"Only for Stephen Kenny, we were not going anywhere"

Stephen Kenny did not have to beat a crowd of candidates for his first job in senior football 20 years ago.

Longford Town FC was not considered the badiest destination nor as a propitious launching pad from which to embark on a brilliant career.

Michael Cox, the president who hired him, tries to remember the situation at the time.

"The previous season, I think we finished with five or six points, if we even get that."

It was actually 12.

"Oh was that 12 (laughs) … Look to be honest with you, we were not going anywhere, it was as simple as that, we were in a dead end.

"So it was not a big problem to give Stephen the job at the time."

Longford Town was sailing in the lower second ranks for most of their existence in the League of Ireland.

At this point, they were veterans of the reelection issue, a process by which the team that finished in second place was retained in the league for the next season.

Always outstanding, and identifying themselves as a football city, their election to the league in 1984 had been at least controversial.

Eamon Dunphy, then a sharp critic of the "Chicken League," lambasted the decision to elevate them to League of Ireland status in his Sunday Tribune column.

When the local press got angry, Dunphy got a right of reply in the Longford Leader, recalling that the club had only been raised because a "powerful administrator had been very energetic for them. elect".

Naturally, it was widely predicted that we would attend another scenario of Thurles Town.

The club has at least exceeded these modest expectations, being more stubborn and resilient than their Tipp predecessors. But there was no doubt that the lower half of the first division was their natural habitat and they were forced to run four times in their first fourteen seasons in the league.

They hit bottom in the 1997-98 season. Earlier this year, an FAI official organized a meeting with club alumni at the now-defunct Camlin Court Hotel, and kindly suggested that they had better retire to take a break from the Leinster Senior League.

Michael Cox was not even a member of the board at that time, but he accompanied the meeting with an acquaintance, more out of curiosity than anything else. He found the fat department of the Longford Town FC administration extremely easy to evolve.

"I knew that if the boys entered the Leinster Senior League, they would never come out of it, at the time it was a more difficult place than the League of Ireland.

"So, I ask you," Who are you here to tell us what we can or can not do? We are quite capable of making our own idea.

"The result is that I entered this meeting as an observer.Before leaving the meeting, I was appointed and elected president.

"Christ, did I have a brutal awakening after that? The first year was a nightmare."

In a fierce competition, the 1997-98 season promises to be the worst in the club's history.

At the time, the team appeared to be mostly players who were considered too old to reduce to Athlone Town.

Even worse, the team cost a considerable amount. The payroll for players is £ 2,000 per week at the start of the season. With an average door of about 50 people, this was obviously unsustainable and Cox was forced to drastically reduce it to £ 1,200.

At the end of the season, he was still cut. This seemed to have the effect of damaging morale. And the players quickly lost the motivation they had every week to get a stomach ache.

The manager, Michael O'Connor, was a hero in the city of Athlone, the Westmeath all-time leading scorer and a member of their league's winning team in 1981 and 1983.

In the early 1990s, he also held the position of managing player of his club in his hometown, with reasonable success.

He and his team of legends Athlone Town (somewhat simplistic, there were players from elsewhere) have not replicated this success to 50 km north.

They finished the season with 12 points, winning two games, six draws and the other 19 losers.

It is in this desert that Stephen Kenny arrived in the summer of 1998.

"Stephen found us, we did not find him," says Cox. "Stephen approached one of the boys (on the board) I was on vacation that week, the season was coming to an end.

"He knew more about Longford Town than us, he was able to tell him all the games we've played in the last 12 months, he was able to tell us about this player and this player we had. They were all companions, and he says that if I'm hired, everybody leaves.

"He said that a new team of young players would arrive and that they would not cost a fraction of the price of the old team." And he was there because his average player was spending about 50 pounds per game. week.

"They met at Tally Ho (New Street Bar in Longford), so I said I'd meet him at two-thirty on the following Tuesday.

"The first thing he said was" Mick, can I talk to you privately? " He said, "Let's be clear about this.If I have this post, it will be the last meeting we will have in a public room."

