Dundalk’s success further proof of Stephen Kenny’s talents

It's the guts of two decades now since Stephen Kenny sat opposite Vinny Perth and suggested the then teenage Dubliner's career in football might be advanced by joining Longford Town. Kenny was only 27 himself and the club, as Brian Kerr recalls, was "really low" but Perth remembers being somewhat mesmerised by the pitch; Kenny's that is, not the club's.

“I don’t know that I’d say he’s a dreamer but it was a dream that he sold players when they were signing,” recalls the midfielder who, as it turned out, would play for bigger sides but never enjoy better times over the course of his career. “I don’t know how but he sold us that club when there wasn’t much of a club to sell.

“Longford were struggling in the First Division and there was a little bit of a stand in one corner of the ground but he was there talking about Europe, and somehow you believed him. Then, within three years there was a stand that held a few thousand and we were in Europe. It was amazing stuff.”

Kenny’s career in management had started even before his own playing days had prematurely petered out. He’d been part of a good Belvedere team, where he was heavily influenced by Noel O’Reilly, but failed to make the breakthrough during two years at St Patrick’s Athletic. In the end he played just a handful of League of Ireland games for Home Farm before returning to local football in his native Tallaght where he made a very early move into management.

Slightly bemused

He has spoken about his early interest in tactics that school and team-mates were slightly bemused by and Fergus McNally, a friend from their days at both Our Lady of Loreto Boys National School and Old Bawn Community School readily acknowledges that when they and their friends went to see a game together, "we might be watching for one reason while he was watching for another; he was always a thinker".

Kerr remembers bringing St Patrick's to Tallaght for a friendly against a Kenny-managed side that "clearly had a bit about them". The League of Ireland outfit was beaten. Later, Kerr's successor at Richmond Park, Pat Dolan, would give Kenny another chance to prove himself at the club; this time running the newly established under-21 side.

“His family ran a meat business and he’d be in Inchicore making deliveries and we’d get talking. I thought he was a terrific fella. I wanted somebody to run the new team, which we were putting into the AUL because there was no under-21 league, and thought he might be a good choice,” says Dolan.

“The team won the league which wasn’t so remarkable but what was remarkable was that he never came near me looking for anything. Everybody else came to me looking for stuff but he was completely self sufficient; he was proactive and innovative.”

That early success earned him a crack at the job with Longford where, given the budget and facilities, Kenny’s chances of actually making a mark seemed remote. When McNally was roped in as kitman, though, he saw first-hand the qualities that would enable his friend to defy the odds.

“He set very high standards and that rubbed off on everyone. I know it did on me,” he adds with a laugh, “I became completely OCD about the whole thing.”

A squad of young, ambitious and talented players was assembled thanks to Kenny's talent for persuasion with Perth recalling that "a lot of us, the likes of Paul McNally, Wes Byrne and myself... we went up there for very little money. We were looking for a bit of a break, somebody who believed in us and he certainly did that".

It was the start of an astonishing era for the club although having got them to their first ever cup final, Kenny had left by the time the first trophy was actually won in 2004.

By then he’d moved to Bohemians, lost another final, won a league and then been let go as a club that was spending heavily to keep up with Shelbourne, slipped behind their rivals in 2004. Not for the last time, he considered giving the game up for the good of his family.

Instead, he bounced back with Derry City, "not an easy place for a fella from Dublin to succeed as a manager," notes Kerr, where success earned him a crack at an SPL job with Dunfermline. The club was on course to be relegated and Kenny was unable to halt the slide. A cup final appearance, in which they were beaten by Celtic, did little to cushion the blow.

Two blemishes

When the next season started poorly his time in charge was cut short with the result that his spell in Scotland, along with his even shorter one at Shamrock Rovers a few years later, are the two blemishes on an otherwise relentlessly impressive CV.

Kenny clearly felt hard done by on each occasion. Those who witnessed the events at first hand insist that the profile of the players he inherited posed particular problems for him.

"It was always going to be difficult for him," said former Shelbourne defender Jamie Harris, who Kenny brought to Scotland. "But I got the impression that no matter what he did it wasn't going to be enough for some of the players. You got the feeling that they wanted somebody who had done their time around the Scottish league."

Colin Hawkins, a player-coach under Kenny at Rovers, is more scathing of some of his team-mates there: "They had a lot of fellas at the time who were smelling themselves after winning the league again . . . It wasn't that he lost the dressing room, it was that quite a bit of it never really bought in to what he was trying to do."

A shock

To most outsiders, his dismissal was a shock with Kenny, a Tallaght local, having looked the perfect fit for the job as long as he was given the time required to make his mark.

Whoever was to blame, though, Rovers failed to maintain the remarkable form of the previous couple of seasons and Kenny was sacked well before the end of his first season.

Some suspected that his occasionally emotional and persistently reflective manner would be a liability amongst players predisposed to scepticism. Dolan recalls a sense of “naivety” about his earliest team talks but Perth insists he has matured a great deal since and, observes Hawkins:

“There’s so much passion in every one of his team talks. He has every single player believing they’re the best in the country in their position.”

All acknowledge that he comes into his own when left to assemble his own squad, as he has with such remarkable success at Dundalk.

Members of his team, most obviously Richie Towell, the league's best player during Dundalk's two title-winning seasons, routinely rave about the trust he places in them out on the field and his backroom staff, which includes Perth, value the way he allows them to get on with their roles.

The success of strength and conditioning coach Graham Byrne in keeping the core group of players so consistently injury -free despite playing home games on an artificial surface has been an important element of the team's success. Byrne has said that after clashing with other managers he demanded control of his brief before accepting a job offer from Kenny and ,to his relief, got it.

Almost all who worked with him seem to talk about his loyalty, his attention to detail and, in particular, his ability to get the best out of players; more, in many cases than even the players themselves believed they were capable of. It has been especially evident at Dundalk.

“My feeling,” remarks Kerr, “was that the club was ready for someone to go in and do something with it but what he has done has been extraordinary. It’s not like Jim McLaughlin’s Dundalk, or Turlough O’Connor’s . . . when there was a bit of money and they bought the best of players.

“His record, given the resources that he’s had, stands out. And that’s before you get onto the style of play and the impact he’s had on players. He’s the best manager in the League of Ireland, that’s for sure.”