Veteran Benno still loving life at the 'greatest club'

Cork City captain Alan Bennett grew frustrated last season and vented those frustrations at manager John Caulfield. But now he is ready to embrace another challenge.

Alan Bennett has, as they say, seen the two days over the last two seasons with Cork City: Double tops in 2017, double runners-up in 2018.

Now, at the age of 37, the club captain is ready to go again for another season which will probably — let’s not put it any stronger than that — be his last as a professional footballer, ending where he began at Turner’s Cross after a career which has also seen him play for eight years in England and gain international recognition for his country.

But he was never really tempted, he says, to go out on the high of lifting the league and FAI Cup trophies with City two years ago.

“I can see that the ideal scenario is to go out after conquering everything but not when I felt that I still had more to give,” he says.

“Last season was quite challenging and now I’m looking forward to the new one. And, if I had finished up, that would have been two seasons I’d have missed out on.”

The difficult challenge last season wasn’t just for City, who saw Dundalk reclaim both of the domestic game’s most glittering prizes from their greatest rivals of recent years.

For Bennett, there was also personal frustration at seeing his own game-time drying up in the league.

“I was frustrated definitely but the cup kind of kept me alive in the sense that John (Caulfield) put me for those games so you knew that you could still end up in the Aviva come November,” he says. “Europe was hugely frustrating though because I didn’t get any game-time.”

And it all came to a head in August when he confronted the City manager after sitting out a 1-1 draw with St Pat’s and a 2-1 defeat to Sligo.

“Earlier in my career I would have gone in on the first incident of frustration, straight in,” he reflects. “But that wore thin at the second or third attempt at it.

So, with experience, you learn to bide your time a little bit. Also, being involved in coaching now, I see more stuff from the manager’s point of view in terms of opposition, selection and how he wants to play. You see other perspectives.

“I think I just felt the anger because I knew I could have handled (Achille) Campion, the Pat’s striker, who played quite well that day. And I just felt I’d done enough in the past against this type of player to prove that I could still do it. (Raffaele) Cretaro for Sligo was another.

"Fine, there’s an unknown factor going in to Europe but I felt that, consistently, I’d shown that I could handle these strikers. My motivation has always been about going up against an opponent and now I wasn’t getting a chance to do it.

"So I saw these strikers having easier times than they should have against Cork and I went in and vented that to John.

“Listen, it wasn’t an argument, it was more me getting my feelings out. He took it on board but it didn’t ultimately change things in a sense which, throughout my career, I’ve learned it rarely does. You get your point across but ultimately the plan kind of stays the same.

"To be honest, it can make things worse for you sometimes because the manager, if he’s in the early stages of his career, might take it a bit personally.

"But John knows me well enough and he knows people well enough, which is a real strong skill of his.”

Bennett also stresses that he had no personal beef with Damien Delaney, someone he’d known and admired from his days in the youths at City.

It might not have helped ease Bennett’s frustration to see his rival centre-half struggling to adapt from the Premier League to the League of Ireland but he says he fully understands the logic behind the marquee signing’s arrival at Turner’s Cross.

“Was I happy? Of course, not. But, one, I really respect Damien as a person and two, if I’d been John, I’d have snapped Damien’s hand off to sign him.

"Three, you sign a player of that magnitude, you have to play him. And you’ve got to give him the time.”

Time might not be on Alan Bennett’s side any more but, in looking to extend his playing days for as long as he possibly can, he says he’s taking his lead “from people I respect, like Derek Coughlan, Declan Daly, Billy Woods, Dan Murray, people who’ve been down this road before.”

At the same time, he knows he needs to be ruthlessly honest with himself.

“It’s a big question and it’s something I’ve flipped over constantly within myself,” he admits.

I’ve had absolute inner turmoil about it. When, how, where to stop? Because I’ve never done this before. I’ve no blueprint for this. And it’s so personal because no-one can really tell you.

"Some days I feel a million bucks, swear to god, I train really well. And other days I can’t get down the stairs.

"But then I think maybe at 25 I wasn’t able to get down the stairs after a tough day (laughs). Maybe I just think too much about it. Maybe I should just embrace it a bit more.”

Because the bottom-line, he readily acknowledges, is that the joy of being a professional footballer is as pure as ever it was for him.

“Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. And you know what? It’s more of a love affair now than it ever was.

"Because I’m nearing the end, everything is more intense, like the joy of getting up on a sunny day and going in, having a great session or a great game, everything is heightened. And the camaraderie in the dressing room and with your team-mates, I know I’ll miss that.

"Although I’ve sort of made my peace with that a little bit because I have good friends and family outside of football. I’ve always had that.”

