The difference a year makes

Manager Tommy Dunne talks to Liam Mackey on the highs and lows of life on Leeside, as Cork City kick-off a new season with renewed hope and purpose.

CORK CITY go into the first night of the new Airtricity League season and a meeting with Wexford Youths at Turner’s Cross with a panel of players from which to choose and a handful of pre-season friendlies under their belts.

Nothing unusual in that, you might think, until you cast your mind back to the equivalent day 12 months ago when the newly inaugurated Cork City FORAS Co-op, with barely a week’s whirlwind preparation behind them, were faced with the arduous task of travelling to the Brandywell on opening night to face First Division title favourites Derry City.

“Our preparation is much better than last year but then that wouldn’t have been hard,” says manager Tommy Dunne with a wry smile.

“Going to Derry, we had the bare amount. We were still waiting on clearances for three fellas. On paper we had 12 available in the Brandywell, but the second goalkeeper, Wesley Tong, was actually injured so, in fact, we only had 11 — if we’d picked up an injury we were in trouble.

“I remember looking at their dug-out and there was Stephen Kenny, all his staff and four or five subs, all decked out right. And on our side, there was myself, (club secretary) Jerry Harris, (kitman) Caen Harris and this young fella on the bench. It was bare bones, a bit embarrassing actually.”

And yet, for all that, infinitely better than the ostensibly fully professional — but in fact deeply dysfunctional club — with which Tommy Dunne, as assistant to then manager Paul Doolin, had soldiered and suffered throughout the previous season with.

The story of the slow, car-crash demise of the old Cork City is well known, the club going from winning the Setanta Cup to financial meltdown and a winding-up order in the courts in little more than one season.

That the team managed to finish that same season third in the league was a credit, says Dunne, both to the players and Doolin.

“Under the circumstances, the achievement was fantastic.”

But in the end it seemed to count for nought, as the club imploded, Doolin resigned, the players scattered to the four winds and Cork City finally went out of business in its 25th year of existence.

Off the field, the season had been one long battle against adversity: a soul-destroying saga of repeated non-payment of wages, threatened player strikes, supporter boycotts and, finally, a series of improbable High Court reprieves before the axe finally fell.

For Dunne the lowest point of all was ‘Busgate’, the infamous day when the team turned up at the Silver Springs hotel for the coach journey to Dublin to play St Patrick’s only to find that the driver was refusing to take them until he’d been paid the money he was owed.

While captain Dan Murray went on local radio seeking financial assistance from fans, Doolin was on the phone to owner/chairman Tom Coughlan “reading him the riot act” in Tommy Dunne’s words. Eventually, the driver was paid and the team was able to travel to Dublin and fulfil the fixture but, for Dunne, the whole episode was “the must embarrassing thing, humiliating and farcical”.

In the midst of all the madness, from promising beginning to grisly end, the football came as pure release.

“To be truthful, if it hadn’t been Cork, a big club with really good players and supporters, I’d have been on the road, gone, a lot earlier,” says Dunne.

“But talking with Paul, we said we’d see it through to the end. The pitch was like an oasis, a relief for everybody. But after training when you’d get home, you’d be saying to your missus, ‘I don’t know when we’re going to get paid or if we’re going to get paid’. That side of it was tough.”

In order to take up the assistant manager’s job, Dunne — a League of Ireland veteran, son of the famous Theo and cousin to Irish international Richard — had returned to Ireland with wife Anu and their three daughters from his adopted home of Finland, where he had been managing TP Seinajoki for a couple of years.

Now they headed back there again, believing that their time in Cork — a city he says the family had come to love — was at an end.

But something was stirring in the ashes on Leeside: the energetic supporters’ group FORAS had prudently applied for a First Division license with a view to launching a newly-constituted club at Turner’s Cross.

However, not least among the many things they needed if they were to compete in the fast-approaching new season was, well, a manager and a team.

Says Dunne: “FORAS got their license on February 22nd, the club was wound up on the 23rd and I got a call on the 24th in Finland. I was standing on a hill in the snow with the girls whizzing down on sledges. It was (FORAS board member) Paul Hartnett asking if I’d be interested in managing the team. I remember saying, ‘I’ll have to ring you back, my hand is freezing’ — it was minus 25 and the battery was going to go dead on the phone because it was so cold. So I spoke to him again in the car, then I went home and spoke to my wife and we decided, ‘right, sure we’ll give it another bash’.

“We knew we needed to be careful but I didn’t really see it as another gamble. Although this was not the same model as Shamrock Rovers, it was similar. The thing is, the potential is huge in Cork. Even in those terrible times, when people weren’t getting paid and there were boycotts of games, there was still something there in the club, a passion for it. I knew where we were — basically with a blank sheet of paper with not a player on it — and I knew it was going to be extremely difficult. But I wanted to do it.

“Jerry Harris for me when I came back was just a complete godsend. I stayed with him, and when we’d get up he’d make the porridge and I’d get on the phone and, from seven in the morning until 11 at night, we’d be trying to get players. My ear was actually sore from being constantly on the phone. We were trying to tell people that this was different now, that this was a supporters-run club.

“We had a decent enough First Division budget and we were saying, ‘here’s what we can afford to pay you but this time we guarantee you’ll get it’. And, it’s a credit to the people running the club now that, to this day, there hasn’t been a bill missed.”

Dunne’s regard for the FORAS people who refloated the club is obvious — in the manner of an Oscar-speech he happily names a dozen or more who, at the outset, were obliged to make their offices in the Turner’s Cross Tavern as they sorted through the 101 different things which needed to be done.

“All these different people were beavering around behind the scenes and we were at it, we were really at it,” he recalls, smiling. “It was brilliant, all hands on deck. But after seven to 10 days, to tell you the truth, I was shattered. I wouldn’t fancy doing it again.”

THE extraordinary thing was that not only did Cork make the deadline, they promptly went up to Derry with their first — and, indeed, only — 11 and managed to defy all expectations, not least their own, by securing a point in a 1-1 draw.

“At the final whistle, we were thrilled,” says Dunne. “I mean, we’d been thinking, ‘this could be eight so we’ll take a 4-0 and go home with that’. But the lads, in fairness to them, were well up for it.”

Despite putting together a couple of good runs, inconsistency would eventually put paid to the chances of the club achieving promotion, the final table finding them comfortable in sixth.

Now, much better prepared for the new season, and with some new and old faces bringing a blend of youth and experience to the squad, the hope will be that progress follows consolidation.

But for Dunne, it’s vital that expectation is tempered with realism.

“Where we came from last year, it should take two or three years, and maybe five or six transfer windows of weeding out and bringing in, to get to where you really want to be but, in our case, possibly, the time is not there — because it’s Cork City,” he reflects.

“Which is fine. We want to win, we want to play good football and we want to get back into the Premier Division where this club belongs. But we’ve no divine right to be there. The supporters need to be patient. This division can be a bit cut-throat and we know how tough it’s going to be. But we’ll give it everything and we’re looking forward to it.”