Dundalk put on a better footing

On Soccer: It's hardly the most painful blow endured by Dundalk supporters during the last few relentlessly difficult years, but Ger Rowe's late winner over Cobh at Tolka Park on Friday night means when Rovers come to Oriel Park on Thursday night it will be as league leaders - albeit a rather more modest league than these two had grown used to down the years.

More than a thousand turned out to see Dundalk draw a game against Finn Harps that they really should have won the other night. Considerably more are expected to show for the visit of Rovers, evidence in itself of an upturn in interest levels amongst a local population, who, even for those closest to the club, feel were spoiled by the levels of success prior to Dundalk's late 1990s decline.

Both on and off the pitch a great deal needs to be done if the club is to be restored to its former glory. Everywhere, though, there was evidence on Friday that it is at least starting to move in the right direction again.

Legend has it that when the sheriffs arrived a few years back to enforce an order for the payment of some debt against Dundalk they could find nothing worth taking from the club's ground. Even after that things continued to get worse and the decision last year to sell Hiney Park, a four-acre site adjacent to Oriel which contains a training pitch, was a clear indication that the board's collective back was to the wall.

The man who bought the land, though, has since emerged as an unlikely saviour for Dundalk Gerry Matthews, an engineer and developer with considerable property interests in the town, has taken over a club that, given his recent arrival and the fact he doesn't travel to away games, he has apparently never seen play on grass.

Matthews, a quietly spoken but amiable character, took control at the start of the summer when, despite the misgivings of a minority who believe his interest extends no further than assembling a larger parcel of land in the area, 107 of 111 co-operative members attending a general meeting voted to return the club to private ownership.

And so it is that a man who freely admits to having absolutely no interest in sport prior to doing a bit of business with a hard-up football club is now spending most of his time at one. Matthews now runs his other companies from the still rather basic office facilities at Oriel. Most of his time is devoted to overseeing a reconstruction of sorts while much of his spare time is spent actually building a new stand down one side of the pitch because, he explains, he has done that sort of work since his youth and he continues to enjoy the sense of "creating something".

His impression of the club prior to becoming involved, he says, was a little like a local Manchester United. This he now puts down to innocence for, after stepping inside, he realised that the place was "ready to fall down".

Now he has come to regard the whole venture as "primarily a business challenge" and insists that he will be around for the long haul.

There are still some doubting his motives but even they can't fully explain away his actions given Oriel is held under a lease and does not, therefore, come with a club that had declared debts of more than €400,000 at its last accounts - a figure that was expected to rise to around €700,000 when the full cost of its artificial pitch is totted up.

He says that when he bought Hiney Park it was always with a view to using it for a sports related project such as a gym which the club could participate in but even that sort of development is off the agenda for the moment.

He will not, he says, write cheques to buy players but has already funded improvements to the club's infrastructure such as a €20,000 refurbishment of its bar as well as hiring general and commercial managers in the hope that it can start edging its way towards a break-even situation. Income is already up substantially but not yet to anything like the extent required and, in the meantime, he has paid substantial tax bills and started to sort out other debts.

He reckons the club must make some €13,000 every week to cover its costs but the figure threatens to rise substantially if promotion is won. At present the squad costs around €5,000-a-week, significantly less, it is believed than the corresponding figure at Rovers. But, after a poor start, an experienced group of players have shown just how canny their manager, John Gill, is when operating at this level.

After his time at Dublin City, Gill is understandably anxious to prove himself in the Premier Division too and is adamant Dundalk is a sleeping giant that he can, if allowed to, awaken. To his obvious outrage, though, his side is uncertain of promotion even if they do top the first division because of the league's restructuring and so planning for next year is currently impossible.

The problem is that if Dundalk do get up then the wage bill would almost certainly have to be doubled or more if the club was to have any chance of surviving at the higher level.

There is a distinct sense that because of this Matthews believes promotion just now might mean a club that is just learning to walk again in financial terms having to run before it is nearly ready.

The FAI might well agree and so for the moment Gill and his men can only look to beat their rivals on Thursday and, thereafter, to ensure that, come the end of the campaign, both their employers and the football association have some difficult decisions to make about the future. Critically, though, that future, regardless of what division Dundalk play in next season, looks a great deal brighter than it did this time last year.