High-flying Limerick learning to live with the city

It has been a long old haul for senior football in Limerick. Over the past decade it's been to the very brink and back with bankruptcy, bitterness and the National League's specialist breed of vulture, the builders, all coming very close to wiping out all that had been achieved since the city's name first began to feature in the league back in 1937.

Sixty years on, though, and things are starting to look up for the team run these days by Dave Connell and currently well up there in the hunt for promotion back to the Premier Division.

With a first team panel made up, with the exception of Howie King, entirely of local players, a FAS backed soccer academy and a rapidly improving image within the city, everything finally seems to be falling into place out at Rathbane where, for the first time in some years, the crowd is expected to top the 1,000 for this Sunday's visit of Home Farm.

Connell's side beat the Whitehall team 2-1 over the weekend to keep pace with Waterford and Bray at the top of the table and open a six point gap over fourth placed Athlone. Possibly even more impressive, however, was their performance in last week's League Cup quarter-final with Shelbourne in which, against Damien Richardson's strongest side, they dominated the opening exchanges and might have scored three or four in the opening half an hour of a highly entertaining first half.

Up front Jason O'Connor, formerly of Peterborough, looked dangerous throughout the opening hour, left full Albert Finnan worked tirelessly in defence while grasping at every opportunity to push forward and the midfield, recruited en masse from leading local club Fairview Rangers performed admirably.

That transfer of three players over the summer was a significant indication of the greatly improved relationship between the National League outfit and the other 100 or so clubs in the city. It's a relationship aided greatly by the addition to the management team of Fran Mullalley from Pike Rovers and it is one which is now, at last, helping Connell to recruit the best talent available locally in order to compete seriously on the national stage.

And it's working. In the league this season the team have beaten leaders Bray already and have only been beaten once themselves. At Tolka Park they completely ran out of steam during the closing stages against a team which includes several full-time professionals and a great deal of footballing quality but only after they had severely tested some of the most highly rated (and paid) footballers in the country with a display built on the approach usually associated with the home side of neat passing and movement off the ball.

"There used to be a great deal of animosity towards us from the other clubs in the city," says Chairman Fr Joe Young. "And, to be fair, you'd have to say that a great deal of it was justified because there was this feeling that it had an inalienable right to take any outstanding players locally and push them into senior football.

"Now, that's changed, there is more mutual understanding and when players do join us there is a certain pride on the part of their original club, they're delighted to see that they are coming on and doing well with us."

At Rathbane, too, there are considerable changes afoot. Having been rescued for the club by an American based friend of Fr Young, Peter Hogan, who purchased the land for £37,000 from the Bank Of Ireland which had ended up owning it in the wake of Pat Grace's financial collapse, plans are now being finalised to replace the club house and bar destroyed by arson some years ago.

Architectural and engineering expertise has been drafted onto the club's committee and the long term potential for development on a large site which includes three pitches seems almost endless.

As endless, perhaps, as Connell's apparent enthusiasm for the club and the warmth which those around it appear to feel for him. Aside from coaching the senior panel and running the academy, the 35-year-old visits schools in the area to run clinics and tirelessly works to uncover the next generation of footballing talent.

His work, feels one local observer, makes the former Shamrock Rovers player an obvious target for one of the bigger clubs over the coming year but Fr Young is adamant that "no, no, he's here for the long haul". If so, the future for the pair, already looking like one of the league's most formidable partnerships, their club and senior football in the city of Limerick is finally starting to look very bright indeed.