LIFE AT THE COALFACE FOR LOVE OF THE GAME
Making it in the Irish domestic league is not easy, as six men tell us of their hard-fought battles to get to where they are...
ANEW season is upon us after the longest of winters and with it brings different ambitions and expectations. Here, Home Game gets just a flavour of the trials and tribulations involved for the players, managers, scouts and workers at the coalface.
THE PLAYERS
Name: Luke Byrne Club: Shelbourne Age: 25 Position: Left-back BYRNE’S contract wasn’t extended at Shamrock Rovers after missing most of 2018 following ankle surgery. A cruciate knee ligament injury earlier in his Hoops career meant a number of clubs were unwilling to take a risk on signing him. ‘I knew before the end of last season that I would be leaving Rovers. We all knew it was coming. I got injured in July. I’d had an operation on my ankle. It was quite a precarious position being out of contract when you’re not fit to play.
‘Obviously, it wasn’t my first long-term injury with Rovers and it’s not a great position to be in when football is your earner. You can understand why clubs would be cautious.
‘They don’t want to sign a lame horse, do they? But I knew I just needed an opportunity and thankfully I got it with Shels.
‘The clubs I spoke to, I had people telling me I was a risk and were worried if I could come back. I was never worried about how I could come back.
‘I was getting phone calls, I met some face-to-face and got really close to a couple things. I got to a final meeting, a phone call or whatever, and it was just “look, you’re too much of a risk”. That was stuff that was mentioned to me. Straight away it’s just a case of “f*** you, you’re wrong”. And that was said to one or two people. I’m determined to prove they’re missing out.
‘People wrote me off. I’ve just turned 25, so it served to motivate me really. I’ve played the four pre-season games for Shels and I feel good, I feel better.
‘Luckily Ian Morris and Shels have given me a chance. The stage I’m at, I’m back into education and want to finish my degree. I’m doing business management and marketing in Dublin Business School (DBS) and have 18 months left there so leaving Dublin didn’t really make sense.
‘I saw the squad Shels are building and just thought I want to be a part of it. I want to win medals and this was a move that made sense.’ Name: Keith Buckley Club: Bohemians Age: 26 Position: Midfield Following the agony of losing in the Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup semifinal replay to Cork City, Buckley consoled himself on a monthlong trip to Asia and explains how it helped recharge the batteries for another campaign at Dalymount Park. ‘I went with Roberto Lopes and Lee Stacey, two of my good mates in football. We went to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia. It was a great experience.
‘We had to go away, I needed it after last season.
‘Losing the Cup semi hurt so much because I want to win something so badly. It would have been brilliant if he’d won the Cup. I’d have probably still been in my Bohs tracksuit if we won it!
‘We went to Vietnam and arrived at six in the morning. It was so busy. It felt like there were millions of bikes in Ho Chi Minh. We saw one fella on his bike and he had his wife and three kids with him all on the one bike.
‘Another fella had boxes stacked up six foot in the air with ducks in them. Old men in the street playing draughts with bottle caps. Everyone there was so helpful and happy with life. They have nothing but are so happy.
‘The lads were saying “ah, will we go to Australia for three weeks?”. But we would be scraping by with our money there and could live like kings in Vietnam.
‘We actually got this lovely big villa up in the mountains. We had a chef come in, it worked out at €30 for him to come and cook for the three of us. It was great.
‘We’ve been back for a good while at Bohs now so we need to use that anger we had from the end of last season to push on this year.’ Name: Sean Boyd Club: Shamrock Rovers Age: 20 Position: Striker A graduate of the Rovers academy who made his first-team debut three years ago, Boyd is aiming to establish himself in the frontline and hopes the guidance of former Ireland international Joey O’Brien will help. ‘This pre-season cost me a fortune with tolls on the M50. I drove in by myself for a while because Finner (Ronan Finn) was on honeymoon. The last few years I would have spent nearly every day with him, Luke Byrne and Dave McAllister in the car. You pick up so much from these lads.
‘Joey O’Brien is in and he is amazing. He knows the game inside out. He’s worked so hard and the reason he has come back here is because he loves football and just has to play. He’s said it. He doesn’t want to give it up.
‘I buzz off him and I get stick from some of the other lads because of it. I don’t care. I just like being around Joey because he has so many stories and I latched on to him straight away. You should want to learn from these people.
‘I know if I do the business — train well and work hard — that I’ll get chances. I’ll work as hard as possible every day to get better. It’s simple really. I want to play as many games as possible.
‘Last season was a disaster with my left hamstring. I was always breaking down so I was in with the physio, Tony McCarthy, and he was very good for me. He only lives around the corner from me so I’d do my rehab in his house.
‘Dean Dillon has been great with strength and conditioning since we came back from the start of December. He gives it loads.
‘I’ve dislocated my shoulder and had stomach problems over the last couple years, I’ve needed injections and it’s been very painful but I still played games off the bench.
‘I’m fully fit now so hopefully I can push for more now.’
