JONATHAN CORBETT sounds very content with life as he speaks, and he has reason to be.
Galway United are currently top of the First Division by a significant 16-point margin.
They need just 12 points or four wins from their final eight games to guarantee a title triumph.
It is also a historic season for the club’s women’s team, as they have entered a side into the top flight for the first time.
They currently sit fifth in the table after 14 games and beat Cliftonville to win the inaugural All-Island Cup last month.
Key to this success has been Irish billionaire property developers Brian and Luke Comer. Last year, it was announced that the brothers would be taking majority ownership of the club.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we wouldn’t be the top of the First Division if we didn’t have Brian and Luke Comer,” Galway director Corbett tells The42.
“And anyone that tells you: ‘We have homegrown talent and great underage teams,’ this is all down to having the Comers involved.
“We would have three or four big meetings a year with them about where it’s going and stuff like that.
“They’re Galway people. They understand that they’re not going to see a return on the money, I suppose.”
Another key figure has been John Caulfield. The ex-Cork City boss was appointed manager in 2020.
He succeeded former player Alan Murphy and took over a club in a perilous state, as they sat second from bottom in the First Division and winless in their opening seven league games.
Since then though, Caulfield has helped gradually transform their fortunes to the point where they now look virtually certain to be promoted this season.
Players like Brendan Clarke, Rob Slevin, Killian Brouder, Vincent Borden and David Hurley have been key for a side that have lost just once all campaign, while Monday’s emphatic 5-1 win away to UCD saw them reach the quarter-finals of the FAI Cup.
Corbett cites the Caulfield-driven decision to switch from part-time to full-time training as being integral to their evolution.
“I would go as far as to say that John has brought the club from semi-professional, amateur to fully blown professional in what we do,” he says. “We’ve loads more to do. But he’s definitely brought the club on. He’s probably brought the club on two years ahead of where we thought we’d be and I’m not just talking about the first team — there was other stuff he helped us with.
“He has, without a shadow of a doubt, turned some players into gems.”
One of the most noticeable changes has been with youth development.
Plans for a €20 million Galway United soccer academy had reportedly stalled as of last year, but it has not stopped some talented players from coming through the system.
In May 2022, a deal was announced between Galway and Newcastle, for the then-17-year-old defender Alex Murphy, after he made 26 first-team appearances for the Irish club, with the early exposure to men’s football rendering him an anomaly in the Magpies’ academy.
Now 19, the Irish youngster impressed for Eddie Howe’s side in pre-season and doesn’t look far off competitive senior football across the water, having been given a good grounding back home.
Again, Corbett praises Caulfield for originally handing the youngster a chance at such an early age.
“I was up with him in training one day,” the director recalls. “He came over to me and he said: ‘The boy Alex, I might give him a chance’. I said: ‘In training?’ ‘No, Friday night.’ I said: ‘You’re joking with me.’
“He said: ‘I think he might have something.’
“That was him, nobody else. Obviously, he touched base with the academy coaches.
“And he was man of the match the first night he played for us. He was unbelievable.
“That element of John Caulfield, of what he does for the club [as a manager], is just one part. The other part is how he’s connected with all the clubs in Galway.
“He lives in Galway full-time. He goes around to all the clubs. He knows every local junior club manager or chairman. He goes to all the matches, a lot of the underage matches, you see him at the women’s matches.
“He gives you a pointer on a few things, a bit of advice on what he’s seen before but he does his business really well.
“I’ve had conversations about 11 and 12 o’clock at night. It just shows you that his mentality is just football, football, football. He knows everyone in the game. He’s pushed us as a board way more than we’ve ever pushed before.
“And in fairness to the board I’m involved in, anything he’s ever asked us for, we’ve given him.”
Keeping hold of talented youngsters like Murphy for as long as possible and commanding a substantial sell-on fee will be vital to the success not just of Galway but all League of Ireland clubs in future.
Furthermore, Corbett and co will of course be keeping a close eye on Murphy’s progress, as additional milestones, such as a new contract or a Premier League debut, will lead to greater compensation for the Tribesmen.
