New captain as hungry for success as ever before
BRIAN Gartland has won it all at Oriel Park but still wants more.
As good as last season was, the centre back is targeting even further success this year.
His tenure as the new club captain got off to a good start at the weekend when he lifted the President’s Cup at Turner’s Cross. While there are bigger prizes to be played for, the 32-year-old feels he has already received one of the biggest accolades of his career by being handed the armband on a permanent basis following Stephen O’Donnell’s close season retirement.
‘It has only really sank in the last week or so,’ he said of the captaincy.
‘When I was told it was a massive honour. It’s where I live now and one side of my family is all Dundalk so that’s lovely. I’ve been here a few years so I feel part of the town. It’s where my home is now but the other side of it is that this is an incredible club.
‘It’s the biggest club in the country at the moment. I don’t care what anyone says, over the last six years it has been the biggest and best team and club in the country so to be named club captain of that is one of the best accolades I’ll ever have in my career, no matter what happens.\
‘It’s something I’m very proud of but when you look around the dressing room and see the ability, the characters, the personalities out of the whole group of guys in the squad, to be chosen from that adds even more to it.’
Gartland has already had a taste of leading the side having picked up the league and FAI Cup last season but he wants even more with Saturday’s President’s Cup triumph a good start.
‘You never get bored of lifting trophies. You’re either winning or losing there so which end do you want to be at?
‘We won’t get ahead of ourselves after winning the President’s Cup. It’s not the FAI Cup final or anything as big as that but you want to great year.
‘We’re not happy if we lose anything. Last year we won a double but we weren’t happy with how we went out in Europe, so we need to improve on that and we weren’t happy with not winning the League Cup. Having a First Division side in the semi-final, we should be strong enough with whatever 11 we put out to go and win. That was disappointing.
‘Overall last year was great but we want this year to be better.’
First up on Friday night are Sligo Rovers, who have a number of new recruits from outside the league for Dundalk to contend with. Gartland is not taking the Bit O Red for granted but wants the Lilywhites to make a better start than this time last year when they drew their opening match at home to Bray Wanderers.
‘It could be a dangerous time to meet them,’ he said of Liam Buckley’s side.
‘Everybody is raring to go at the start of the season and there’s some unknown quantities in terms of a few foreign players signed, you don’t know anything about them. They’ve a Nigerian lad up front and one or two others from outside the league throughout the team. I see they’ve signed Daryl Fordyce. I played against him up North before he went to Canada and he’s a very good player. You’ve got Ronan Murray there too, who is an excellent player. You can’t give him time on the ball or he’ll hurt you. Johnny Dunleavy has signed too and he has lots of experience. They’ve kept some good players from last year too so they have the spine of a squad who, on their day, will compete in every game.
‘It’s the first day of the season so everyone is raring to go. We remember last year Bray coming up to Oriel and they were excellent and look how their season turned out. On the first day they came up and Gary (Rogers) had to make a save one on one to get us a point so hopefully we can make a winning start this year,’ he said.