THE GENERAL MANAGER
Name: Anthony Delaney Club: St Patrick’s Athletic As he enters his 11th year at the coalface with St Pat’s, Delaney reflects on the toll his role has taken and the excitement a new season, and manager, brings. ‘There has been no break since the season finished in October but I’m used to that now. It’s part of my life. You take days here and there but in terms of going away, the last time I was away for an extended break was December 2013. I went to America with my wife. I have two kids now, so it’s tough going.
‘I try and take bits and pieces during quieter times of the season, maybe an away game I’ll try take a couple days off. When the football finishes, that’s the busiest part of the year for me.
‘You have to get your licensing application in for the end of November. There is a lot of paperwork to do around your structures, your management, your facilities. Down as far as ambulances and match day stewards, all that type of stuff.
‘We are heavily reliant on volunteers.
‘December you are selling season tickets, there are new jerseys, it’s coming into Christmas so you’re trying to get all that sorted. Then pre-season starts. Harry Kenny was coming in so November and December, you’re speaking with Harry trying to get players over the line.
‘Sometimes I will be there with Harry, sometimes I won’t. Harry will be the one who initiates the meetings, I get involved when it comes to signing the contracts.
‘Going to people houses is easiest. Chris Forrester for example, I was in his kitchen getting the deal done.
‘He made us a cup of tea and the video we actually shot when Chris came back was all done in his kitchen.
‘We brought the branded sponsorship pull-ups and got the camera out to have it all prepared. The day he was released by Aberdeen we got the
‘My wife waits and watches Netflix in the car, she has completed Netflix at this stage’ Sligo Rovers scout Dave Campbell
deal over the line and announced it the next day.
‘Everybody seems happy. We’re going into the first game and we’re optimistic.’
THE SCOUT
Name: Dave Campbell Club: Sligo Rovers After seven seasons working alongside Liam Buckley at St Patrick’s Athletic, the duo now find themselves with Sligo Rovers and Campbell is ready to hit the road again. ‘I’ve done 3,000 kilometres in the last three weeks, going from Dublin to Sligo, Sligo back to Dublin, the President’s Cup in Dundalk, there was a game in Athlone, then to Mayo and up in Ballinamallard.
‘There’s no doubt about it, you need a partner who supports you and is understanding. You get used to the travelling. I have a nice car.
‘Last year, funnily enough, my dad, Jimmy, started coming to a lot of the games with me.
‘He played for Sligo, Pats and Shamrock Rovers so he enjoys going to the games as well. it breaks up the journey. We have a chat and talk, it’s good.
‘My wife, Linda, has come with me all around the place but she doesn’t actually come in to see the game with me, she watches Netflix in the car.
‘She prefers to wait. She’s completed Netflix at this stage.
‘‘I love the games and being around it all. It helps to build up the knowledge of players. If Liam asked me about a domestic player and I said I know nothing about him, that’s not doing my job properly.
‘I have loads of notebooks with notes taken so they’re kept safe but the main database is a 10 terabyte hard disk that, if I lost, I’d have to throw myself off the top of the stand at Lansdowne. It’s going back 10 years, all the games, match reports, videos, so we can reference back to it.
‘It’s the easiest thing and the hardest thing in the world to get players for Liam because he has very set beliefs in what he wants his players to do.
‘Identifying those qualities is simple, finding a player to fit those qualities is very hard.
‘Liam might not have signed Roy Keane at the start of his career because he’s probably not good enough on the ball to start the play as a holding midfielder.
‘He hadn’t got enough magic for Liam to play as an offensive midfielder so we would have agreed that he is a top player but that he wasn’t for us.
‘That’s the hard bit but you never stop trying.’
THE MANAGER
Name: Neale Fenn Club: Longford Town After his first full season in charge in the First Division last season, the former Spurs star discusses why he is not bitter like some of his peers but needed a break away from the game to rediscover the love. ‘I retired from playing in 2010. All I knew was football from 16 to 33 and then I took a little bit of a break from it. I set up a coaching business but I was away from the professional side of it and was looking at doing other stuff.
‘I got a little job as assistant manager with Leyton Orient for six weeks at the end of 2017 and I loved it. That was absolutely me again.
‘I think the break did me so much good because you probably get people my age now, 42, and they are sick of football. I’ve gone back into it now and I’m loving it.
‘Of course there are challenges. It’s tough. The first priority I had this season was keeping the lads I had so within a week of the season finishing, definitely speaking before the season finishes, I wanted to get those boys signed back up.
‘Saying to them “look, I want to keep you”. The trouble with that is, as soon as you’ve said that, “I want to keep you, you’ve done great” they want more money.
‘You’re meeting players in random places. Most of the players I’m speaking to are in Dublin so they’re not going to come out to Longford to see you. It’s hotels, it’s coffee shops.
‘If you’re paying x amount of money and they’re spending most of it on travel they’re not going to do it.
‘A lot of the time it factors in what time you’re training, how often you’re training. I’ve had players turn me down because we train too much and they can go somewhere else, train twice and earn the same money for it.
‘If you look at is a job and only a job, and you can go somewhere twice a week and get paid the same money as four times, you will probably go there, won’t you? But it’s more than that.
‘Football is not just a job, it’s a lot more than that.’