Benson’s on board with the bonding
Dundalk midfielder opens up his team-mates’ minds
AS Dundalk’s FAI Cup final media engagements were winding down at Oriel Park, Robbie Benson broke out the giant Crokinole board and challenged all-comers.
The Canadian indoor pursuit is played on a round slab of smooth wood and is akin to a combination of curling and Subbuteo as players flick counters to and fro across the shiny battlefield, seeking points.
It calls for skill and cunning, and Benson has plenty of both. Within almost all sporting groups, there are those with specific tasks and Benson is the entertainment officer on Dundalk’s away trips.
As befits a bright fellah with a degree in actuarial science, Benson isn’t content with a hand or two of Snap or a round of Ludo. He goes deeper into the mind, to challenge himself and his team-mates, and also to distract them thinking too much about the game ahead.
‘There are some card games, along the lines of Werewolf, they would be staples of the sorts of games that I would like, social deduction games and strategy, hidden role-playing games.
‘That’s what I like to do in my spare time and I’ve inflicted it on the rest of them,’ he joked. ‘There are a lot of intelligent lads here, footballers get a bad reputation; there is a lot of intelligent strategy in the group,’ he said.
The latest whizz is Crokinole, from a French-Canadian word, croquignole or pastry. Benson came across the game on YouTube and was taken aback when his colleagues chipped in and got it for him.
‘They bought it around the time I broke my rib so it shows what a great group it is, to do something nice for me when I was going through a hard time. It touched me when I walked in and saw it there,’ he said. Benson isn’t your average League of Ireland footballer. Who is, you might ask? In the past, they tended to be lads who put football ahead of education, who dreamed as kids of a move across the Irish Sea.
Not all excel in long-term planning, about what life holds after the legs and lungs run out, and there is no place for them on the team bus, never mind around the Crokinole board.
Benson, 27, has the advantage of falling back on his Master’s degree from UCD in actuarial science which, according to Wikipedia is ‘The discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance, finances, and other professions.’
The ‘risk’ he has undertaken is to play football at the highest level, before turning to a day job in his area of expertise that should run for ‘five or six times longer’ than his playing career.
As he comes to up a decade’s exceptional service in the League of Ireland, five seasons with UCD, four with Dundalk, Benson is looking at management through a prism of curiosity.
‘I never thought that I’d like to be a manager but when you get to know more, and work with good coaches and good players, you kind of develop your own thoughts on what will and won’t work and there is an attraction to implementing those on your own team.
‘But there are only a handful of full-time management positions, and if I did it, I’d like to give it my all. If I could cross it with a job, it would just depend on time and whether it is something I could do.
‘I’d like to (do it) but I’m not pinning all my hopes on it as it is such a small industry in Ireland.’
Benson operates on a year-to-year arrangement with Dundalk, which he reckons ‘feels right.’
‘Lucky enough, I think the stability at Dundalk is looking quite good at the minute. I wouldn’t be against signing a longer deal but I always go with my gut.’
Benson broke his ankle in the first minutes of the season, and had just recovered full fitness in time for the European jousts, when he punctured a lung and broke a rib.
‘If someone had said to me that for Dundalk to be in the FAI Cup final with two trophies in the bag, you are going to have to break your leg on the first day and break a rib a bit down the road, then I probably would have taken it,’ he added.