Shels have hope again as weight is lifted
SHELBOURNE finally look to be a club at least trying to go in the right direction. After years in the wilderness, saddled by debt in the region of €4.5million courtesy of their ill-fated quest for qualification to the group stages of the Champions League, they are now free from that burden.
A takeover by Andrew Doyle, once a director of Shamrock Rovers, will soon be completed while this week they also announced the appointment of 26-year-old Dave O’Connor as chief executive. It is an intriguing one as the former Hoops defender, who graduated from UCD, only stepped away from the League of Ireland in a playing capacity after ending last season with Limerick.
There is no doubting that the Meath native should bring an energy and enthusiasm to the role — something which chairman Joe Casey needed every ounce of just to keep the club going over in the last decade. O’Connor’s sabbatical from the pitch now appears to be permanent as he returns to a League of Ireland boardroom alongside former Ireland international Seana Cooke, who lends her expertise as a marketing and business development executive.
As well as their groundshare of the soon-to-be-redeveloped Dalymount Park with Bohemians, Shels also have a strategic partnership with nearby university DCU with scholarship programmes for promising players one of their selling points for the future.
That is not a new phenomenon, a host of clubs have links with colleges — St Patrick’s Athletic, Cork City, Dundalk, Sligo Rovers, Bohemians to name just a few — but the relationship can be a difficult one.
Managers of professional clubs, naturally, have to look out for number one and while there is little overlap in respective seasons, that doesn’t prevent conflicts of interest.
One exciting talent in the Premier Division who is on a third-level scholarship was offered a professional contract at his club before the start of this season. The terms were a pittance — understood to be €100 a week — and one condition of the contract was that he had to give up his part-time job as well as stop playing for his college team.
The player in question was prepared to do so until he relayed the conditions to his parents, who then got in touch with the school to see how this would affect the status of his education. Of course, they informed them that their son would lose his scholarship if he stopped playing for their team.
After some back and forth, it was agreed that he could represent his college, thereby retaining the scholarship, and was also given an extra €100 a week to make up for loss of earnings from the part-time job.
It’s all very well for clubs to espouse the benefits of their partnerships with colleges but they can’t have it both ways. As a graduate himself now on the other side, O’Connor will have to get used to these quirks sooner rather than later.