1903 Supporters Club will fund Dundalk FC academy

The 1903 Supporters Club will fund the Dundalk FC academy teams for the remainder of the season after it emerged new owner John Temple – who stepped in last month to rescue the club from liquidation – is committed exclusively to covering first-team costs.

With the U14s, U15s and U17s all making long trips to Donegal for matches over the weekend, those in attendance at The 1903’s EGM, held in the Lilywhite Lounge at Oriel Park last week, had no objection to paying academy team expenses for those fixtures.

With close to €27,000 fundraised by The 1903 over the past month, an additional vote took place online, asking if members wished to use that money to finance academy costs until the end of the campaign – to which approximately 90% voted in favour of doing.

“I spoke to John Temple and he says the money is not there to pay for the academies,” confirmed Orla Crilly, chairperson of The 1903. “We had a long, strong debate and I don’t believe that there is money going to come from anywhere except us for the academy teams.”

Bernard Freeman, Head of Women’s Football at Oriel, then warned at the meeting: “I don’t know if everybody realises how bad a situation the club is in, we’ve never been this bad before.

“We have six teams in the academy. Each team costs about €30,000 a year to run, so that’s €180,000 a year to run. The academy isn’t cheap, but the academy is also the future of the club.

“Whatever way we end up this year, whether we end up down in the First Division or we manage to perform a miracle and stay in the Premier Division, I think the academy teams are going to be the future of our club.

“If we don’t have an academy team, if we don’t have a boys team, we don’t have a girls team, we can’t have a senior team, we’ll lose our licence. That’s the other end of it, that’s the reality behind it and I don’t think people know how serious it is at the moment.”

Orla then disclosed that while the new Dundalk owner had initially requested no major fundraising take place for a three-month period, he has since warmed to the concept.

“He had said before that he didn’t want big fundraising going on to take away from the jersey and season ticket sales. That didn’t sit right with me, so I explained that there is membership models and stuff like that and he didn’t object to any kind of fundraising.

“He says he has put money into the club, he’s trying to make everything right, he’s trying to get new streams of revenue coming in. The thing is, the fanbase have been burned a lot and are going to have big trust issues with any of the new owners.”

The 1903 later unveiled its new proposed membership models, which would retain the €24-per-year card membership, but would be offering out a three or five-tier membership scheme, ranging from €100 and €1,000 to be paid annually by members.

As of Saturday, when the voting closed, 66% were in favour of implementing the five-tier scheme with monthly payments, while 90% opted to keep the €24 basic membership fee.

Mr Temple informed The Democrat last month that he would not be holding any personal interviews for the time being, while Orla explained he didn’t attend the EGM because of concerns that his comments could be taken out of context by attendees.

“He said, five or six people might take the right thing I’m trying to say from it and then other people might take something different from it. I said, give me something as a show of good faith. I know it’s not earth-shattering, but he’s given for The 1903 members discounts on the gyms and stuff.

“We’ve spent €13,000 to date on the buses and everything and people would like to see some of that money kept for doing something in Oriel. That’s what everyone has been kind of saying, but he’s just saying there’s no money there.”

The possibility of supporter representation in the Oriel boardroom has also been put to Mr Temple by The 1903, but according to Orla, the barrister has dismissed that notion.

“We met with him and that was one of the first things I said,” she recalled. “I said it would be a really good show of faith to the fans if you had someone coming onto the board as a representative. He wasn’t open to the idea.

He said if you have someone now that would work on the board, you’d always have to have that space there and if that person steps away, who would be the next person stepping in, and that’s why he wasn’t keen.

“He spoke about the fan-based model of ownership. He said, looking at other business models at other clubs, that it really slowed down the pace of trying to make decisions in a club.

He was talking about Rovers and saying they have to jump through so many hoops to get anything done and that because the club is in such disarray and things have not been run well, that you really needed to be able to have very decisive decision-making to get things done.

“We all know this club has not been run well for quite a few years. It’s a mammoth job to try and pull everything back and try and make sure all of the correct procedures are in place to do it properly. He seems to be trying to do that. It’s a hard line to walk down.

“On one side you have the real money aspect and because the money is so bad and all over the place at the moment, he’s really drawn a tight line on how to manage all that and get that under control, but there’s the other side of it.

There’s the community side and the people aspect of it. I do understand it’s a very hard line to walk down the middle of the road with these things, but maybe you’re a little bit too far on that side.

“It’s a really hard balancing act, but what is the biggest problem at the moment? Money. So maybe he’s right to just go really strict, really gung-ho about sorting out the financials of the club and maybe there’s some unpopular decisions, but he’s not against us all going out and fundraising now. I think we can go for it.”

On the pitch, Dundalk’s relegation from the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division will be confirmed if they fail to defeat title-chasing Derry City at home this Friday night.

Despite their impending demotion, Orla says Mr Temple is still actively trying to avoid entering the club into the Small Companies Administrative Rescue Process (SCARP).

“The books are in such a mess,” she said. “Everyone knows who money’s owed to, I don’t have to tell anyone that, but he has worked out some. He’s already brought people back to the table to work with them through that.

“I think the SCARP thing is going to be avoided. He doesn’t want to go the SCARP route as it would be too messy. That’s good for the local businesses.

“The best thing that can happen to us next season is to go down to the First Division because we have a massive wage bill for players and that needs to be cut.

The only way to save this club and to balance things out is to drastically reduce your expenditure. The wages for players and stuff like that is massive and all the associated costs with that is massive.

“We have to go right back down. We have to press the complete reset button, go back to zero and start again and try and figure out how to get out. It could even mean part-time football.”

The EGM concluded with Orla thanking Frank Carolan for his service to the committee after he stepped down as vice chairperson to be replaced by Jay McKeown.