A BRAVE NEW dawn is in store for soccer in the Kingdom, as Kerry FC has lift-off in the League of Ireland.
The latest club to enter the First Division are fully aware of the potential pitfalls however, as they bid to build a strong, sustainable entity that can have a lasting imprint on Irish football.
For starters, the Tralee-based outfit are not embarking on a professional model just yet.
“It will be an amateur start. It has to be, obviously,” outlined former Shamrock Rovers, Cork City and St Patrick’s Athletic footballer Billy Dennehy, who is acting as the club’s sporting director.
“Previously, when you’re identifying the model to go down this road, you have one or two options.
“You go with the option of a big budget to try and recruit and invest heavily in a senior team, maybe at the sacrifice of the underage structures, or else you take your time and you build slowly and try to produce from within and develop from within and progress from within, and that’s the model that we’re going down.
“We know it’d be more difficult, we know it will be a longer road, but I think that’s the journey that everybody has embarked on here.
“It’s going to be a long journey, a difficult journey at times, but we’re going to do it in the right way, which is trying to produce our own players, get young players from the area and the region an opportunity to progress and excel and hopefully not just play in the senior team here but also go further afield.”
Fostering local talent and providing them a platform to kick on is central to their ethos, according to Dennehy.
“They’re the aspirations now that are here for young people,” he continued.
“Personally, I want new players now in this area, in this region, to believe that they can be playing for the international team in a couple of years’ time, that they can be going out and playing in the Premier League in years down the road, so I’d be very passionate about that.
“Our mission here is to give those players the opportunity to come in at 12, 13, 14 and develop them right the way through. It’s going to be more difficult to compete with clubs in the league that are going to have very big budgets and are fully professional. We fully understand that but at this moment in time, we’re going to be taking small steps and try to develop them as the years go by.”
And they will be adopting a holistic approach.
“Ultimately, what we want for [the players] while they are here is a dual career where the education side of this club is going to be very important for us, the opportunities that we provide for the players in terms of the relationship with the MTU [Munster Technological University, Tralee] that we have, the scholarships to the US programme that we have, and other educational avenues that we’re looking to provide for the player,” Dennehy detailed.
“We’re hoping when a young player comes in, that they can use this not only to develop on the footballing side, that they can develop their education as well, go on to third-level education through the club and see this as a long-term platform for themselves to be able to play at the highest level while living at home, and not having to travel away, which is what players have always had to do in the past.”