CHANGE AT DUNDALK has come gradually and then suddenly.
They will forever be the LOI side synonymous with the 2010s, given the amount of silverware collected and their paradigm-shifting achievements in the Europa League. But their current squad now features only three players from the club’s last title-winning season in 2019, and this is hardly down to simply the passing of time.
Five of that squad are now at Derry, while Jordan Flores is at Bohemians, defenders Sean Hoare and Dan Cleary are at Rovers, Sean Gannon has signed for Shelbourne, and Sean Murray is in the First Division at Cork City.
“I thought it needed a freshness”, manager Stephen O’Donnell tells The 42. “You want to keep as many of your better players as you can, but the place needed regenerating from an ownership point of view, a playing point of view, staff, everything.”
That refresh has certainly happened. A local consortium rescued the club from the chaos of the Peak6 ownership at the end of 2021, but they spent much of last season looking for investment, and there were extensive talks over a deal with Hull City’s Turkish owner Acun Ilicali until he switched his attentions to Shelbourne, whom he owned for about five minutes.
The club was sold at the end of last year to Boston-based businessman Brian Ainscough, who divested himself of his interests in Kerry FC to take charge. Ainscough accelerated the deal by a month to allow O’Donnell get on with putting a squad together for this season.
Dundalk won five of their final six league games in 2023, but O’Donnell admits the uncertainty around the ownership had an impact, with nobody in a position to offer certainty to players whose contracts were expiring. That uncertainty also hindered any early moves in the transfer market, with most of the domestic business done within a couple of weeks of the season’s end. Among those to leave were stalwarts like Daniel Kelly (to Derry), Keith Ward (Shelbourne), and Darragh Leahy (Waterford).
The certainty brought by Ainscough’s arrival couldn’t prevent the exit of record scorer Patrick Hoban, who has joined many of his former team-mates at Dundalk. Hoban had a year remaining on his contract, but has cryptically said there was “no point in staying.” A few different reasons are believed to have come together to provoke his exit, but one of them is the ticking of the clock: at 32, Hoban is still good enough to be fighting for league titles and playing in Europe. Dundalk are currently not at that level.
“I can’t give you a definitive answer as to whether we will miss them or not”, says O’Donnell when asked if Dundalk will miss Hoban’s goals. “But I am sure there’s a good dynamic in the group. I don’t think we were so reliant on any individual in the way we played last year, or that everything went through one individual. It was more of a team, when we functioned well. I am hoping it will be that way this year, we will find different ways of scoring goals.”
Popular goalkeeper Nathan Shepperd has also not been retained as the club and player were unable to reach an agreement, the demand of a summer release clause among the stumbling blocks. Shepperd’s agent has been openly critical of the club on social media, but Dundalk have moved on. O’Donnell and Brian Gartland – now back at the club as the head of football operations – identified George Shelvey of Nottingham Forest in early January, but a permanent deal was held up until this week amid Forest’s uncertainty in the position. (Having failed in a deadline day bid for Caoimhín Kelleher, Forest eventually brought in Matz Sels from Strasbourg.)
Dundalk’s recruitment has been heavily centred on the UK, with only UCD’s Dara Keane signed from another League of Ireland club. They have prioritised young players with first-team experience: Keane is the oldest of the arrivals at the age of 25, while only Shelvey and teenager Zak Johnson have made fewer than 40 senior first-team appearances. Strikers Ciaran McGuckin and Jamie Gullan have arrived from Rotherham and Raith Rovers respectively to try and pick up Hoban’s goalscoring mantle, while Stephen Kenny’s son Eoin has signed pro terms at the club and scored his first goal in the Leinster Senior Cup at the start of the month.
Dundalk finished fifth last season, two points outside the European spots, and a return to continental competition is the aim for this season, even if the level of off-season change makes it difficult to make accurate forecasts of the team’s potential.
“I do like the age profile we have and the players we have”, says O’Donnell, “but I have no evidence to give you sure-fire prediction of where we will finish. All I want is that when players play for Dundalk, it means everything to them, and we will do anything to get three points on a Friday night.”
Ainscough, meanwhile, is splitting his time between Dundalk and his home in Boston. He has promised he will bring further investors to the club, with an announcement on that expected next week.
He has been happily unfiltered in his view of Oriel Park, calling it a “pigsty” after his first visit, during which his seat broke. Dundalk’s degraded facilities won’t be fixed for this season, with plans afoot to replace the floodlights at the end of this season. The pitch also has to be made five yards longer and two yards wider to comply with Fifa regulations, and those works will happen at the end of the year. The astro surface will stay however, until the academy teams find another facility at which to train and its burden is reduced.
Tonight Dundalk kick off the season away to champions Shamrock Rovers, over whom they once ruled. They are the last side to stop Rovers winning the league title, but in a time Rovers collected four league titles, Dundalk had three different owners and four different managers – and one of them had two separate spells in charge.
This year has brought yet more change at Dundalk, but there is now a sense of unity.