The Dundalk FC Trust will support whoever is running Oriel

There has been very good feedback to the news of the setting up of the Dundalk FC Trust. They say there is no more time to lose as the future of the club remains so uncertain.

They say that the trust, the supporters and the community must become the guardians of Dundalk FC going forward so that the club never again comes to the point of going out of football as it was last month.

They say there is a significant chance that unless the Trust model they wish to put in motion becomes a reality, the club will die.

Any supporter, member of the community, a person from Dundalk and surrounding areas or from anywhere can join the trust. The main aim of the Trust will be to fund the academies.

It will also be there to provide emergency funding to the club. The Trust is a limited company. It is 100 per cent independent of the owners of Dundalk FC.

The Trust will not have any say in the daily running of Dundalk FC, but it will be there to support whoever is running Oriel. They want the townspeople. The community and the supporters to become the guardians of Dundalk FC.

The trust will not have a role in team affairs, in management, and coaching decisions and the club's commercial activities. It will launch on Friday 25th October at the Town Hall in Dundalk at 7pm.

This week I spoke to the Trust's media officer, Gerry Lennon. "The purpose of the trust is to assist the club going forward and to try and add a level of stability to the club.

There is a document which many have seen at this stage which outlines what we are all about. It will become widely available in the next few days. We are on our fourth owner in four years.

Those of us who are behind the trust idea feared that this was just going to be a cycle. It would mean more debt and goodness knows all that goes with that. This will be a perpetual Trust.

This means that we will be building up funding that will be available, if needed all year round, every year into the future. It's not just a one off fund gathering system. It's hoped that this will run for years and years. It's also hoped that there will be good support for it and that a lot of people will get involved in it''.

Gerry said that anybody who joins the trust will become guardians of Dundalk FC. They will hopefully have a say at board level and at the running of the club.

If we get enough people together and enough people involved over the next few weeks and months, we would be able to leverage the support of the townspeople.

This would ensure that there is good governance ensuring the club will be a viable resource for the town of Dundalk. We will do that in a very transparent way.

The details will have to be worked out between the owners and the representatives of the Trust. Ultimately the trust will be about the people of this area and this town who have been frozen out over the past number of years.

They had very little way of influencing what was happening in Oriel Park. We were just concerned that we were spiralling, out of control with the club completely gone.

This is why a number of us decided to put something in place. We are hoping that we will get strong support from the community of Dundalk and surrounding areas.

Gerry said that it has yet to be decided where they will exactly place the funding they get in the club.''This will depend on who the owners are.

We assume that if we have a decent fund of money, up and running very quickly, that we will have a better idea where we are at. We have an amazing amount of pledges already from people in the community.

This is from people who are prepared to give us one thousand euro up front. We were not sure how many people that might have suited. But we are very happy with the response to that.

We are hoping to get at least 40 to sixty people who will give us 1,000 euro straight away. That will be seed capital which will be used first of all as a leverage to get involved with the owners.

We want to show them that there is a serious effort out there to provide support. It should also show that there are people willing to buy in. But they will want to have a member of the Trust to have membership at board level. That's the plan.

Maybe we will not be able to raise our aimed figures from half a million euro to a million. The lower buy into the Trust is 260 euro a year. This is five euro a week over the 52. Five euros will not even buy a pint these days.

I was charged 4.05 euro yesterday for a coffee in a certain establishment in Dundalk. If we can get 400 people to sign up at 260 euros, this would get us 104,000 euros straight away.

We may not get all of these people on board straight away. We may not even get half of them. But even if we do get half that number it's a great start.

But Gerry added that Dundalk has a population of 45,000. ''Taking in its hinterlands and the support it gets from South Down, South Armagh and Monaghan and parts of Meath we would be hopeful of reaching the 100,000 euro figure from pledges of 260 euro for the year.

If we were to get another 400 people at 500 euro a year this would bring in an additional 200,000 euro. This would go on top of the 100,000 collected from the 260 euro per year.

If you got 100 people putting in 1000 euro each, this will bring in a considerable sum on top of the money pledged at 250 euro and 500 euro. We heard at a meeting this week that the academy will cost up to 200,000 euro to run.

From the figures we were told this year it cost 180,000 euro to run. And as everybody knows, costs only rise. Nothing comes down. Can you imagine if we had between 300,000 to 400,000 euros gathered before the start of the season.

We could perhaps offer to run the academy for the owners. We would still then have maybe up to 200,000 euro to go towards infrastructure and improvements around Oriel Park. We have all been crying out for these improvements for years.

Gerry says there has been much doom and gloom around Oriel for some time now.''We of course have had grief at Oriel recently with the passing of Maxi. This was terrible. A few years ago we also lost Harry Taaffe.

This is of course far more important than football. But there are positives around as well. We know there is a grant of 450,000 euro for a new astro turf pitch and floodlighting improvements.

There is also a grant of 375,000 euro which will be paid to the club by UEFA. That is substantial money that will come in. That will go to the owners.

