The 1903 hold AGM

The 1903 Dundalk FC Supporters Club successfully hosted its third Annual General Meeting (AGM) inside the Lilywhite Lounge at Oriel Park on Saturday afternoon.

The hour-long meeting, attended by Dundalk FC owner Brian Ainscough and club secretary Colm Murphy, was convened by The 1903 chairperson Orla Crilly.

Orla opened by welcoming those in attendance, recapped the minutes from the previous year’s AGM before delivering a comprehensive report highlighting the past 12 months.

“It has been a very busy year for The 1903,” she stated. “We have a small number of people who have undertaken a huge amount of work on behalf of the fanbase over the year and it’s been great to build upon the great work that was started by the previous committee.

“Over the course of this last year, we have concentrated our efforts in a few key areas. Firstly, we introduced the new membership card, which is more wallet friendly and supports the membership scheme that we built for our members.

“Secondly, we put a huge amount of work into building a comprehensive benefits package for our members when it came to value for your 1903 membership, still only €24 this year. Thirdly, we worked on increasing the participation of our members in the matchday experience here in Oriel.”

Jimmy McEneaney, whose position as registrar and membership officer was ratified following a change of constitution, confirmed in his report that current membership stood at 329 people, however only 250 of those were fully active and paid-up members.

The 1903 hopes to increase its membership figures over the next 12 months, with more exposure throughout the Dundalk community expected to be visible in the short term.

Orla added: “We had pop-ups outside of Oriel on matchdays to promote ourselves and plan to have pop-ups across the town this year to promote membership of The 1903 to the wider community and increase revenue.

“On matchdays, I myself came to Oriel and helped what was a very small team of people preparing for the arrival of thousands of people for home games. Personally, I want to support the work of the club and get a greater understanding of what it takes to run the club on a day-to-day basis, also to establish relationships of greater trust with key people at the club.

“I learned there’s a huge amount of work that goes in behind the scenes by people who do it for free sometimes every week. In general, it’s a pretty thankless task, but people do it for love of the club.”

With the ‘crossbar challenge’ making a welcome return for home matches this season, The 1903 hopes to implement further initiatives that will engage supporters of all ages.

“We’ve started to get more families involved. Nothing makes me happier than seeing happy kids in Oriel and any kids can come up and put their name down to be a flag-waver in our guard of honour as the players come out to the pitch and have their name announced by Mickey Duffy, which they absolutely love.

“We’ve been building our future fanbase by including these kids now and they’re going to have some amazing memories of Oriel Park.

“Of course, we have our half-time competitions, and for the season ahead in conjunction with the club, we plan to alternate this with mini kids games on the pitch from local clubs if we can. I would also love to bring back the club mascot.”

Treasurer Damien Mackin confirmed in his financial report that The 1903 last year raised €6,133 – the majority of which was acquired through member subscriptions.

A printed breakdown of expenditure was presented to attendees on the day, with Orla then reaffirming that funds raised by The 1903 goes directly into specified projects only.

“Our aim is to work on pinpointing achievable goals for the improvement of the grounds,” she said. “I believe this can only be done by a combination of private investors, public funding and fundraising initiatives by the fans. I feel that is the only way forward.

“I think that with Brian (Ainscough) involved, we could start making more concrete plans for redevelopment. That’s when we’ll be calling on the fanbase to step up and start doing the work of fundraising.

“We will only fundraise if there’s a specific job to be done and any fundraising undertaken by the fans under the banner of The 1903 will not be paid over to the club, it will be paid directly to contractors for works carried out.

“I really want the fans to know that the money they raise will go directly to its intended purpose and won’t get lost in paying for any of the day-to-day expenditure of the club. I want to give strong assurances to members that any money they raise will not be wasted and you will see exactly where your money is going in the grounds.”

Vice-chairperson Frank Carolan offered an update on the marketing and media side of things, but topping his agenda was prospective plans of improving the Oriel experience.

“We’re trying to get the whole feel of Oriel lifted,” he said. “We’re looking at getting big tifo style flags of legends of the club behind each goals as an option. We’re not too sure how far we can go with this, but we’re investigating the option of doing this.

“With that as well, we approached the SEEK Festival to do a design on the Town End wall. It was just an initial talk to see how much it would cost and they were very interested in doing it. I think they give us an estimate of €6,000 to do it, so if that’s something that we’re interested in doing, we would need to fundraise that money.

“More live events and podcasts hopefully will happen this season. We had David Keenan last season, the Town End Podcast lads were here and we had the comedy night, so we’re hoping to do more this season, but we’re still trying to finalise some of those details.

“As part of the fundraising ideas that we’re having, we’re looking to bring out our own merchandise. I’ve spoken to Playr-Fit initially to see what kind of ideas we could do. They are interested in talking to us, so we’re looking to push that on, maybe get some kind of commemorative jerseys going. There is celebrations coming up in 2026, so we’re looking to talk to them about that as well.”

The AGM concluded with Orla, Frank, Damien and Jimmy re-elected in their respective positions, while Logan Carroll and Lorraine Durnin were both added to the committee. Those who wish to become members of The 1903 can do so by visiting the1903.ie online.