No regrets, no tears goodbye

Dundalk's Stephen McGuinness might now be challenging for a league title with St Patrick's, but is still happy with his lot, he tells Emmet Malone

With his former team-mates at St Patrick's Athletic still centrally involved in the title race, Dundalk's Stephen McGuinness could be forgiven for wondering just what it is he got himself into last summer when he made what many felt was a surprising move from Inchicore to Oriel Park, where relegation is still a worry.

As the countdown to this evening's Carslberg FAI Cup semi-final against Shamrock Rovers continued yesterday, however, the 28-year-old Dubliner didn't sound like a man with too many regrets.

"Obviously it's been a tough season for all of us, but we've come through three tough Cup games (away to Galway, Kilkenny City and Finn Harps) that everybody was saying would be sticky. And then (in the league) when we went to Longford we were looking at being 10 points behind by the end of the night. A lot of people were tipping us to pretty much go down that night but instead we've clawed the gap back to three points and we're still very much in the hunt (to stay up)."

It's not, he admits, exactly what he was expecting when Martin Murray recruited him and a string of other high-profile players last summer, but things are looking up.

"I don't think that there's any doubt that we've underperformed as a group of players, there's no point in us hiding behind the manager or anybody else on that score, but in a way you've got to draw some encouragement from that, you've got to look at how much better we can play as a team and think of how much we can move forward if we can just start to achieve that.

"We've had some bad luck, too," he adds. "At the start of the season when I signed I was looking at the likes of Brian McCrystal, Mick O'Byrne and Stuart Connolly and expecting to play with them, but they've barely played a game between them.

"I mean any one of them would have been a great help to us because we don't have that big a squad, but they haven't been around and we've struggled without them."

Then, he observes, there was the downward spiral that so regularly follows a poor start to a season. "We were losing games and the manager was making changes, you can't blame him for that. But the result was that we never really had a consistent side.

"In recent weeks that's changed. It's been more or less the same lads out there and I think things have settled down a bit, we've stopped letting in so many goals and we're looking more and more like a team that's capable of getting a few too.

"If we can keep it up I still think we can get ourselves out of trouble - although I'm sure up at Longford they're saying they're good enough to do the same too."

Another factor he cites as having played a part in sparking what is now a six-match unbeaten run between the League and Cup is the criticism heaped upon the side by Brian Kerr on RTÉ after highlights of the 2-1 home defeat by Shelbourne were aired.

"We were all a bit annoyed about it, to be honest. Brian is well respected within the league and you have to accept that he was there to give his opinions but we all felt that he was a bit harsh."

McGuinness himself was singled out for two errors he made and the criticism, he admits, stung him. "I just felt that in another game you'd make those two mistakes but the other side wouldn't score and so it wouldn't matter. Overall I thought I'd done okay but it did leave me and some of the other lads feeling that we had a point to prove so maybe it hasn't been such a bad thing."

Murray, presumably, would now like his players to sweep this evening's television analysts off their feet. If they do, Dundalk can beat a Rovers side that has struggled in recent games.

If Murray's men also go on to haul themselves out of trouble in the league then it will be hard to find anybody around Oriel Park who'll admit to being disappointed. However, if St Patrick's win the title, will there be pangs of doubt in the mind of the man who left Richmond Park last summer?

"It would be easy to think about it that way," he says, "but the truth is that I did what was best for me last summer and I have no regrets about it at all. If St Patrick's win the league I'll be delighted, I'd love to see Trevor Croly and all of my friends there lift the trophy.

"The fact is that we can still win a trophy ourselves up here and that's what's important to me right now."