It obviously will not go to the Trust. The money that we can provide and believe me there will be total transparency on the money we can give.

If we have owners who will be willing to cooperate and who will work with us, we would take the burden off them for some of the projects. People could be saying that we are contributing towards the pitch and the new floodlights and the new pitch".

Gerry says that people would be able to say that they are contributing towards the academy and the pitch. ''They would see where their money is going.

The money is going into a trust and people will know that it is being used in the correct manner to keep Dundalk FC going..The trust is being launched at a public meeting on Friday week 25th February at the town hall. It holds 600 people.

If we can get that kind of a number, that would be great. Ultimately a lot of people will not be able to get to the meeting. We are hoping to broadcast it in some way. The money that will go to the academy is so important.

It is an integral part of the licence. It's the future of the club. It's so important that we keep the academy going. In fact, the aim would be to strengthen it going forward.

Hopefully, we would be able to bring coaches in and they would be able to bring more players through. It's impossible to know how this project will work out. All I can say is that we have had a fantastic response from people so far.

We are getting texts and messages continuously. Everybody we meet say that this should have been done years ago. A month ago we thought the club was gone. We hope that this fund, this trust. Trust is a very important word here.

It's putting the money of the townspeople and surrounding areas to fund and secure the future of the club. People can trust that the people that are using the money will be used wisely".

Gerry says that they have to see that trust goes the other way. We have to put trust in the owner or owners or whoever is out there. But that is something that will have to be built on over time. It's going to take a lot of hard work.

It's going to take a bit of time to get this up and running. We do not know what time we have in relation to the immediate future of the club.

I think we need to do this and have it up and running. If things go badly wrong with the club we may be a safety net of some sort''.

''The public meeting in the Town Hall on Friday week is going to be very important. It's at 7 pm. This is for anyone who has any questions or queries about the trust to get answers. We will have an open mike.

We are hoping that there will be a good response to that. We need people who are there or who can not make it, to buy into the idea and see how key the Trust will be for the future of the club.''

''So far we have not had any contact with the owner, John Temple. He came in, in fairness to him at a time when the club was going to be completely liquidated. Mr Temple has come in and has at least stayed the execution temporarily.

Hopefully, we can get the season through. So we have to give John credit for what he has done so far. I am sure he is working hard in the background to get additional funding himself for the club.

But we have had no contact with him yet because we do not have a fund set up. We have a website being set up. It will take a couple of weeks. There is still a lot to be done on our side.

But we are coming close to a point which will let people subscribe. We will have an email address and a text number where people can pledge.

That will be available by the time your paper goes to print. We have had people coming up to us and asking how they can subscribe. They have also been asking us if they can help in any way''.

Gerry says that at the moment, they are just taking numbers and telling people they will come back to members of the public.''We are not in any way trying to put pressure on anybody to invest. We want people to look after their own first.

But if people want to even split the 5 euro a week into 2.50 each then that is fine. They can then nominate one name. There will be other ways of contributing to the club if they are not in a position of supporting this Trust scheme.

There will have to be other fundraisers or events held going forward to support the club whether by the Owners, the 1903 supporters club or by the Trust itself.

So people can contribute to a draw or whatever event is taking place. But we are hoping that the more people that come in and support the Trust, the more leverage and clout we will have.

We feel that will bring most owners to the table and signal to them that we want to work with them for the good of the club and the supporters. Our slogan at the moment is By the Town For The Town. The town is just the nickname for the club".

''A friend of mine supports a well known European club. The fans own 51 percent of the club. He pays just 85 euro a year for membership. But they have more than 18,000 members in a city with a population of just over 400,000 people.

They also have high attendances at their games. The scale is important here. If we can get widespread support from people for this would be immense. It's not a one off. Football is a big thing for people around here.

It has become something like a religion to some people. Dundalk as a club has had fantastic memories and great trips, particularly over the last ten to twelve years. Let's see can we get back to that.

There is no way why we can not with the right people. We will be in the First Division next season. It is going to be hard to get the right players. It will be difficult to pay big wages. But at least we have a club if we can get support for this Trust project.

This is the time when fans can get involved in the running of the club. My call to all fans and people who have any liking for the club is to get on board and make Dundalk A Giant Again''.

Gerry says the Trust may have to look at the issue of them taking over if the owner comes back and says at the end of the season that the club is not viable.

''If we get the trust up and running and the numbers in, every person who subscribes will become a member of the Trust. They will be able to attend meetings and see what is going on.

They will decide what is going to be done if we face a situation where we are told the club is not viable. We are setting up the Trust and obviously have interim people in charge for the moment.

The attention will be to have an AGM as soon as possible. Depending what goes on with owners or owner that is something that will definitely be looked at. The one thing we can not do is let the club die if things do not happen in a certain way.

If we were taking over we would have to get a licence. But of course, you must have an academy to get this all important licence. We want to work with anybody interested in putting money who are potentially thinking of investing.

