Oriel Park in need of “love and attention” says new Dundalk owner

Dundalk FC chief operating officer Martin Connolly doesn’t believe the land owned by the Casey Family Trust provides an impediment to ground developments at Oriel Park.

Oriel has been The Lilywhites’ home since 1936, and while the club acquired the lease of the venue at the end of 2016, the land itself still belongs to the family of the late Des Casey – the ex-FAI president and UEFA executive member who supported the club in the process of securing the disputed lease from former Dundalk owner Gerry Matthews.

However, aesthetic developments at Oriel have been non-existent since then, with the ground instead falling into further decay, but Connolly is hopeful that new owner Brian Ainscough – who is seeking additional shareholders – can buck what has been an ongoing trend, and doesn’t anticipate a lack of land ownership being a stumbling block.

“I have never seen that the lease on Oriel Park would be a problem on anything,” said Connolly at a press conference held in the YDC on Friday afternoon. “I’m involved in this 10 years and nobody has ever told me ‘you won’t get that grant’ or ‘that won’t be done’ because of the lease. Never. So I don’t see that it’s going to be a problem in any form.

“As a country, there’s nothing can be achieved quickly,” he later added. “We know (Bohemians chief operating officer) Daniel Lambert quite well, and Daniel will tell you that when they started talking about the Dalymount project until today, I think it’s 11 years or 12 years or something along that scale. So nothing can be done hugely quickly in our country because of planning permission and funding and all that sort of thing.

“If we generally are seeing that we have a plan, that we’re bringing it forward and that at the same time, we’re making the place a little bit better, improving fan engagement and improving the fan experience on a match night, I think that’s where we start.”

Ainscough, whose 100% takeover of the club was completed last week, said:

“Most facilities around here that I see need help. Some of them look like they’re on life support.

“Oriel Park definitely needs a lot of love and attention. Obviously Martin knows more, but I know that they put in for some of those sports grants that are supposed to take care of the field getting done and some work done towards the lights – they’d be two of the main things that we as a club will address, is getting the field playable for the players. So for now, this season, it’s certified, and then for next season, we’ll see what happens.

“There’s different phases of that,” he projected.

“Martin has had a committee come and put that together. I haven’t had a chance really to look through that. I mean, we’d love to be able to have a magic wand and do it all in one day, but it will take a while.”

In October, a development group – consisting of Connolly, Colm Murphy, Simon Blackmore, Bernard Freeman, Gerry King and Stephen Neary – publicly outlined its long-term ambitions to upgrade Oriel to a Category 3 League of Ireland stadium.

Ainscough’s portfolio incorporates ground development, plus optimising attendances, with the ex-Kerry CEO already considering short-term measures to improve Oriel.

“We talked about cosmetic stuff,” he continued. “Can you put in some portable standing at the back of the goals that are not going to be outrageously priced in the short-term?

“We could get portable stands that are not as expensive to put in to dress up the facility, put some seating in there, red and black seating compared to the grey seating. I think those cosmetic things would make the fans feel a little bit that we’re doing something.

“We did a little bit down in Mounthawk.

“We put some seats in and they thought we were building Wembley. Something like that is not out of the realm that we can’t do next year for seating and so forth – not this season, not ’24. Last year, we had to do it for ‘23.

“We did it in a month, but I don’t have that time, but we will be looking to do some stuff.”