The Town I Love So Well

Dundalk Football Club are staring into the abyss. One of Irelands greatest teams sit bottom of the league, having lost their last 3 games and were unable to pay player and staff wages a couple of weeks ago as the Brian Ainscough era began to unravel. I'm from Newry but we always had more in common with Dundalk, 12 miles up the road but over the border, than Banbridge, 12 miles up the road in Northern Ireland. On both sides of my family there are Dundalk connections and it always felt familiar. My first ever football match was on a Sunday in the autumn of 1988 with my uncle Leslie, not even a blood uncle, a Dundalk man married to my mothers sister. I was competing in the scór for our GAA club with his children later that evening. During the day, they were looking after me, with my parents at work, we went to see his mother who lived in the town. My auntie Helen and the younger children were left to visit while I was brought to the football at Oriel Park. Derry City were the visitors, we stood on the small bank behind the goal, Leslie chatted to men he knew, I don't know if he went often or only knew them from growing up. I just took in the scene. The smell of cigarette smoke that accompanied everything back then, the rattling drone of the chip van generator, the Derry fans were singing to our left "Thank you very much for all your sterling" to the tune of the Quality Street advert. The big stand to our right was full, messages blared out from the tannoy. The players were warming up in front of us and the pitch looked like baize. I was in love. The game itself wasn't particularly memorable. Derry had risen from the ashes in the mid 80's and names like Jonathan Speak, Felix Healy, Pascal Vaudequin, Owen Da Gama, Tim Dalton and Paul Doolin were recognisable to me but I couldn't tell you how many of them played that day. Dundalk had players like Alan O'Neill, Joey Malone, Martin Lawlor and Gino Lawless. Again, I'm not sure if they lined up. It ended one all. I probably went in to school the next day and relived it with anybody who would listen. I'm a Liverpool fan and Steve Staunton, from Dundalk, was starting to figure for us. As a young football fanatic, it made the dream of playing for Liverpool seem achievable because somebody from just up the road was doing it. I was back at Oriel Park the following year for the League Cup Final. The dad of a friend of mine who lived down the street (his late wife was also from Dundalk) took a load of us up to the game. Again it was a draw but this time it had to be played to a finish. Dundalk won on penalties and we were on the pitch with all the fans celebrating the victory. Tony Cousins scored in the shootout and he was Liverpool bound as well.

I started going to watch my local team, Newry Town and the star player was a Dundalk man called Ollie Ralph. He played up front but wore number 6. This was before squad numbers. The team lined up wearing 1 to 11 and it was unusual to see the striker wear 6. In my late teens, I trained with Newry Town and played a few youth team games. One night in a game at the end of training, I was thrilled to hear Ollie calling for the ball off me. He knew my name! I had a bit of craic with him a few times after that as I tried to set him up for the goals he craved. Years later when my wife and I were looking for a priest to marry us, we met with a Dominican priest in Newry called Father Ralph. We lived in Belfast but we weren't from Belfast so the parish priest wouldn't marry us, we called another priest from a wedding we were at and he wouldn't do it either. I used to go to a youth club at the Dominican so we gave it a go. I mentioned the name of the priest who ran the club, Fr. Walsh, but he had left the priesthood. Joe Ralph wasn't leaning towards marrying us either but then I asked him he was anything to Ollie Ralph "Oliver is my brother" he said and from that moment on we were golden. When our son was born a few years later we booked the Dominican for the christening and Fr. Ralph appeared as the celebrant, he recognised me as somebody he associated with football and I reminded him of the story. He told our family and friends congregated for the ceremony that he got a tremendous lift when he realised he had married us and now we were back as a family.

