‘I’d prefer to be beaten 5-3 or 4-2 if we are playing good football’

Limerick FC chairman John O’Sullivan has big plans for his club — both on and off the field

Interviewing League of Ireland soccer players in a ladies’ toilet/changing room is hardly an ideal scenario for any young male journalist, especially when the sole woman on site comes in and lets off a blast with a hand-dryer.

This location does not do Limerick FC any justice, however, and it is symbolic of a past they are about to leave behind.

The club was hours away from extinction in 2009 before the intervention of current chairman Pat O’Sullivan.

“I had the view that the city was getting a lot of negative press about anti-social issues and the soccer club was about to fold, which I thought would be another kick in the teeth for the city,” says O’Sullivan.

Limerick FC, or Limerick 37 as they were then known, was a day away from a winding up order before O’Sullivan intervened, paying the players’ wages and the club’s debtors to secure a future for Limerick at the top table of Irish football.

After a few seconds in his company you can tell O’Sullivan is an enthusiastic football fan. As a chairman, and after ploughing his own money into the club, there are only a few things he expects in return — good, attractive football and that Limerick remain an integral part of the local community.

“I’d prefer to be beaten 5-3 or 4-2 if we are entertaining and playing good football,” he says in McLysaght’s pub in the city.

This is the kind of establishment where O’Sullivan feels at home. Football is the epicentre here. The coffee is served in Manchester United mugs as O’Sullivan holds command over the biscuit tin.

“I don’t like being beaten. I hate being fucking beaten and the rafters in Thomond Park know all about that,” he says with a hearty laugh.

“Pub teams can kick the ball from one end of the pitch to the other so that is not what we like about football. This is a product and we have to entertain.”

However, the club is about more than attractive football, with a community ethos at the core of everything it does. This is enforced greatly by the club’s recent acquisition of an old convent in Bruff, 15 minutes outside of the city, which will become the club’s new training ground as well as a hub for social and economic development.

Pat explains: “It is going to be an integral part of the community and it is going to be available and accessible to every sport and every community group.

“I don’t care who they are or where they are from — black, blue, red or white — if it is something that helps them on a pathway to positivity it will be there for them.”

His point is enforced greatly by the fact that Bruff’s camogie team were the first side to move in to the facility. Not only will it provide the club with a strong foothold in the community, it will also give the club something that they have never had — a home.

The facility will house offices, a club museum and a commercial kitchen to feed the 300 players at the club. Facilities will be provided for educating and schooling academy players and there will also be accommodation facilities for visiting teams.

Currently the club are using the sports arena in Limerick Institute of Technology as a makeshift base, hence the ladies’ bathroom doubling up as a media centre, and while LIT have been helpful to the club, it is not a place Limerick FC can call their own.

The new facility will house several pitches and training facilities. It will home the club’s senior team and its academy players from three years old upwards, their Special Olympics team and ladies’ sides will also train and play there.

The players appreciate the value of such a facility to the club and midfielder Shane Tracy is excited about the project.

“It is an unbelievable coup. There are not many clubs in the League of Ireland, if any, who have their own training facility — especially to the standard that we are going to have,” he says.

The club will also benefit from developing its own sports science and medical wing on site.

While Limerick are clearly an ambitious outfit, driven on by a determined staff, it appears they have learned from the mistakes of the past, not only locally but on a national scale as well.

Chief executive John O’Sullivan feels the club are putting structures in place to preserve its integrity and demonstrating that it has learned from past experiences by building on a solid foundation.

“The history of the League of Ireland is littered with clubs trying to win without the necessary structures in place,” he says.

“Looking at the financial issues Limerick have had in the past... there isn’t a club in the league that has not had similar experiences. People are looking at Cork City’s average attendance of 4,500 every week but it is only four years since they almost went out of business. Derry are similar. Shelbourne, Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers have had their issues. You can chase glory but you need a strong foundation.”

SSE Airtricity League director Fran Gavin feels Limerick’s example is one that other clubs could look to.

“The association is pleased with the proactive steps taken by Limerick FC to develop their own training and community base,” he says. “The [FAI] is always pleased to see its member clubs take steps to secure their long term future and provide the best facilities to help develop the playing talent in their area.”

