Cabinteely ready for action

Cabinteely FC may be better known throughout Ireland as the childhood club of recent Puskas Award runner up Stephanie Roche, but in the past week many League of Ireland fans have come to know it as the latest entity to join the League of Ireland First Division.

Extratime.ie reporter Stephen Walsh caught up with Chairman Pearse Toale this week ahead of the campaign to discuss the campaign ahead and to get some facts on Cabinteely FC.

Cabinteely FC was founded in 1967 and will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017. They were originally called Cabinteely Boys but with the name change became just Cabinteely.

The South-Dublin club, based in the Borough of Dun Laoghaire, has increased hugely in size in the last ten years and now consists of a thriving juvenile section along with a non-playing side of the club. Their current Director of Coaching, former Bray Wanderers manager Eddie Gormley, along with Andy Rice helps to manage over 950 playing members and have been vital to the club progressing in recent years as Toale explains.

“It has grown hugely in the recent 10 years, with the club putting huge effort into coaching and makes it consistent with the club ethos. We have grown to such an extent that there is 54 teams playing across all spectrums of football from the DDSl, South Dublin Girls league, Special Olympics, the academy of eight-year-olds called the Cubs right down to our four-year-olds.

“Most importantly, we have some good football people involved with the club like Eddie Gormley who has been involved with the coaching side of things for the past four years along with Andy Rice. They're all good guys to have in the club and help drive the club on. We have about 120 non playing members in the background doing the coaching, administrative tasks and in general just keeping the whole thing ticking over.”

Despite some speculation online that Cabinteely were approached by the FAI over the winter to fill the remaining spot in the First Division following the decision by neighbours Shamrock Rovers not to enter a B team into the First Division ahead of the coming season, Toale is quick to refute this point.

“No we were not approached by the FAI. We decided about 18 months ago to think about it as in were we ready for the step up and had conversations with football people across a wide spectrum regarding questions such as how much do you need and getting advice on all other bits and pieces.”

The actual licence application took six months to do and involved a lot of communications with the FAI to fill out the necessary requirements all of which makes Toale believe they are ready for the season ahead.

“The process stepped up a gear last summer where we met up with the FAI to start going through all the various requirements and also started communication with Blackrock College R.F.C to get a stadium to meet all the various requirements so it’s definitely not something we have been working on over the past few weeks. It took about six months between the licence going in and then getting it confirmed last Wednesday”.

While the Irish Mirror announced back in December that “Cabo” were applying for a licence, it was only last week that the club announced they were in negotiations over a licence by publishing a facebook post.

“We didn’t want to tell people unless we got refused and we had a confidentiality agreement in place with the FAI so we wanted to make sure we had it before announcing anything. The Directors and Executive of the club were, however, involved in all stages of the process."

While the club will be situated in a huge catchment area of South Dublin for potential fans they do have two neighbouring clubs in UCD and Bray Wanderers on their doorstep that could potentially affect crowds but the chairman doesn’t appear fazed by the challenge of generating crowds.

“We have big numbers in the club through parents, families and there is a big catchment in the area around Dun Laoghaire that we will be hoping to tap into as well. A couple of hundred spectators is a prudent target for the club in the season ahead.

“We expect a large crowd for the first game of the season with it being a new club and we hope people will enjoy the whole experience having very good facilities in Blackrock and we should be able to make it an event that people will want to attend."

Many large regional clubs in the past who would have taken part in the A Championship back in 2008 such as Castlebar Celtic and Tralee Dynamos’ have decided not to pursue League of Ireland football in recent years due to the high cost. So how do Cabinteely plan to afford the costs?

“Firstly, we will have the senior set up separate to the youth teams so they will both have different budgets and we are in final discussions with a sponsor that should be confirmed shortly. We run a very tight ship in the club; we have some very good business people involved in the club on the board in both sections.

“Regarding this year we have no specific goals for the year, as in saying we want to be here in three years time, but we will build it slowly and will see what it takes. We’ll get it up and running for the time being and see how it goes over time."

The learning curve has already begun for Toale and his fellow commitee members.

“The phone hasn’t stopped for us and it is a very new thing for a lot of people involved with the club but we’re fast learners so we should be able to manage in time."

When it comes to first team matters  Eddie Gormley will be looking over that side of the club, having held his first training session last Saturday. Toale hasn’t yet seen a training session due to his hectic first week preparing for First Division football, but has been hearing accounts of the team.

Lastly, the Cabinteely chairman hopes for the season ahead to be enjoyable, with good quality football and that in the years to come many youngsters from South Dublin will be out supporting the team.

“We hope it to be an enjoyable experience. We hope that there will be a good quality of football on show and that people will come out and support us, with hopefully many youngsters chanting "Come on Cabo" in the years ahead."

The interview may have ended, but one knows that the big hard work is only starting for Toale and those associated with Cabinteely ahead of the big season-opening clash with Wexford Youths on the 6th of March in Stradbrook.