“Are we watching Newcastle’s bench every week to see if Alex plays? You can bet your bottom dollar,” he says.
“Similar to Dara Costelloe in Burnley who came from us as well.”
Corbett is wary, however, of assuming that such funds will eventually become available.
“We have seven players at the moment going over to clubs. They’ll get some trials in the summer over there.
“You don’t know who’s going to take them. And obviously, there are different tiers. If a Premier League club take them, you’ll get more money than as you go down, to the Championship, League One.
“We don’t say at the start of the year, we’re going to make 20 or 50 grand on some signing because they’re few and far between.”
Corbett, who emphasises the diligence and importance of fellow board members who are all unpaid volunteers, has been working behind the scenes at the club for close to a decade at this stage and perhaps the most difficult moment occurred at the end of the 2022 campaign.
After a long, hard season vying for promotion, a 3-0 loss to Waterford in the First Division playoff final felt like a crushing blow.
Angry sections of the travelling support made their feelings known, calling for Caulfield’s dismissal, after a third year on the bounce in which the manager and his side fell at the playoff hurdle.
“Every year that we failed to get promoted in the last five years now, myself and other board members would go into the dressing room at the end of the match,” says Corbett. “And we’d be devastated, we’d be sick, we’d be depressed for weeks afterwards, but last year was a bit harder to take and it was because of the support we brought down to Limerick.
“We brought 10 buses down to the ground. And there’s no point in hiding it — an awful lot of negativity happened after the match. And we all said in the dressing room that night that we’re all in it together.
“We all said that we’ll back whatever John wants to do. We need to get up. That’s our main goal. It’s what the Comers want and the fans want. And that was the hardest night I had in football. I’d say it was probably the hardest night for John Caulfield as well.
“The ‘keeper made a massive mistake for the first goal, and probably the second goal as well, so it didn’t help.
“And we all said it, we left that room and said ‘no matter what we do, we have to get promoted’.
“We stuck it out and hopefully this year, we’ll prove we made the right decisions.”
And while the outlook is now extremely promising on the promotion front, Corbett recognises there is still plenty of work to be done on and off the field.
“I would say the only thing we’re lacking is we don’t have our own facilities – [for example] Roadstone like Shamrock Rovers have.
“But even speaking to the Shamrock Rovers lads, they still have to use other facilities because there are so many teams.
“If you think about it, we have 10 teams including all the women’s teams that we have to furnish every week.
“When I was over at Newcastle at their academy, they had 12 grass and two astro pitches. And that wasn’t enough for them — their academy starts at U8s.
“So we do have a good academy, but facilities are a massive part of it at the moment, we’re actively looking for grounds to develop facilities.
“That’s our next big thing, I suppose every club in Ireland are struggling for it as well.
“Football in Ireland probably wasn’t ready for what we did with the academies — everyone having their own training grounds.
“You look at the clubs in England and 90% do have them. We use Salthill Devon for our senior squad and some of our underage.
“And without the help of Mike Heskin [the Director of Sport at the University of Galway], we wouldn’t have anywhere for the women to train.”
Corbett is far from the first person to make a variation of this point — in June, the Football Association of Ireland lamented “chronic” underfunding in the sport and outlined a proposed €863 million investment plan for the next 15 years.
Whether this money is made available for Galway and others remains to be seen, with the association’s own recent financial struggles well documented.
“We’re not getting a bang for our buck with TV, sponsorship deals, it’s not there in any club,” adds Corbett. “There’s no club in Ireland that would disagree with what I say. And I’d be shocked if Jonathan Hill disagreed with what I’m saying.
“We need investment in the League of Ireland. It needs proper sponsorship. I’m sure they’re going to say it’s been a few tough years since what happened a few years ago. But they now need to work extra hard to get money into the League of Ireland.
“Maybe that’s someone from the outside coming in to help us with running the League of Ireland.
“I think it’d be better for both sides, but at the moment, it’s not there, it needs to be dealt with ASAP. And I’ve no doubt every League of Ireland club is saying the exact same thing.”
