‘We made mistakes but we lived by the same creed: Go for it’

THERE were just eight days to go in the 2010 season and the new Cork City board were huddled over two laptops in the corner of the Turner’s Cross Tavern.

Among the many daunting tasks that new chairman John O’Sullivan and his colleagues faced was convincing Tommy Dunne to leave the ski slopes in Finland and come back to cobble together a squad for the newly formed Cork City FORAS Co-Op.

A long summer of First Division fixtures lay ahead, many mistakes and a lot of criticism waiting in the long grass. But there was no time to worry about the future — the very fact that the future existed was enough to push them through the many long nights of uncertainty.

“I remember we were in Maguire Desmonds office down near the quays and the news came in that Cork City Investments Ltd hadn’t got the First Division licence and we had,” recalled O’Sullivan when we sat down just yards from where that first official meeting took place a couple of days later.

“It was tough. Eanna Buckley and Kevin Mullen had been employees under Tom Coughlan and they were there in the room with us. They had put a lot of work into the proposed takeover, as it was. We didn’t have time to react to it.

“A couple of days later we were sat at that table. Eanna and Kevin had laptops out in front of them. It’s crazy when you look back at it. We were trying to get a deal done for the training ground in Bishopstown with McCarthy Developments.

“We had 10 days to go to the season, Tommy came in with eight days to go. We were lucky in a sense. There had been a bit of pre-season training during the upheaval and Tommy had been involved to a degree. He went back to Finland then and I think he was on the ski slopes with his daughters when we rang him to try and get him to come back.

“It was a scramble. The work that Tommy and (long-time club secretary) Gerry Harris did in that week leading up to the Derry game was incredible. We made so many mistakes in those first few months but as a board we had to just agree that we’d have to forget about it and move on.

“We jumped into a lot of decisions too quickly. Nothing serious, just things we could have done better.

“Even the first day in Derry, we had three players on the bench who didn’t have clearance to play yet. We put them on the bus in the hope that it would come through in time. It didn’t but if it wasn’t for Gerry’s experience, they could very well have been named on the team sheet and that could have caused all sorts of problems.

“We went up with 12 registered players, with Wesley Tong on the bench but he was injured. So really we had no subs to bring on if anything happened. To get from there to here…”

HERE, of course, is the Premier Division. Here is the morning after that dramatic league-winning clash at Tolka Park on Saturday night. And Kerry-born O’Sullivan, a long-time fan of the club and one of the founding members of the Supporter’s Trust FORAS (Friends Of the Rebel Army Society), had absolutely no doubt about what approach the players should have taken.

“Go for it, we were all agreed on that. At one stage, we were 11 points behind Shels. To get to the situation where you’re two points with a game in hand, not to go for it would have been criminal. That’s Cork City. There’s no lying down. There’s no seeing it out. Waiting until the 94th minute wasn’t part of the plan though,” he adds, laughing.

“I was confident going up. In fairness to (Shels), they had gone through a bit of a blip but they’d got it together and they’re in the cup final now. They had been finding form again but we were still confident.

“At the risk of sounding cocky, we were confident of going up all season. It was tight but when we beat Shels 4-1 at home and Athlone 7-0 up there, we really stared to believe. Something clicked, the crowd got back into it in a big way and we were beating teams by two and three goals. That’s all Tommy, getting the right performance at the right time.”

O’Sullivan now plans to step down as chairman, eager to pass the club onto a fresh pair of hands.

“It’s a big commitment. I don’t live in Cork, I live in Cashel. Every Sunday night when I put the kids to bed, I know I won’t see them until Tuesday evening. I usually get up early for work (O’Sullivan works for Cordis) on Monday so I can leave early and get to Cork where it’s meetings through the night.

“It’s a commitment that I and everyone else signed up for but it’s tough to maintain with a full-time job.

“But there are other reasons too. It’s important that you keep cycling people through the board, keep it fresh with new ideas. The last thing we want is to have the same old faces hanging around for a decade.”

Now he’s looking forward to just being a supporter again.

“Last year I’d see a player get a yellow card and immediately I’m worrying about the fine that will go with that booking. I’m hoping I’ll be able to shake that off.

“This year it’s been much better, we’ve been that bit more stable off the field. Although I probably see more football away from home because, especially in the last few months, there are so many jobs to be done on match night, you’re only really coming out for the second half.

“It’ll be nice to just stand back and watch the football now.”