Longford Town’s Jack Brady: ‘Understanding how much the club means to people is hugely important to us’

Longford Town keeper Jack Brady knows the importance of delivering for the Red and Black this year. 

The two-time FAI Cup winners are celebrating their centenary this year after being formed in 1924. 

And it would be quite the tonic if they can compete for promotion back to the top-flight under boss Stephen Henderson. 

Despite a dismal start to the campaign last year, Longford only finished a few points outside of the play-off positions - so building on that is the priority for secondary school teacher Brady.

“The club is in its 100th year and they are doing a lot of work off the pitch to promote that,” he tells extratime.com. 

“As players, we are taking responsibility for that because that is hugely important as well. The players being aware of how it is important to the club is really important. 

“Stephen Henderson brought us in and we spoke to the volunteers, club owner and operations manager, right from the top down and from the bottom up. 

“They spoke about how important the club is in the locality and community. That's hugely important, especially if a lot of the players aren't from Longford. 

“Understanding how much the club means to these people is going to be hugely important for us players and will give us the motivation to hopefully go and get promoted this year.”

De Town have been buoyed during the off-season with the recent arrivals of Chris Lyons and Conor Crowley from Bray Wanderers, Dean George, Dean O’Shea and Jordan Tallon from Treaty United - and the return of stalwart Karl Chambers from Wexford. 

And former Tipperary GAA star Brady reckons that a new core added can only be a good thing. 

“You look at your core group and they're primarily down in the centre of the pitch,” he said. “Jamie Egan is back from England and is young but experienced. 

“You have Viktor (Serdeniuk) and Bastien (Hery) in midfield with Adam Wixted and Chris Lyons through the middle as well, with a nice sprinkling of young lads. 

“Shane Elworthy has been unbelievable for the club over the last 7 or 8 years so that experience and what he brings on and off the pitch is phenomenal. 

“You have players coming in then. Callum Bonner is one and Kyle O’Connor is obviously playing left back. Luke Wade-Slater adds a lot of experience coming in on the right wing as well. 

“We are by and large a young team but have loads of games under our belt between the players who were there and the new players coming in. 

“I think we've a much better balance in the team this year, where we have players who can play in a couple of different positions as well. 

“Karl Chambers has been unbelievable for the club. He went to Wexford last year and came back to us.

“Dean George can play in the ten up front or across the front in any position.That versatility gives us loads of options in terms of formations and how we structure. 

“I've noticed that this squad generally does whatever is asked of them. And that's exactly the type of character and good positive attitude that we have.”

And having come through pre-season, Brady is relishing his latest season in the League of Ireland ranks.

“The addition of the Leinster Senior Cup gave us more games than I've ever had in pre-season, which was brilliant for our squad,” he added. 

“Hendo came in late last year and then we were scrambling signings and trying to get friendlies organised. That made pre-season last year quite hectic and I think we carried that into the season with us, which was hugely problematic in how we performed in the first round of games. 

“We only had one win and I felt like we weren't fully prepared. I think that's something that we acknowledged and we learned from this year. 

“We had 7 or 8 friendlies this year with the inclusion of Leinster Senior Cup games in between. 

“Managing minutes was the bigger challenge and we saw some really good performances from some of the young players coming through. 

“It's been excellent. Ross Fay has been excellent and even new signings like Chris Lyons and Dean George are embedding into the squad quite nicely. 

“We are just tying things together now in the last couple of training sessions before Finn Harps on Saturday.”

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— Extratime.com (@ExtratimeNews) February 13, 2024