The club aim to eventually fill the team with local players such as Tracy or Shane Duggan, therefore, the youth set-up and the academy hold great significance. They hope the FAI will afford the Kirby O’Sullivan Sports, Social and Business Park (named after Pat O’Sullivan in honour of his contribution to local football) status as a regional football centre of excellence.

Jason O’Loughlin’s son is an 11-year-old centre-back for the academy’s U12s and is proud to say Jay was one of the first players to sign up five years ago. He compares the academy to a scaled-down version of Barcelona’s La Masia because of the way its players and the senior side intermingle.

“It is great. The boys have learned an awful lot and the level of coaching is fantastic,” he says. “They promote playing the ball out from the back instead of just hoofing it.”

This ties in with the club’s mantra of enjoying a possession-based game — something manager Stuart Taylor firmly believes in. Youth games remain uncompetitive until U14 level, with a focus on skills and development instead of winning.

“When I came in I told the youth team managers to go and let the kids play with a freedom where they can express themselves and adopt a certain style of play to develop young players in a way that will help them at first team level,” says Taylor.

Similarly, club captain and talismanic midfielder Shane Duggan thinks this is something the senior players get great satisfaction from. Speaking about his manager, he says: “I love playing under him. The style that Stuart wants us to play is really enjoyable. I am loving every minute of it at the moment.”

It also seems the hunger and ambition shown by the manager and staff at the club has hit home.

“In the next year or two we can definitely kick on and aim for the European places because the plan is in place for the future. We are still only in our second season back in the top flight and we have been unlucky with injuries,” says Duggan.

It is hoped that by that stage the club will be playing its home games at Markets Field, the spiritual home of soccer in Limerick, which is being redeveloped by the JP McManus Trust and the Limerick Enterprise Development Partnership.

The ground was Limerick’s first home and entertained sides like Celtic, Liverpool and Southampton during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s before temporarily relocating to Jackman Park, behind the city centre’s bus and train station. Neither site has been of a sufficient standard to host the club’s home fixtures for some time. Now, Limerick ground-share with Munster Rugby. Thomond Park’s capacity is 26,000, but with attendances below 1,000 and a far from ideal playing surface the venue is not best suited to League of Ireland football.

Taylor is keen to stress how supportive the ground staff at Thomond have been but sees a move to the home of Limerick football as a step in the right direction.

“The people at Thomond Park have been very hospitable towards us but the rugby does make a mess of the pitch and it must be frustrating for a groundsman who works at a rugby club because they are watching their pitch getting battered all of the time,” says Taylor.

This is a sentiment echoed by his boss.

John O’Sullivan says: “We saw the pitch after the Heineken Cup quarter-final and they turned that around for us within a week. The work that they put into that was phenomenal.

“They do everything we ask of them and while it is not a perfect playing surface, it is as good as any of the away pitches we have played on this season.

“Markets Field is the spiritual home of Limerick soccer and certain generations want us to return there. We are extremely happy in Thomond Park but our concern is to ensure Markets Field is done properly and that everything is done correctly with it so we are in no rush.”

It is hoped that this return to Markets Field will bring supporters back in through the turnstiles to boost attendances and the atmosphere at games.

“Look at that there,” Pat says sitting in the corner in McLysaght’s. He points his hand and cites a Jock Stein quote from a Celtic scarf hanging above the bar: “Football is nothing without fans.”

At the moment the club sit in mid table in the SSE Airtricity League. The start of the season was hampered by injuries to key players. However, this does not leave the manager overly concerned: “The average age of the squad is 21 and we are looking to the future.

“All of the decisions that I have made at the club have been for the long-term future of the football club. Next season the boys will be better and more experienced and the year after that they will be even better again.

“I am ambitious and the club is ambitious so I want to go and achieve things. I want to put our name to the league title. I am not looking for perfection right now, I am looking for progression.”

Interviewing the players in a ladies’ toilet is symbolic of where the club currently finds itself — training at someone else’s ground and using a rugby stadium for home games. The club is out of place in its current surroundings. However, the progression Taylor seeks for Limerick is taking place. Once the facilities and injuries have sorted themselves out, there is only one place that they can really go.

“The overall goal for the club is to make it sustainable, build its facilities and provide a pathway to breed our own young players and if we are competitive, which we are, winning will come in time,” says Pat.

And surely, with success, will come the opportunity for the players to escape interviews in that bathroom.