"He did not care about that, he wanted everything to be done privately and nobody could hear what was being said, he made the law very early.

"I looked at it and I said" Stephen, stay well now! "I'm just flying back to Longford and I did not know where I was. you wanted to meet, I have no problem, you can meet where you like after that.

"But anyway, after listening to him and talking to him, I said that if you want work, it's yours."

"We knew that he knew his stuff, he was not a Chancellor, and the thing that really impressed us was that he said right away," I do not will not bring those boys you have. I will bring young Dubliners who are thirsty for football and it is not money that interests them.

Goaltender Stephen O. Brien was one of those hungry players. He had spent a season and a half doubling Alan Gough at Shelbourne, then constantly chasing the Division 1 title under Damien Richardson.

Like Cox and the Longford Town Board, Kenny almost scared O 'Brien of the extent of his career knowledge.

"He knew a lot about me, where I played schoolboy football, which I had played in the UK in Gillingham, that I was an international schoolboy …

"The typical Stephen guy, he really did his homework, he actually said," you play every Friday night, every Saturday night, every time we play. Even though it's the first division, a stepping stone to the prime minister's. Listen, from the beginning, he was very convincing. "

The local team, Enda Kenny, was one of the few successful candidates. Indeed, the new manager gathered a team of young players who used his intimate knowledge of the scene in Dublin.

"It has attracted a lot of hungry players," said O. Brien. "I was very hungry because I was a reservist in Shelbourne, I wanted to prove myself, and he has a lot of players from that state of mind, people like Vinny Perth from Cherry Orchard, Paul. McNally of St. Francis He signed Alan Merriman and Shay Zellor of Tallaght Town, he had Keith O 'Connor who was at Bluebell I think. "

For Dublin-based players, arriving at Mullologher, the terrain since their departure from Abbeycartron in the early 90's, was a "shock to the system".

There was a small Guinness sign scalded behind one of the goals. On one side, there was a small shed and a terrace on which one could stand

"When you arrived on the main road from the city, you entered the ground and there was a small locker room next to the parking lot.

"Literally, there were four walls around the square, and when you came out of the locker room and tunnel, there was a small Guinness sign scalded behind one of the goals." On one side, there was a small hangar and A terrace So nothing was like it.

"But the pitch has always been very good."

The training structure was similarly dilapidated, but Kenny's resourcefulness made it work. More importantly, the quality of the coaching was excellent.

"Stephen should have been very careful, he trained us at the Celbridge golf driving range, there is a five astro against whom we trained a lot and at the top of the practice there was actually a grbad.

"And Stephen being Stephen, he gets along with everyone and convinced the guys at the top of Celbridge's golf driving range to put spotlights in his place so we could train on that end of grbad and that's what we did to It was mostly boys based in Dublin and two boys from Longford who mingled with us.

"But the training was fantastic."

Kenny encouraged his players to play without fear.

"His greatest strength lies in his confidence in the players, he really trusted you to go play football, and he insisted that you be brave on the ball," said O. Brien.

"His balance within the team was very good, he started playing in 4-4-2 and he always had good wingers.It was always an exciting and exciting football and he always had overlapping backs. "

The first months of the 1998-99 season were a somewhat disorienting experience for the small group of supporters of the club (then).

Longtime supporters who viewed Longford Town's presence at the foot of the table as a mere fact of life now had to acclimate to life at the top, adapting to this strange new reality in which their team was winning matches . the regular.

Limerick was beaten 3-0.

Monaghan United have been sent 2-0

Kilkenny City and Cobh Ramblers were sacked 3-1 and 2-0 respectively.

After each home victory, the small group of fans would leave by the quickest way, namely by walking on the field and crossing the players tunnel to get to the car park.

The locker door was generally ajar and the players were wiped. Kenny was standing at the entrance, smiling and saying goodbye to the fans as they pbaded.

Cox remembers the surprising turnaround.

