PAUW ON THE BRINK
GYPSIES MUST PUT FOCUS BACK ON PLAYING BALL
VERA Pauw (above) and the Ireland women’s team potentially stand two games from next year’s World Cup finals.
Even uttering these few words is incredible and both the manager and all the players deserve every credit possible.
It doesn’t matter that last week’s 1-0 win over Finland was a scrappy, nervous occasion. The side got the three points which was all that mattered.
Stone
England’s win in Austria on Saturday helped them and now victory away to Slovakia tomorrow will put them into a play-off where possibly just one game — and maybe in Tallaght Stadium — could be the stepping stone to Australia and New Zealand next summer.
There’s a resilience about this team that is getting them through the hard games and this speaks volumes.
Come on the Girls In Green!
I HAVE not applied to become the new Bohemians manager and I won’t be doing so.
In the days that have followed Keith Long’s departure from Dalymount Park, countless Bohs fans have contacted me about the position, urging me to return to the club.
It ain’t happening. Right now, I would not get the freedom and support from The Gypsies board to turn the club into trophy winners and that would frustrate me.
Back in September, 1998 I received a phone call from a senior Bohs official to ‘come in and give a hand’ in the wake of Joe McGrath’s exit.
I was happy to do so and by the end of that season I had steered the team to Premier Division survival via the playoffs.
Emulate
When I left Bohs in June, 2001, we had won the double, finished as FAI Cup runnersup and beaten Kaiserslautern and Aberdeen away from home in the UEFA Cup.
Could Bohs emulate such success in the near future?Yes. Will it happen? No, due to the way that the club is currently operated.
Any organisation that makes social inclusivity and its local community key elements of its structure must be applauded and Bohs do so much great work in Phibsboro and Dublin’s northside.
But somewhere along the way, the club has forgotten that being a successful football club is its primary objective. Winning trophies is now a secondary issue.
Bohemians is a club that is now too political and this is wrong. To me, it seems that the least important thing there is football, with no ambition to win silverware.
The new boss faces a tough task in changing the culture up in Dalymount. Here’s what he needs to do to win the battle.
He must keep the young players that the club continues to develop by banging his fists on the boardroom table and ensuring that the club finds the money to keep them on longer and more lucrative contracts.
Since last December, Bohs have lost Georgie Kelly, Andy Lyons, Ross Tierney, Dawson Devoy, Promise Omochere, Jack Moylan and Sean Grehan. This is simply not good enough for a club of Bohs’ stature.
But this culture has been there for decades. When Billy Young was in charge during the early to mid-eighties, Jacko McDonagh, Paul Doolin, Terry Eviston, Kevin Brady and Liam O’Brien all left for Shamrock Rovers to become key members of their four-ina-row title-winning run.
It’s the job of the manager to secure these great young talents and sign experienced stars — not being cosy with the board and being buddies with the directors.
Keith was there for eight years — no trophy to show for his efforts. It amazes me that he was offered a new four-year contract last year.
Wrong
For me, the emphasis is all wrong at Bohs, so even if I received a call from their board, I would not go there.
The Hoops are setting the standards in Dublin and right across the League of Ireland.
But Bohemians can be just as big a club as Rovers. Now, they’re content with beating them in derby games as happened on Friday night.
How far are Bohs behind Rovers? Ten to 20 years.
If the Bohs board is brave and takes the correct approach they will appoint a boss that only sees winning football matches and silverware as his brief, with everything else irrelevant.
This will bring him into conflict with the board but so what?
The sale of young players, the €1.7m received from Wolves when Matt Doherty moved to Spurs two years ago and strong ticket sales have left plenty of money in the club’s kitty.
So it should be invested in keeping the best young players there when offers arrive in from Shamrock Rovers and Britain. There has been a lot of sympathy (inset below) Keith Long extended to Keith in the past few days over the platter exodus but it doesn’t wash with me.
He should have put a gun to the head of the board and told the directors ‘if they go, then I go’.
Did Shelbourne keep trying to buy Glenn Crowe when I was Bohs boss and he scored an incredible 25 goals when we won the league? Of course they did but they didn’t get him when I was in charge.
Budge
The same applied to Kevin Hunt, while I refused to budge with the board when it kept stalling on my bid to sign Trevor Molloy from St Patrick’s Athletic. We got him in the end.
My belligerence didn’t go down well and I remember one director telling me that if ‘I kept my head down I had a job for life’.
Nonsense, I wanted success, not a job for life and every manager must think this way.
It’s 2009 since Bohs last won the Premier Division crown and 12 months before that since the FAI Cup was last claimed by the club. Since 2009, the Setanta Sports Cup was won in 2010.
Bohs fans have been hoodwinked for the past 12 years.
It’s time for real and meaningful change at Bohemian Football Club, not just the arrival of a new first team manager.