They can get in touch with us. What we are doing is for the ordinary supporter or the ordinary fan. We are also trying to make it as affordable as possible and let people in the door for 260 euro for the year.

''But we are open to talking to anybody. It would be down to the members who will decide about what happens. We just can not let the club die. If that happens it will set everything back.

We are looking already at the possibility of a fifteen point reduction if things don't happen in a certain way. We would hope that there would be people in business as well as the trust if the owner decides the club is not viable.

We want to work with all of these people. If we have to do what we have to do to get the club through to the end of the season that the decision will be made by the members. It will not be my decision".

The importance of the Dundalk FC 1903 Supporters Club was revealed by its chairperson Orla Crilly, when she told an AGM that they spent over 13,000 euro on buses for the various teams that Dundalk operate over the past number of weeks.

Most of the monies was spent on the academy teams. Orla revealed the stark reality is, that were the Supporters Club not funding the Academy teams, the club would lose its licence. This would happen within a very short number of days.

It would see the club going out of business. The owner has committed to funding the senior team until the end of the season. There are not enough funds in the clubs coffers to pay for the academy teams.

Orla had a one hour meeting with new club owner John Temple just hours before the AGM. The revelation that the club could go out of business, were the academy teams forced to withdraw from their leagues, which would in turn result in the club going out of business shocked me.

The meeting agreed that the supporters club would fund the Academy teams for the weekend gone by. A voting slip was to be sent out to all members of the supporters club asking, should the supporters club continue to fund the Academy teams for the rest of the season.

The Supporters Club has raised over 30,000 euro since the start of their GO FUND ME campaign. They have funded bus and meal expenses for the first team over the past few weeks when the team played away from home since the financial crisis became public.

The Supporters Club have run many fundraising activities in the past few weeks. Without these, there would be no Dundalk FC now. Thus there is no doubt that supporters should look seriously at any scheme that is going to help the club.

If the Trust scheme is successful, then it will ensure the club would not get into this mess again. The supporters either through the 1903 or the new Trust scheme must have a seat at the board.

It is the supporters who have kept this club alive over the past few weeks through funding the Academy teams. John Temple has of course played a pivotal role also.

However at the end of the season should Mr Temple continue his role at the club, he must allow supporters a place on the board. He must also engage continuously with the new Trust Group and the 1903.

Dundalk were not relegated on Friday night as Drogheda failed to beat Waterford at the RSC. But the Drogs got a very creditable draw. They are eight points clear of Dundalk with three games left.

If Dundalk draw or are beaten in Oriel on Friday night by Derry City then they will be relegated. Drogheda could relegate them anyway, should they get the right result against Shamrock Rovers also on Friday at home.

It would be so ironic were Derry to relegate Dundalk. Imagine if it were a Pat Hoban goal that sent Dundalk down. Or if Michael Duffy or Patrick McEleneay scored and put them down.

Ruaidhri Higgins has signed at least 8 former Dundalk players so far. This is the first season he has not swooped for any Dundalk player. Derry are not playing well in the league.

Yet they could win it if they picked up the three points from all of their remaining three games. On Friday night they could only draw with Bohemians at the Brandywell on a 1-1 scoreline. Pat Hoban got the equaliser for them.

He is the league's leading scorer. He should still be with Dundalk as he had a season to go on his contract. But he was told by then manager Stephen O'Donnell that he could go just before the end of last season.

This season's owner Brian Ainscough let Hoban walk out the door for a paltry 30 to 35,000 euro. Brian of course is no longer the owner.

This will be the third time Dundalk will be relegated. The first time was in 1997. The second was in 2002. The third will be 2024.

Dundalk were first relegated on a Thursday evening in April 1997 at 9.33 pm, when referee Gerard Ferry blew his whistle and UCD had beaten Dundalk by two goals to nil at Oriel.

Dundalk were condemned to the backwaters of the First Division after being in the topflight for 73 years. The attendance on the night was a paltry 350 home supporters. The final whistle was greeted with some boos.

But as Dundalk players made their way off the pitch, they were applauded by heartbroken fans. The financial crisis that hit the club that season saw Dundalk put all of their players on the transfer list.

The loss of Peter Withnell and Mick Doohan did huge damage to Dundalk's prospects. The injury problems that kept Brian Byrne sidelined for most of the season was the major body blow.

After the game, Dundalk manager Jim McLaughlin announced that he would be resigning. He told the media that it was the saddest night in the history of Dundalk FC and in his own career also.

''I have had a good life in football. At least I can look back on the good times. There is not a club anywhere who has not had their bad days. I hope that Dundalk can turn things around. At least we still have a club''.

Jim McLaughlin was the most successful manager in the League of Ireland. It was not his fault that Dundalk were relegated that season. Dundalk did turn things around.

But now they are in an even worse situation than they were in 1997. But the right people are out there and are making the correct moves to save the club. It just remains to be seen if they can.

Have a good week. Look after each other. And remember please be careful out there.