Liverpool and Dundalk met in a pre season friendly in 1996. I was working a summer job in Coolock so was driving through Dundalk, Castlebellingham, Drogheda and Balbriggan every day. This was before the M1 was built. I think parts of it opened that summer. A lad I went to university with invited a few of us to go out in Dundalk, stay in his house and go to the match the next day. He trained with Newry when he was younger as well but he'd also played for Dundalk youth team at Oriel Park against Liverpool youth team featuring Robbie Fowler. I think Dundalk lost 10-1 and Fowler scored about 5 but Wayne had scored the 1 goal against his idols and even better he had a video of the whole game. We watched the goals over and over again that night. The next day Fowler lined up for the Liverpool first team in a one nil win from a Steve McManaman goal in a game that featured Jamie Carragher in one of his first appearances for the reds. It was a while before I returned to Oriel Park. I was coaching an under 15 team in a summer tournament there in 2014. I was struck by how little had changed in more than 25 years. By this stage, The Town had been on a rollercoaster that saw them taste the highs and lows in League of Ireland football. I watched on from afar as they won the league then found themselves in promotion/relegation play off  the next season and were eventually relegated a few seasons later, promoted and then relegated again. They spent four seasons outside the Premier Division. When they eventually returned it wasn't until the appointment of arguably the greatest manager in League of Ireland history, Stephen Kenny, that Dundalk could truly say they were back. They won the league, the double, they went so deep in Champions League qualifiers that they qualified for the Europa League group stages played at Tallaght Stadium because Oriel Park wasn't UEFA compliant. Kenny left to take the Ireland job on the long finger but his assistant Vinny Perth kept the good times rolling. A first domestic treble was narrowly missed out on following defeat in the 2019 FAI Cup final by way of shoot out. In the middle of all this glory, I was at a family event in the Ballymascanlon Hotel on the outskirts of town. I was in the hotel leisure centre listening to the local members enjoying Dundalks continuing success and rivals like Cork City trying unsuccessfully to reel them in by signing Premier League players like Damien Delaney. Dundalk were on the crest of a wave and it was turning into a tube with qualification for the Europa League group stage and glamour ties with Arsenal, Rapid Vienna and Molde. Unfortunately, it was during covid so finances could not be maximised.

I took my son, Arlo, to his first ever football match at Oriel Park early in the 2023 season. Football had moved to the summer in the League of Ireland. We got invited by my old school friend who has been a Dundalk fan throughout his life, through his father, also a lifelong supporter, even while living in London. Sligo Rovers were in town during the Easter holidays. Dundalk lost to a late winner but we returned on our own to see them beat Shamrock Rovers, Bohs and a couple of teams in Europe. We usually sat in the main stand. Arlo got his picture taken with Gavin Bazunu at the Rovers game. A man sitting beside us couldn't understand that this was my son and not my grandson! Things weren't as good but they weren't too bad with Pat Hoban scoring the goals to keep them in the mix. On the way to the games, we called in to see my aunt, a Dundalk woman who married my fathers brother. We didn't get to any games this season as Friday evenings became a swimming club night for Arlo. I'd kept an eye on what was happening - Manager Stephen O'Donnell was fired and replaced by Noel King, once upon a time a big name in Irish football. After a surprise win in his first game, he quickly had to be replaced on health grounds. Stephen Kenny ended a difficult spell with the Irish national team, I wonder if Dundalk had been able to bring him back to the club to work his magic before St. Pats Athletic nabbed him, would they have been able to avoid this mess or was the slippery slope already getting too slippery. We were at the Shels game a few weeks ago. Arlo brought his friend to sample Friday nights at Oriel. As we drove up to the ground past the fans making the short walk up from the town, he was unimpressed by the size of the stadium, comparing it to a trip to Anfield earlier in the year. "This is League of Ireland" I tell him. This time we get ground tickets because I want to go over the other side where all the singing usually is. The place was full of kids wandering about, sort of watching the game, playing football themselves on any patch they could find. Parents and grandparents willing Dundalk to find an equaliser to lift them off the bottom of the table, kids coming over looking money for the chip van or the shop. This place is about family and friends. I bumped into a lad from Newry I hadn't seen in years. He lives up that direction now and goes when he can. "This place will go off if they score". Dundalk keep searching as the final whistle approaches, we end up in the main stand anyway, inching towards the exit They can't find the equaliser and their fate is starting to look sealed. I messaged my friend in London from the Sligo game last year "If they can just give themselves something to play for against Drogheda in the final game" I predicted " We're doomed" he replied. Just how doomed they might be we never imagined. It could mean the great club folding before the end of the season never mind getting to the final game. I'm not even from Dundalk nor have I supported them through thick and thin but I know what Dundalk FC means to me. I can only imagine what it means to the real fans. Phil Coulter famously sang about Derry in his song The Town I Love So Well "For what's done is done and what's won is won and what's lost is lost and gone forever. I can only pray for a bright, brand new day in the town I loved so well". C'mon the Town!