THE BIG INTERVIEW

Chairman is ‘just a normal man’ Bill’s big

‘JUST a normal man,’ was how Dundalk boss Vinny Perth described Bill Hulsizer when asked about him recently.

Not a lot was known up until now about the club’s 77-year-old chairman but Perth says there is absolutely no airs or graces about the man who has a series of ambitious plans for the club, on and off the pitch.

‘He is one of them characters who stays in the bed and breakfast opposite the ground. He doesn’t go to four or five star hotels. He eats in the Jockey’s and The Windsor and these sort of places. There’s nothing flash or out there about him,’ said Perth.

‘He doesn’t drive a fancy car. He’s just one of us. He puts a big focus on Dundalk being in the heart of the community. He can’t shout as loud about that because he is so far away. That’s not about business interests or anything, that’s just about what’s doing best for the area.

‘That’s why I don’t like the term benefactors or funders when people discuss PEAK6 because they’re owners and it’s completely different. It’s not about throwing money at everything.

‘They’ll break our balls over a signing that didn’t work out as much as a business deal that didn’t work out. There’s no money tree in the club. We have to earn everything we get off them but if we make a good enough business case for something we need then they’ll back us, whether that be a business project or a football project and Bill is right in the middle of it but he’s just a normal man.’

Hulsizer recently came to national prominence for criticising the FAI in a leaked email which was published by The Irish Times but Perth says the chairman’s intentions were to improve Irish football, not just in Dundalk.

‘We’re very similar actually. We’d both be very passionate and shoot from the hip but neither of us are overly keen on being all over the press.

‘What he has done recently isn’t necessarily to do with making money for PEAK6, it’s about improving Irish football and I think it’s important that people get that message.

‘Bill’s hunger and his drive is really to help make Irish football better. He’s very conscious of the fact that in the Premier Division we’d only have 10% say and we have to ultimately do what the majority want but at the same time he’s there and fighting for the cause in terms of making the League of Ireland better for everyone. Genuinely, his heart is in the right place,’ said Perth. ‘You may say I’m a dreamer ‘But I’m not the only one ‘I hope some day you’ll join us ‘And the world will live as one.’

- Imagine, John Lennon

Bill Hulsizer doesn’t stutter or bat an eyelid when he says he wants Dundalk FC to win the Champions League.

To most people that may seem a laughable prospect but to the club chairman, it’s part and parcel of dreaming big.

Shoot for the moon and you might not get there but you may reach the stars.

It’s not that long ago that Dun