No blind optimism at heart of Drogs' revival

In football, as in life, perception is everything. Our view of the world at any given time borrows heavily from the underlying facts but we also rely on a general wash of historical opinion that has yet to be influenced by the most recent developments. For instance, at the start of a new season the favourites for the league title, almost without exception, will be the previous year’s winners. And those clubs we consider to be destined for relegation will inevitably be those that just about got away with it the year before.

So, as the new 2012 season approaches, that would make Drogheda United candidates for the drop then? It would be a reasonable assumption. After all, the only thing that saved Drogheda last year was the record breaking awfulness of Galway United, a club no longer with us. 

The view from outside Hunky Dorys Park is of a club that had it all and blew it spectacularly; a club that sold its soul for silver, that sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Drogheda were that club that had five managers in 2010, the team that simply couldn’t stop conceding goals, and that Roddy Collins, then a pundit on MNS, claimed were certainties for relegation after just a few short months of the 2010 season.

And Roddy was right. Drogheda were relegated on 22 October 2010 by a defeat at title chasing Shamrock Rovers, only to be saved a few months later by the implosion of Sporting Fingal - somewhat ironic given that Drogheda themselves seemed to be on the edge of extinction on more than one occasion.

That gap between the end of 2010 and the start of 2011 appeared to be a dark time for Drogheda United and our perception of that was not flawed. It was a view shared by those at the heart of the club, then in a state of many-headed chaos. But in one short year many things have changed at the home of the 2007 League champions.

When I call Jim Agnew, the current Chairman of Drogheda United, he is in the middle of watching University Challenge. He has managed to get his quota of one question right and is feeling fairly pleased with himself. I wonder if discussing his club’s recent troubled past might disturb this contentment.

But no. Whether he is remembering the success of the mid noughties, or the trauma of the administration and court proceedings that followed, Jim is inscrutable. So, as a starter for ten, I ask him how he came to be involved at the club in the first place.

“I’ve been going since I was four years old”, he says. “My mother goes, still, and my grandfather took me to games for many years. So, I don’t know what that makes me, but a lifelong supporter anyway.”

Jim enjoyed the heyday of manager Paul Doolin’s success from the terraces. He watched as a fan when the Drogs beat Cork City at Lansdowne Road to lift the 2005 FAI Cup. And when the club’s first ever title win followed in 2007 he could not have imagined that within a few short years he would be the Drogheda United Chairman. It was only when the consequences of ‘living the dream’ came knocking in 2008 that Jim started to become actively involved in the club’s internal workings.

In 2008 he spotted an internet forum message asking for help with fundraising. “So I sent a message saying I would shake a bucket, and within three days I was shaking a bucket.”

The transition from supporter to board member was “very gradual”. Jim and a few colleagues organised a duck race on the river Boyne and, soon afterwards, along with Roisin Philips, he helped to come up with the concept of the Claret and Blue club, a vehicle for raising the money that would eventually help to save Drogheda United from extinction.

“There was some hope that we might be able to drive the membership of the Claret and Blue scheme up to a level where people might be interested in using it as a vehicle for supporters to take over the club”, he says.

This didn’t happen, chiefly because the structure of the Claret and Blue club was not actually that of a ‘club’ at all.

“It was very badly named, on reflection”, says Agnew. “It was a fundraiser and not a club in any conventional sense. So there weren’t the structures within it to let it develop.”

What did happen was that Drogheda’s owners and directors made it known at the end of 2010 that they were no longer in a position to run the club. Exhausted by the scale of the club’s difficulties and recognising the need for new blood, they let it be known that they would be willing to work with anybody who would be willing to take it on.

Agnew takes up the story. “So around about this time last year... a committee of about twelve or fifteen supporters was formed to look at what would need to be done in terms of taking the club on. That group of people more or less became the management committee for last season.”

“We set out at the start of last season with three objectives. To retain our position in the Premier Division, to put in place the proper structures so that we could completely revamp the running of the club, and to change the ownership from the existing owners to companies run by the supporters. And we did those three things.”

As Agnew explained, a viable operating structure that would protect supporters while allowing them complete control of the club required the setting up of two companies. One would operate as a trust, of which the supporters would be the members, but such a company would not be allowed to trade. 

Instead, this company would be the 100% owner of a second company, Drogheda United FC Ltd, which would operate as the trading company that would manage the football club on a day to day basis.

“The company limited by guarantee is very good for the supporters”, says Agnew. “It’s a ‘one person - one vote’ kind of arrangement, and it’s very low risk for the members. So their individual liability in the event of something going badly wrong is specifically stated. One of the things that people initially expressed a lot of reservations about, having heard of the booms and busts in Irish football, [was that they] didn’t want to put themselves in a position where, through trying to support the club, they could expose themselves to risk.”

The stability of Drogheda’s new management and ownership structures are also underpinned by a lack of debt. Jim is reluctant to go into specific figures but the debt that the club does carry is not excessive, and that which it does carry has been roughly halved over the past year or so.

There seems little doubt that the journey the club has taken over the past year has been an extremely positive one. And perhaps the most positive aspect of it is that the pain of the club’s recent woes is so fresh in the minds of those that run it. I ask Jim what was the low point, and he in unequivocal.

“This time last year”, he says. “We didn’t have people in place, we didn’t have a structure, we were headed for the nightmare that would have been the First Division. This time last year was certainly the lowest point. Honestly, I think quite a few of us, while we were willing to do everything we could, really doubted that it was doable. We might have struggled through but it would have been really, really difficult to do so, and I think we all felt that way.”

The buoyancy at Drogheda seems worlds apart from that. “Absolutely”, he agrees. “Absolutely. Although the first thing I would say to anybody is that the big enemy is complacency. You can never say ‘job done’ and I don’t think, by any means, it is job done. We’ve met our three initial objectives and we’ve been very lucky in that, unlike other clubs, we haven’t had massive debts to worry about because we weren’t left in a mess by the guys on the way out.

“And we can never operate on the basis that someone will come along and clear up our mess.”

The notion of a knight in shining armour, or a Red Adair, marching in to make everything alright brings us neatly on to Mick Cooke, the man who took up the managerial reins just weeks before the start of last season. It was a time when many in the managerial fraternity might have been forgiven for running in the opposite direction. Several did, and who could blame them.

“We got extremely lucky with Mick and his assistant Robbie (Horgan). In them we have two people that I really think share our view of the world. They want to build something that’s sustainable and, like us, they’re willing to put in the time and build it up gradually. Mick will tell you himself that he doesn’t want to win the league and put the club out of business. Even back to his younger days he has a strong affection for Drogheda and I think he wants to prove to himself that he can do it in the Premier Division. We’re absolutely blessed to have someone who’s willing to work with us in that way.”

Key to Cooke’s appointment was the transparency regarding the club’s position and his acceptance of that. “We talked to him before he came in”, said Jim, “so there were no surprises. We have a very straightforward and open relationship. It’s a two way conversation. We talk all the way through the season we’re really lucky in having Mick because he wants to do it in the right way.”

Finally, I ask Jim where he thinks Drogheda will finish this season. It’s put your money where your mouth is time and he thinks carefully before shaping his reply.

“Mick will give you a different answer”, he says. “I’d be happy with eighth. Seventh or eighth will be good enough for me. Mick will say fifth or sixth, I know he will, because he’s an optimistic football manager”

Optimism, it seems, is the new perception by the banks of the Boyne. Long may it continue.