Gill Aims for Crowning Glory

John Gill may well be entering the Dundalk dugout for the final time this weekend when the Lilywhites travel to Kildare County in search of the League of Ireland First Division crown and the prize of promotion that goes with it. However, regardless of his own situation as his future at Oriel Park remains uncertain, the boss is aiming to end another rollercoaster campaign on a high, by taking victory at Station Road, which he hopes will prove enough for title glory.

“I’m not nervous, I’m looking forward to it, as I do with every game,” Gill declares to dundalkfc.com when looking ahead to Saturday’s crunch clash. “We trained really, really well on Tuesday night. Hopefully, we can finish on a high by getting a win, and if the other result goes for us, it will be even better. In retrospect, maybe, you wish the season was only starting, but, I still think, no matter what, that it has been a tremendous season.

“It has been a topsy-turvy year and, personally, it has been a very difficult year, off-the-pitch. I said at the start of the season that I felt that this was the best bunch of players that I’ve worked with. If we win on Saturday and accumulate 71 points, it matches what we done three years ago, although we’ve scored more goals. I think we’ve made improvements, but, again, you’ll always get some people who feel that we haven’t.

“We could have maybe beaten Limerick or Longford, we could have won a lot of games, but, also, we got a lot of late goals in games. People will look back at the Monaghan game, Athlone away when we were 2-0 up and the Waterford game when we conceded a goal in the last minute. But we also scored very late goals against Sporting Fingal, Athlone and Waterford, so these things even themselves out over a season.”

Gill is now in his third term at Oriel Park but has come under increased pressure this season. A new one-year deal has yet to be offered, and the boss admits that his future at the club is currently in doubt, as it appears that he may become the victim of his own success after instantly transforming the club from also-rans to title challengers in each of his three seasons at the helm.

“That’s out of my hands,” he admits. “That’s down to the powers that be. We did have talks earlier on in the season but nothing has happened this last while. I’m just focussing on the game, and no matter what happens, I’ve had a tremendous and very enjoyable three years here. It has been excellent. I’m not saying it’s not going to continue, but that’s not down to me. Even if we win the league, some people think I don’t deserve a chance in the Premier Division, so you can only please some of the people some of the time, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

“All I know is that if we win on Saturday, accumulate 71 points and score 65 goals and a team finishes above us, well then good luck to that team, because they’ve done remarkably well. But I’m not going to worry about Shels. All we can do is focus on our own game. We can’t influence what happens at Tolka Park. What we can dictate is what happens in Kildare. Our first prerequisite is to go and win that game. If that isn’t good enough, so be it. If it is good enough, great, I’ll be thrilled for everybody.

“These are the kind of games that you want to play and be involved in. Our crowd has been magnificent all season and I know we’ll bring another big one down to Station Road. We’ll give it a right go, and no matter what happens, let’s try and finish with a little bit of dignity and show respect to everybody concerned. Tony Cousins has come in and done a good job at Kildare - he’s after getting a draw and a win in his last two games. They’ll be focussing on the playoff game that they have next week, so he’ll have his team set-up as being very hard to beat.

“All we’ve got to concentrate on is doing what we do well, and I think if we play anywhere near the level that we played at last Thursday, with the intensity, the desire and the passion that we showed, it will take a good team to beat us. Some people will say ‘why can’t you do that every week?’, but it’s not like a light switch. If I had the secret of being able to turn that on or off, I wouldn’t be managing Dundalk. We prepare the same way for every game and we’re no different this week.”