Why I Support Dundalk FC Supporters Trust

That’s my Dad in the pur­ple coat.

The pho­to is tak­en in Oriel Park and it was one of 100’s of nights that he and the great men around him were after walk­ing the estates of the town col­lect­ing mon­ey for Dun­dalk FC. I remem­ber those times so clear­ly. They just hand­ed over the mon­ey to the then own­ers, great peo­ple too, and hoped for the best. Some­times the best came. Many times it didn’t.

I also remem­ber one night he came home very upset. He didn’t get upset eas­i­ly but there had been an argu­ment. Those col­lect­ing the mon­ey from the towns­peo­ple, prob­a­bly my Dad and Bar­low doing the talk­ing, had asked for an expla­na­tion about how some of it was being spent. They had been told in no uncer­tain man­ner that their fundrais­ing was wel­come, but their ques­tions were not.

Decades lat­er not much has changed. We Dun­dalk fans have con­tin­ued to ride the eter­nal roller­coast­er of ‘boom bust’, great days fol­lowed by cri­sis. But lit­tle has changed. It’s pos­si­ble last Fri­day seen the last game of Dun­dalk FC. The best we can hope for is the first divi­sion next sea­son and a mas­sive points deduc­tion. Dis­as­ter again.

These mem­o­ries are why I am such a pas­sion­ate sup­port­er of the new­ly formed Dun­dalk FC Sup­port­ers Trust and so proud my old­er Broth­er is one of its inter­im Direc­tors. Dad would be very proud of him.

He’d also be very vocal about the need for the peo­ple of Dun­dalk to at last arm them­selves with the vehi­cle that can not only save our foot­ball club but deliv­er the good gov­er­nance nec­es­sary to bring an end to the ‘boom bust’ roller­coast­er. The Trust is that vehi­cle and a prop­er­ly fund­ed Trust — and that’s up to us — will 100% help deliv­er a more sta­ble future and re-devel­op­ment once sur­vival itself is secured.

To those who are fix­at­ed on this own­er, that own­er, the next own­er or the last own­er I ask this — why? Why can we not fix this prob­lem bot­tom up on sol­id foun­da­tions? Address­ing our prob­lems top down has not deliv­ered sta­bil­i­ty, it’s always end­ed in some cri­sis or oth­er. Time to build more sol­id foun­da­tions, embed­ded in our com­mu­ni­ty, our town and our fan­base.

C’mon Da Town