FORMER ARSENAL VICE-CHAIRMAN David Dein was one of the key figures in the formation of the Premier League and around the time of its inception he returned from his frequent reconnaissance missions at NFL matches with a great obsession: the toilets.
“Arsenal was going to treat fans like more than just human beings ” write Josh Robinson and Jonathan Clegg in The Club. “It was going to treat them like customers, and that started with the bathrooms, where every finish was upgraded.” The club won the “best toilets in football” at an architectural awards night for their improvements to Highbury in the Premier League’s first year and Dein appeared on Sky Sports News last year with the trophy, a tiny interactive toilet which still makes a flushing noise.
Cork City are back in the League of Ireland Premier Division this year and may be about to catch up in one sense at least. The club is now back in private ownershir under the stewardship of Kildare-based businessman Dermot Usher, who has made his fortune in the bathroom business. And perhaps unsurprisingly, among his first promises to supporters is an upgrade to the toilet facilities at Turner’s Cross.
“I have all the product in stock from Sonas, but I have really struggled to get certain people to do work”, Usher tells The42. “They will 100 percent be done by mid-season.”
Usher took over his family bathroom business, Sonas, with his brother at the age of 23, and the company has grown from a turnover equivalent to €300,000 in Usher’s first year to almost €50 million today. Usher isn’t involved in the day-to-day running of the business any longer, though he does still sit on the board.
He is now the latest owner of Cork City, completing a deal earlier this month and fulfilling a long-held ambition to immerse himself in Irish football.
“I got involved with Bray [Wanderers] a number of years ago through sponsorship and I saw a little more in-depth as regards how football clubs have been run”, says Usher. “I always felt it could have done a bit better. I spent a number of years looking at setting up something in Kildare, and what prevented it was that there was no stadium.
“With Cork City, I was already fairly familiar with some numbers, I got to know them again, and it was a no-brainer for me.”
Cork City were restored by their own supporters in 2010, run by the Friends of the Rebel Army Society, or Foras. What followed from their assuming charge was a parabola of on-pitch drama, from promotion to the Premier Division in 2011 to a league title triumph in 2016 to relegation in 2020. The club came close to a sale to English businessman Trevor Hemmings in 2020, only for the deal to become unstuck as Hemmings’ group failed to agree a deal with the Munster FA to lease Turner’s Cross.
Usher, however, then stepped in last year, with Foras members voting 84% in favour of selling the club. The sale process then got underway, with Usher’s legal team Pinsent Mason helping to get the deal officially completed on 3 February, just in time for the club’s return to the top flight.
“People have asked me how it’s been”, says Usher. “I am happier now than before I went in. It is like any business: it is all about people and the people around Cork City are absolutely top-notch.
“Any merger and acquisition transaction takes a few months to go through, and I had a decision to make: do I sit tight and go with the Foras budget this year? We probably would have been demoted with that type of budget, so I took the view this is going to go ahead and I underwrote any new signings for the club.”
Cork have signed a couple of familiar faces from the Irish market – Tunde Owolabi and Ethon Varian have arrived from St Pat’s and Bohemians respectively – but have also shopped in different markets, signing a trio of players from Sweden. I ask whether the immediate ambition for this season is to avoid relegation.
“I would like to think it’s a little more than that”, he replied. “If we finish fifth I’d take it. I was renowned in Sonas when people would ask, ‘Are you happy with that, Dermot?’ I would reply that I am never happy. Even if we got to fifth or fourth or third or second or first, my attitude would be that I am never happy. Not in an ungrateful way, but by answering in that way it allows me to look for more and keep raising the bar. There’s a team in there with Colin [Healy] and the bar has been set for ourselves. We will try to reach that bar, and next year we will try to better it again.
“I am not trying to compete with Shamrock Rovers and Derry in terms of budget. There are still two European places below that. Pat’s have a decent enough budget after that, but after that we are more than able to compete. We have a decent budget, let’s see how this season goes, we were a little late coming to it.”
Usher sees his role as growing the club’s commercial potential, and has planned several events across the year to engage with Cork’s corporate and business world.
“We are trying to get a lot to do a little rather than a little to do a lot”, he says. “It will take a bit of time, and this year’s events will probably be loss leaders but that is fine, it is more to do with good PR and good communication.”
His commitment to good communication extends to engaging personally with fans on social media.
“My mantra is to behave toward people as you would want to be behaved toward as a customer. First and foremost I am an League of Ireland football fan and I have my own experience of being a fan but also a sponsor, I’ve had some good sponsorship experiences but I’ve had some really poor ones as well., A lot of that comes down to feeling appreciated for the money you’ve given. Some people can do that in lots of different ways. This isn’t lining my pocket in any way, the outgoings will be more than the incomings, certainly this season.”
Does he believe he can turn a profit at any stage?
“If we got a good run in Europe, anything is possible. That is probably the only situation. If I can get the club wiping its face and expenses covered, there’s a good bit of work to do in the next couple of years in terms of building up the brand. There’s a bigger appetite for League of Ireland out there than people probably realise.”
Longer-term, there are no plans to buy Turner’s cross from the Munster FA but Usher hopes the club can have its own academy. Unless it is built by a separate, private backer, he says it will have to be at least part-funded by the government and should that come to fruition, Usher says it would be transferred to a trust to remain part of the club.
Though the bathroom upgrades will have to wait for a couple of months, there have been some incremental improvements at Turner’s Cross completed following engagement with fans, and Usher hopes a new clock, scoreboard and sound system will be ready for Friday’s opening game with Bohemians.
The RTÉ cameras will be in town for that game, as Cork aim to scale old heights under new ownership.
