Dunne determined to ensure City moving on up
The players were cheered off the pitch at the final whistle of that game, a welcome change in mood at Turner’s Cross given the gloomy pre-match backdrop of sliding attendances and a rumour mill full of stories of dressing room unrest and mounting pressure on manager Tommy Dunne.
And, speaking candidly, the man in the hot seat doesn’t deny that the team’s run of poor form, after what had been an encouraging start to the season, placed a strain on relationships inside the camp.
“We’ve been together now since early January, training hard, pretty much with each other every day of the week,” says Dunne.
“I wouldn’t possibly be the easiest person to get on with, as regards my temperament. If something annoys me I end up saying it when sometimes I should maybe hold my tongue. And that annoys the players.
“But being the club that we are, and the group of people we are, I also think things are better out in the open at times, although sometimes the timing doesn’t help.
“But when you’re working that close together and things aren’t being done the way I feel they should be, or players are feeling that, unjustly, they’re not being played, then you’re going to have an atmosphere that can be very tense. Especially when you’re not getting results. And it’s not a nice atmosphere. And when the crowd feel we’re not playing the way we should be and not getting the performances and results that they want, then that’s an extra bit of tension, on top of everything else.”
But Dunne feels strongly that, even if the team rode its luck at times against Drogheda, the tenacious way the players went about securing the three points should remove any doubts about their commitment to the cause.
“Before the game, Dan Murray was as sick as a dog — and he’s playing as an amateur,” he observes. “Neal Horgan, Danny Murphy — is someone going to tell me there’s no commitment in that dressing room?
“The senior players that have created a lot of the history at this club, they’ve been hurting because of how things have gone recently.”
And Dunne, the Dub who returned to help rescue the club in its hour of need four seasons ago, has been hurting too.
“I’ve been here for the last what, four and a half years,” he says. “My little one, my youngest one, has spent the majority of her life in Cork. My home is Cork. This club, for me, means a huge amount, from what we went through and how we came back. If fellas think that I’d do anything to put this club in jeopardy, then they’re completely wrong. I’ll never put this club in any harm.
“I’m a League of Ireland man that’s come from a family that’s steeped in it, so it hurts for me when a club like this gets into the trouble that it got into before.
“I understand the fans’ frustration but the important thing for me is that they support their club, that they come out and cheer the boys on and get behind them. Because if they don’t come through the gate, then we have an issue, and the club is going to find it hard to keep going the way it’s going. The fans need to keep the faith. Clubs go through difficult times, yes, but the last thing we want is to have to go through the shit that we went through before. I was here for that and all the people in the club now saw what happened. And the only people who can make sure that doesn’t happen again are the people that come through the gate.”
As ever in football, it all comes back to results, and next up after the break for Cork is an away trip to UCD on Friday. “If we win that, then we’ll have a little bit of momentum,” says Tommy Dunne. “And, for whatever reason, for this club — more than any other club — momentum is huge. When we get momentum, we’re like a train that can’t be stopped.”
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