in them at some point or another?
SK: Of course but that’s part of what I’ve always tried to do at clubs - team building and assessing the balance of the team and the squad. What I tried to do initially was get the best players I could. I like to play with wingers. Traditionally at Derry I would have had Niall McGinn, Paddy McCourt, James McClean and Stephen McLaughlin who all ended up going to the UK.
I loved wingers and even at Bohemians I had Bobby Ryan and Mark Rutherford but at the time I couldn’t see any wingers who were attainable that would help us get to the standards we needed to get to. I was never set on one particular system though so I decided to get the best players I could and then work on the system, which is not generally the way you’d pick but it was very hard to get good players in the market that we were in. The players that we were getting, there wasn’t loads of clubs in for them. We got Dane from Bray, Andy from Shels and Richie was the only one who had other clubs in for him and we had to sell him the idea and build a picture for him about where he would end up. Other clubs like Shelbourne, Shamrock Rovers and Pat’s were talking to him so we had to convince him to come here but he had spoken to the likes of Paddy McCourt at Celtic, who I had done something similar with after he had come back, and he decided to come here.
That was a big signing for us I felt. We then signed some players that had technical ability like John Dillon and Keith Ward. Then getting Stephen O’Donnell was massive. Stephen had been at Rovers when I was there but he hadn’t played much with injury but I knew him from when I was manager of Dunfermline and he was playing at Falkirk. He had had some success over the years but because of his injuries we probably got him at a good time because his options were limited. Getting him and Richie Towell was massive for us then. We played a diamond in midfield at the start of that season and that was balanced by two strikers, Kurtis Byrne and Pat Hoban. We had Tiarnan Mulvenna and Vinny Faherty as well.
Then Mark Rossiter came in, who was great, and John Sullivan who played right back and did a very good job for us that year. The player we signed then was Darren Meenan, who was on a PFAI course for the players who couldn’t get the club. He had just had a shoulder operation which the PFAI paid for because he was an out of work pro.
We took him up for a friendly against Finn Harps in Oriel to see how it went and it didn’t go that well for him or for us because we lost. It hadn’t gone great for him but we didn’t really have any wingers and we needed some width. He had a real fighting spirit and he was great for us.
JR: That first year, I’m sure you could never have envisaged challenging?
SK: No. We had some good performances at the start but then we had a couple of defeats. We lost to Sligo 3-1 in Oriel, then Derry came down and beat us 3-1 in Oriel as well.
That was roughly after the first third of games and I think we were about 12 points behind Pat’s. I remember thinking ‘where am I going with this?’ It was a mammoth challenge to come in here with all these young lads and expect to be challenging at the top end of the table. Apart from Stephen O’Donnell, none of them had ever really done anything. We were 12 points behind and I was away from home but I wasn’t coming down here just to be content with mid-table and progress over a couple of years. I hadn’t got time for that.
There was no way I was committing myself for that kind of stuff and sacrificing everything for that. I’m not going to say it was easy. We didn’t just sign a team and go off flying and start winning leagues. There were periods where you had to really reflect and rethink what we’re doing. We had good values and good spirit and we started to change our system somewhere in there a bit and we ended up with 4-2-31 a bit which was probably our preferred system at Dundalk even though we’ve had a lot of variations on that.
We went on a brilliant run then and went right to the wire nearly. We went to play Pat’s in Richmond in a pivotal match towards the end of the year but
they had been building for a couple of years with players like Forrester, Brennan and Fagan and they had a very settled back four of Browne, Kenna, O’Brien and Bermingham. We went into that match with Chris Shields and Darren Meenan suspended and we were kind of patching people up a bit.
There wasn’t much in the game but we were second best and ended up losing 2-0 and Stephen was sent off. There were a lot of good teams in that league. Sligo had been league champions the year before, Derry were quite strong that year, Cork weren’t bad and Rovers of course but we finished second and that gave us something to build on.
JR: Going into the second season, losing 4-1 to Drogheda on the opening night, did you ever think that maybe the first season might be as good as it got?
SK: I think there was a lot of optimism going into the season. We had made four signings - David McMillan, Sean Gannon, Ruaidhrí Higgins and Daryl Horgan - and they all started in that match.
They were all very important for us that year but there were probably players still settling in and I think Brian Gartland was missing that day and Chris Shields played centre back. United Park is funny because you can get the ball up the other end of the pitch quickly and score quickfire goals.
It was a terrible result especially given there was a big expectant crowd from Dundalk. They all went home so disappointed. It’s funny the fickleness of it all because there was a lot of criticism and people wrote us off on TV. They said we had overachieved the previous year but we won a scrappy game the next week against Limerick 2-1 having gone a goal down and that was a big win for us.
JR: The big story of that season was probably losing Stephen O’Donnell to injury, who for me had been the best player in the league up to that point.
SK: He had been playing very well and was an important player for us. I can see the tackle still. Initially we got the prognosis that possibly his career could be finished.
I remember going up to the hospital with him and his mam and dad coming over from Galway. We sat down with Ray Moran and he reassured him that he would play again. His words to Stephen were ‘this is not a showstopper’ but for us the question was how would we replace him? There was nobody tipping us to win the league then.
