Mick Byrne takes on GM role at the Drogs

BALBRIGGAN’S TONY REILLY APPOINTED THE NEW MANAGER AT UNITED PARK CLUB

June 1985

DROGHEDA United’s ability to defy the orthodox reached a new pinnacle with the dual appointments of Tony Rellly as their new team manager and of Mick Byrne as their general manager.

Both appointments have rather stunned soccer fans in the town, and indeed beyond for they repreent a tremendous gamble on the Board’s part, with the stakes for success and failure very high indeeed.

Tony Reilly’s appointment is being talked about in soccer circles as a second rate manager for a second rate team, playing in a second rate division.

That is a totally unjustified view because for a start Tony Reilly’s credentials have never been tested at the highest level of the game, and secondly the status and quality of the new division is totally unknown.

Reilly’s appointment represents a calculated gamble, but one that United, given the calibre of the other applicants for the job, were right in taking.

Perhaps it could be said that others, Paddy O’Neill a local, being one, had achieved as much in the lower divisions but Reilly impresses in his enthusiasm, personality and commitment for the Job he faces.

His ambition both for the club and himself could be the motivation needed to bring success back to United Park and he himself knows better tha anyone that it is not talk, but action that he will be judged on.

But while Tony Reilly’s appointment was a gamble worth taking, doubts are being expressed whether Mick Byrne’s appointment as general manager will damage the club’s voluntary support.

Clearly the rationale behind the appointment is sound, for too many soccer clubs suffer from the lack of professional organisation and no one could doubt Mick Byrne’s qualifications for the job in that he knows the club intimately, and was perhaps the club’s most successful chairman in terms of getting on with the job.

United Park, with its excellent facilities is testimony to his great efforts.

The appointment therefore boiled down to one question: Can United afford a general manager? Or perhaps putting it the other way, can they afford to be without one?