Dundalk face a new dawn

After the best part of a year's talking the process of turning Dundalk football club into a co-operative should kick off at Oriel Park this evening when the last a.g.m. of the current board is scheduled to take place.

Talks between the two sides are ongoing at present but there is confidence in both camps that a deal can be concluded well before the summer. The hope is that the new management, made up from representatives of the co-op members, will have as long as possible to settle in before the start of next season.

Of the outgoing board, several key figures have indicated their willingness to be involved after the takeover is completed, although for now the target is to leave the newcomers with as close to a clean slate as possible.

The day-to-day bills for the rest of the season should come to around £60,000 of which about £20,000 should come in by way of gate receipts and sponsorships. The ideal scenario is that the current directors can raise the balance so that the new board will not have to deal with anything from the current campaign.

It still doesn't change the fact that the club has substantial debts, the total figure runs comfortably into six figures, but they have over the past couple of seasons been transformed from what was felt to be a rather tangled mess into something quite manageable.

The feeling, however, is that things are at a stage where the repayments for the overspending of previous regimes should not unduly hinder the club's ability to move forward again.

Still, the problem of generating enough cash on an ongoing basis for capital investment in the club's ground, while also meeting day to day commitments, remains.

The organisers of the co-op put a figure of around £65,000 on their cash reserves plus around £100,000 in commitments from the business community - around half of the figure outgoing chairman Phil Flynn reckons is needed to run the club for one season.

But Flynn and his fellow directors see the potential of getting a far broader base of people involved in the club. "If you can get 500 people to sell just two £1 lotto tickets a week then straight away you're looking at a turnover of £100,000," he said.

He strongly feels that a wider distribution of the workload is critical for the success of the new venture. "I would certainly look at the lotto and see it as something that could generate more money for the club and the key to that happening is for more people to be involved so even on that level I would hope that it will be beneficial," adds Flynn.

"The bottom line, though, is that running a football club these days is far more about raising money than it is about playing football and it seems that the new board will have a lot of enthusiastic people behind them."

But if the new board need some inspiration, they need look no further than first team manager Terry Eviston and his players.