Shelbourne fans back the struggle for survival

On Soccer:While the FAI have been busy sounding out individuals they hope might be of "high net worth" on the corporate facilities at Lansdowne Road and warning anyone else who might receive the letter to disregard its contents, Shelbourne have been more reliant than ever on the "ordinary fan" of late.

Six months after the club found itself relegated from the top flight as a result of its financial difficulties and almost four months after manager Dermot Keely cobbled together a squad with the sort of frantic haste that usually accompanies some of the crazier attempts to earn a mention in the Guinness Book of Records, the attention of the outside world has shifted elsewhere as things have quietened down at Tolka Park.

Around the club, the faces remain more or less the same although the apparent continuity tends to gloss over the fact that a quiet but profound revolution has taken place since Ollie Byrne departed to concentrate on fighting illness and, everyone hopes, getting himself well again.

Those who had long provided help and (often ignored) advice to the man regarded by many rivals as the sort of cartoonish bad guy of Irish football are now running things themselves. An eight-man board of management has evolved with Ollie's nephew, Andy, serving as secretary but with no one rushing to take up what might be regarded as the "leadership" roles.

Instead, the workload has been carved up and a group of long-standing supporters, including Joe Casey, Martin Fitzpatrick and Colm Murphy, have set about the business of getting the club back on its feet. It hasn't been easy. Andy Byrne readily admits that Ollie's tendency to oversee every aspect of the club's day-to-day running has inevitably resulted in his departure creating an enormous vacuum.

The exact level of indebtedness remains uncertain but the board has made a determined effort to deal head-on with whatever problems they have encountered.

By and large, they say, there has been a fair amount of goodwill and patience shown by creditors who appreciate that an effort is being made to address the situation.

Behind the scenes, it is still Ozzie Kilkenny's money that makes up the difference between income and outgoings on a week-to-week basis. Despite a poor start to the league campaign and swift exits from both cups, crowds have held up relatively well with an average of 1,200 or so attending games.

The wage bill has been reduced hugely but commercial and other incomes have become a good deal harder to generate after a period in which the Shelbourne "brand" took quite a battering. The fact is that gates probably account for 70 per cent of income now because there has been a fair bit of bad publicity and there aren't the TV games anymore so advertising has become harder to sell and sponsorships are more difficult to come by.

Long-term backers like JW Hire, Dulux and Umbro remain on board but the game-to-game stuff certainly looks to be thinner on the ground. Friday's cup game with Cork City was sponsored by industrial lighting specialists Acec Distributors but the match ball sponsor was club stalwart Shay Weafer and the one for next week's league game against Cobh Ramblers is the Shelbourne Supporters Development Group, an entity now more important than ever to the club's long-term future.

Where exactly that future lies remains as uncertain as ever with the current board weighing up options in the light of a heavily revised assessment of the lump sum likely to be available when Tolka Park is eventually vacated.

What is certain is that there will not be enough to start afresh on a greenfield site while Santry is considered a doubt as both Drumcondra and the as yet unformed Fingal team, which is expected to apply for league membership when the opportunity arises, are likely to play out of the stadium for at least the next five or six years.

The club's preference appears to be to remain on the northside and a variety of options are being explored with Keely having taken over the primary responsibility for leading the search with the support of a committee that is due to meet for the first time over the coming week or so.

Keely, meanwhile, also has the small matter of reshaping the team to worry about. Given the ridiculous speed at which the current panel had to be assembled it is hardly a surprise that the early months of the league campaign have proven to be a struggle. The team has won just two of 13 league games but in cup games, including Friday's against Premier Division Cork City, it has turned in spirited performances that suggest there is the basis for some progress.

A handful of current players, some of them on loan, are likely to depart in the forthcoming transfer window and the process of drafting in replacements has already started with former Drogheda United defender Stuart Malcolm and Mark McCullough, formerly of Arbroath, both lined up to join while others are being courted.

Perhaps surprisingly, given all that has been happening of late, there is real optimism that the club might return to the top flight and the hope is that it might be in a position to relocate too, for every week that Kilkenny writes a cheque means another little bit of the club's capital is gone.

There are, as it happens, no plans at this stage to sound out individuals of "high net worth" regarding what should go into the new ground. What there is, though, is a hope that ordinary supporters, the people who have shown a willingness this year to endure the bad times just as they enjoyed the good, will stay on board even as others in a new catchment area are recruited for a ride that, while bumpier than before, never seems likely be anything less than interesting.