There was a cloud over the club. It was a huge disappointment and the big question was how we would get over it because that stage we had been playing 4-3-3 with Chris Shields or Ruaidhrí Higgins sitting, Stephen to the left side of central midfield and Richie on the right side of central midfield. We had to rethink the system then because we didn’t have anyone who could play on the left of a three.
We had players we hoped would emerge like John Mountney and Keith Ward, who were both having up and down times with injury, but the player we didn’t predict would emerge was Kurtis Byrne. We had seen him as a centre forward but he played a really pivotal role that season as a number 10.
Pat Hoban also came to the fore in a major way in the second half of that season too and Richie was brilliant as well. Shieldsy did terrific and the back four were great together. Of course the difference was that we now had Daryl on the left with either John Mountney or Darren Meenan on the right.
That made such a difference to us but it was still a young team really to be looking to win a league. When Stephen came back for that pivotal Cork game we reverted to 4-3-3 but I felt a big thing that year was our bench making such an impact because we came back in a lot of games. David McMillan coming off the bench was superb and Ruaidhrí Higgins was coming on and changing games.
When teams sat off us, Ruaidhrí was the best player we had because his range of passing was just incredible. He wasn’t as mobile as Chris Shields in getting around the park but the way he shaped the games was brilliant. We had other players like John Mountney and even Donal McDermott coming on and doing well.
JR: I remember the match after Stephen’sphen’s injury going to Athlone for what was a horrible game and Richie got a 93rd minute penalty to win it. I know every three points is important but how big a moment was that on the back of what had happened a few days earlier?
SK: It was an afternoon game and we had just played the Friday. Those games can be tough but it was a good win and an important one to win.
JR: The penultimate game against Bray, in your six years it was probably the worst weather conditions you played in.
SK: It was nearly unplayable. Pat Hobanban got an equaliser but it was hard to believe we were going into the last game behind Cork. There was huge pressure on us because we had been the best team, there was no doubt, but all of a sudden we found ourselves in second position which was difficult to stomach.
Cork had a lot of experienced players in that team – Colin Healy, Darren Dennehy, Dan Murray, Billy Dennehy, Mark McNulty, John O’Flynn, Mark O’Sullivan. A lot of winners but it was such a huge game. There was a lot of pressure on that game. Had we not won that game it would have been a real setback for us but the euphoria was incredible. That will live long in the memory of everyone in Dundalk that night.
JR: Do you think you would have went on to have the success you had if you hadn’t finished the job that year?
SK: We just don’t know. It’s one of those things we’ll just never know. You talk about big players and it was no coincidence that Stephen and Brian came up with the goals. They were two big goals from two real leaders. Obviously the fairy- tale story was Stephen O’Donnell coming back and getting the opening goal.
JR: How big a risk was that at the time? SK: It was a big risk and a big call. He had come on in a couple of games but it was still a big risk playing him. I just felt we needed his leadership for the big occasion. One or two players as well, their form had maybe dipped a little bit so it helped the balance of the team but going into the game he had a couple of strains. Paul Cheshire at the time did a great job getting him back because he had a calf injury at the time so we didn’t know if he could start but Paul got him through it. He deserves a lot of credit for getting him back from the cruciate injury. It was just an incredible match to win.
JR: You won a lot and achieved a lot but it was that the best because of the fact it was your first league title and how dramatic it was?
SK: Yeah. When I won the league with Bohemians it was Bohemians and Shelbourne going head to head in Tolka. It wasn’t the last game, it was probably with two or three games to go, but that was the decider. Bobby Ryan scored past Steve Williams with a header. He had never scored a header before or since but he popped up with one in the 91st minute to win it so it was a dramatic win.
The place went mad but this was special. Obviously there were a lot of great European nights and Cup finals but for this we had put so much in over the two years and sacrificed so much. I felt we really had earned it but sometimes you don’t get what you deserve. There was just a sense of relief and unbridled passion in the ground. It was edgy and you could feel and sense that but the joy it brought to people for weeks was just incredible.
JR: It’s a cliché at this point but it’s an amazing story how the club went from almost being out of existence two years earlier to league champions. This was a team cobbled together as well. You’ve been accused of it since but the league wasn’t bought. It wasn’t as though a sugar daddy had come in and given you an empty cheque book.
SK: Traditionally the way to win a league was for a manager to come in and get four or five of the best players off different teams. That’s how leagues were won – get the best players and win it. This was a different way and not only did we win it with players who never won anything but we won it playing a style that people really related to.
That was the most important thing for me. It had been said to me that you couldn’t win the League of Ireland playing from the back. Traditionally that’s not how teams had won but it was really important to me as a manager, to the staff and all of the players that we had a conviction in what we were doing and that we could get there.
JR: That was the start of you beginning to lose players because you lost Pat Hoban that winter but how important was it to hold on to Richie Towell?
SK: It was great to keep Richie at that time. It was pivotal because he was a hugely iconic player. He wasn’t popular in the league because people seen him as uber confident. We like our stars to be humble in this country.
In the dressing room, Richie wasn’t like that. The players all liked him and he was very hard working but when he went out and did interviews he said things like