Along with his first team duties this season, Bennett — who worked with the club’s U15s side last year — is taking on the role of assistant to manager David Moore for the Cork City team who will be taking part in the inaugural U13 National League, which kicks off next month.

And he doesn’t need to be told that, in coaching terms, it’s an especially responsible role.

“It’s such a special age, from 13 to 17, that these lads need to be dealt with so carefully,” he days. “We can talk about the problem of the guy who comes out of the game at 35 without social skills. Even worse is the thought of a 17-year-old going out of the game, destroyed by it.”

From personal experience, he is also acutely aware of how different rates of physical, technical and mental development need to be taken into account at such a young age.

“Because I was that kid,” he says. “I probably didn’t play my first organised game of soccer until I was about 17. It had been GAA the whole way up to that. Country background.

"The GAA was the be-all and end-all. And at 16 or 17 you played youth soccer in the off-season just to keep fit. So I can completely relate to that.

“A kid might not be the best tactically or technically but he might have determination, gets over failure quite quickly, be relentless in wanting to learn. And there’s so much that goes into that.

"You can control the training environment but what about the environment that creates the kids? I would love to see football coaches be facilitated in learning more about all that so that they can develop challenges to help with a kid’s resilience or confidence.

"If someone’s got those mental skills, it underpins everything.”

And that still applies to the veteran in the game. The learning never stops.

Assessing City’s contrasting fortunes over the last two seasons, Bennett can see a reflection of his own personal experiences throughout his career.

“I won a league in ’05 with Cork and ’06 was kind of patchy for me. I won a league in ’09 with Brentford and ’10 was patchy for me. I won a league in ’17 and ’18 was patchy for me. I can be honest and say that my own expectations probably flip from intrinsically to extrinsically.

"You’re intrinsically driving yourself to achieve a goal. You achieve it and maybe you build up in your mind that certain things should happen after that, certain rewards. And I’m not talking about finance here. I’m talking about everything that goes around that.

"It maybe changes you slightly. And I’ve probably been guilty of that. And I suppose the greats keep that focus. They’re multi-millionaires so money is not the issue. They just keep that going.”

As Bennett sees it, the key to success at City is maintaining a unified and intensely driven culture.

“I think the strongest thing about our club over the last four or five years has been the behaviours within the group,” he says. “So whether you’re Sean Maguire who got released from Dundalk or James Tilley who we just signed from Brighton on loan, you come in and you work and you adhere to those behaviours. And that creates a unity.

"I was listening to Steven Beattie on a podcast recently and he was saying stuff that John (Caulfield) had been saying. You could almost hear John.

"And that was Stephen submerging himself in those behaviours. He really bought into the culture of the club and he was successful out of it.

“It’s more than work ethic. What’s at the heart of it is a relentlessness. And I know I’m immersed in that and I love being in it. And maybe last year some didn’t work like that and it got a bit fragmented.

"But if we can get our players buying into it, regardless to some extent of the quality of the players, I think we will be challenging again. I think that’s the key.

"But it’s when the pressure situation comes along that we’ll really see what the group is like.”

While he acknowledges that the departure of Stephen Kenny from Oriel Park is seismic, he still regards champions Dundalk as the team to beat this season.

“Absolutely. You finish above them or beat them in a competition and you’ll win something. But it’s going to be interesting. They’ve kept all their players and, if anything, added to the squad, but there’s been huge change in the management.

"Drastic change. That will be a huge challenge for them and it’s where their opponents will hope that they might find and expose a weakness.”

His ambitions for Cork City are not confined to just this season, however.

“We’re sat here now and I would hope that we wouldn’t have a boom-bust in the League of Ireland this year,” he says. “Not many people would give us good odds on that. But that’s the environment we’re in, that’s the industry we’re in.

"As a Cork City fan, I want the club to be run properly. I want it to be prudent. I want it to slowly grow over time. I want that as a Cork City fan.

“What would I sacrifice? That would be another discussion. But what it boils down for me is that I don’t want to be remembered as playing for the greatest team.

I want to be remembered as playing for the greatest club. An incredible club that’s still here long after I’m gone.

But the man they all call ‘Benno’ is not gone yet.

Having at one point used the word “terrifying” to describe his feelings about, sooner rather than later, hanging up his boots, he feels an obligation to correct the record as our conversation draws to a close.

“It’s probably an Irish thing that you go straight to the shadows rather than the sunshine,” he says with a smile.

“Because the truth is that I truly love the game and I’m really looking forward to the season. I’ll train as hard as I can to put myself into contention for everything I possibly can.

"So, as I said earlier, I need to and I will embrace this a lot more. And I know I will.”