"For matches where there would not be 50 people at the games, where you know you were defeating before the ball was kicked, we suddenly played a totally different football.

"We now had young guys playing football and keeping the ball on the ground."

At the end of November 1998, Longford Town, a distant low at the end of the previous season, was at the top of the standings.

Their shape dropped somewhat during the second half of the 1998-99 season, but they still finished in fourth place, relatively high.

Kenny added to his off-season team, recruiting former club hero Richie Parsons, the city's top scorer during Dermot Keely's modest success in the early '90s.

He formed a remarkable partnership with Keith O & # 39; Connor and his goals helped Longford Town to top the scoring charts for the First Division in 1999-2000.

In the penultimate game of the season, at home against Monaghan United, the two men scored a brace in a 4-1 win and Longford Town effectively confirmed its promotion to the Division's Premier Division for the first time.

In the clutches of the locker room, Parsons did not see himself offering a new off-season deal.

"The problem with Stephen is that people think that he is a little limp, because he speaks softly and that he is a gentleman." says O & # 39; Brien. "But there is a ruthless trail in him.

"He got rid of the players who promoted us, got rid of Richie Parsons, and Richie was heartbroken, he was a big fan of the club and had already been to the club.

"The players were stunned, because Richie had played in the post of Prime Minister for Bray and we thought he was going to stay out of the way, but that was Stephen. He was improving things that way, and now he's getting along very well with Richie, he's just getting him moving.

"He made a great signing with Stuey Byrne, picking players who, he knew, would do a job for him." Stuey had played in the North for the Crusaders and had fallen in love with the game. Stephen had it, he played in the middle of the field and was fantastic and we managed to get to the final of the Cup. "

Their first season in the Premier Division was an unprecedented success. They easily survived in the high end and reached the FAI Cup final at Tolka Park.

And as the Bohemians won the double, it means that Longford Town had to go to the UEFA Cup. The main seated grandstand had already been erected for the inaugural season in Division 1. The arrival of European football required the rapid installation of seats on the rest of the field.

When he arrived three years earlier, the ground consisted of a few rickety and isolated sheds and a slightly steep slope on one side where the loyal followers gathered.

In 2001, the so-called "Flansiro" was born.

Midway through the next season, he was gone, caught by Bohs, the defunct defending champion.

"I would say it's the same thing in his club," said O. Brien. "He's telephoning you personally." It was emptied until the end of the phone.

"He almost apologizes for leaving, but in the end he has this trail in him where he knows where he wants to go.

"He left Longford after three and a half years in a much better position than he found them, and the players he took out there made their careers much better than they were before I had a fantastic time there, the best time of my career. "

O 'Brien, who likes the fact that Kenny is two years old with under-21s to adapt to international management, said that the elected manager of the Republic of Ireland would not judge blindly players according to the club they play for.

"He's a true believer, if you're good enough, you're big enough, and he would pick a player who would play for Longford Town and who would play for Ireland if he found him good enough." # 39; in foutra.

"Because it's good to spot players and that he knows what they can give him, so he will not care if you play Wolves or Ipswich or Gillingham." or to others.

"It will be his team, he will expect that they behave in a certain way and at some performance on their part … Anyone who thinks that Stephen will have a problem to handle Ireland, they are seriously wrong. "

In the first game that followed his departure, and prior to his arrival at Dalymount Park, Longford Town met the Bohemians at home.

Kenny, looking sheepish, came to the ground for the match. He received a prolonged ovation from the local crowd. The team he had built defeated the team that he had to recover 2-0.

Five and a half years later, Michael Cox, alongside the pillars of Longford Town such as Noel Butch & # 39; Treacy and Donald Keogh, was invited to the final of the Scottish Cup at Hampden Park, where Kenny's Dunfermline was playing against Celtic.

"Everyone in Longford would love to see him get the job in Ireland," said Cox. "Personally, I would have been delighted to see him get it now! He did a lot for football in the county.

"Only if Stephen Kenny went to Longford, we would not have gone anywhere."