League of Ireland legend Dermot Keely returns to Dundalk amid club’s financial uncertainty ahead of book launch

IT WAS long down the list of priorities but Dundalk’s difficulties left Dermot Keely wondering whether he needed to source a new venue for his book launch.

Keely will touch down in Ireland today for a whistle-stop tour of Q & A sessions around Ireland to promote his autobiography ‘Better Without The Ball’ which I have written with him.

Dundalk legend Dermot Keely has written an autobiography ‘Better Without The Ball’

Dermot Keely in action for Dundalk back in 1980

Although a Dubliner, Oriel Park – where we will be in The Lilywhite Lounge from 7:30pm tomorrow – was a natural first port of call.

Fans gathered there on Monday evening amid fears liquidation was on the cards. Thankfully, they have been allayed for now but there is still work to be done to ensure the club’s future is safeguarded.

Keely’s return will serve as a reminder of its illustrious past.

He won honours with the club both as a player and a manager. His sons Alan – now sadly deceased – and Peter settled in the town and he, too, lived there for a time but is now based in Lanzarote.

The news that club was in danger of going out of business may have come as a shock to those reared on domestic dominance and reaching the group stages of the Europa League.

But, for Keely, it was a reminder that, throughout the 1994-95 season which ended with an unlikely league title, the wolf was never far from the door.

An injection of £100,000 was said to be needed to keep the club afloat with the loan signing of Warren Patmore cancelled to cut costs.

Fewer than 200 turned up for an early fixture against Cobh Ramblers.

One director suggested wages should be linked to how many people came through the gate to which Keely responded that presumably he would have been OK if the same logic had applied when 19,000 turned up to see Celtic in 1979, a game in which he had played.

Keely told SunSport: “I wrote in the book about this cycle of boom and bust. I was there for part of the boom times when I was a player at Dundalk and I was there as manager when the club was struggling to keep going.

“So it’s not the first time this has happened.

“The book is important to me because I’ve spent a lot of time on it but there are people’s jobs on the line here and it was, and still is, a worrying time and I really hope things work out in the end.

“Something has to be done with the structure of the club to ensure that it can continue.

“Shamrock Rovers is a good example of a club that could have gone to the wall and is now well-run, playing out of a stadium owned and developed by the local council.

“Then you’ve Sligo Rovers who raised more than €500,000 last year through fundraising.

“There has to be a part for the fans to play in the running of the club now. It’s a great club which is supported by people that really love the club, they’re not fly-by-nights, and they have to have a voice.

“This has to be a big wake-up call for everyone and you can’t ignore it. It’s only a few years ago that they were playing in the group stages of European football, it’s not the distant past.

“It needs everyone to sit down and decide what’s the best way forward for Dundalk FC for Dundalk rather than person A, B or C.

“And the FAI has a lot to answer for with someone coming in and taking over the club when the licensing process has been completed with no due diligence done.

“I’m sure there are fans of other clubs thinking that could be them next week, next month or next year.”

A 37-year career in the League of Ireland made him well aware of just how precarious the industry here could be.

Aside from Dundalk, he was player-manager at UCD when their dabbling in professionalism did not work out, leading to a move to Shamrock Rovers.

He was at Rovers when the club owners sold Milltown.

And he freely admits in the book that he failed to grasp the significance of that in the same way that supporters did, having been sold – and bought – a pup to say Tolka Park would be developed.

He was at Dublin City when the club shut down and returned to Shelbourne – his last job – when it too had come close to extinction.

But, along the way, there was a lot of success.

As a player and manager, he won nine league titles and the FAI Cup seven times, the first with an amateur Home Farm side in 1975 which also included his brother Joe.

PERSONAL ACCOLADES

Dermot was PFAI Player of the Year once and SWAI Personality of the Year twice.

Having lined out against them in Europe, he turned down the chance to sign for Celtic, unhappy with the basic wage on offer, along with the requirement to sell his house, surrender his passport and shave off his beard.

He was stunned to learn from a customer – and Shels fan – John Davis, in the now-closed Keely’s Bar in Lanzarote, that his dad, Peter, had also rejected a cross-channel move, to Leeds United, in 1947, having also decided he was better off staying put.

Although Dermot managed full-time in his first stint with Shels, he was more comfortable combining football with his day job as a teacher with current Reds boss Damien Duff among his students.

And he was at his happiest at provincial clubs, particularly Dundalk and Sligo Rovers.

There the travel involved provided hilarious anecdotes involving John Gill’s Mini and scattered and flattened geese, missed trains in Edgeworthstown as well as stolen clothes from an end-of-season trip to Spain.

He won silverware north of the border with Glentoran in the early 1980s and can recall receiving an anonymous threatening phone call to the house, being driven at by a team-mate and needing police protection.

Learning that previously-unknown detail about his dad’s career prompted him to write an account of his own.

The process came to a halt during the Covid-19 pandemic which had been preceded by a dispute with the landlord over a new lease for the premises where Keely’s Bar was located. It did not reopen.

The recording of his footballing life recommenced following the tragic sudden passing of his son Alan in his sleep in 2021, something he combined with working a couple of nights a week in Paddy’s Bar in Puerto del Carmen’s Old Town.

The book opens with a moving account about Alan’s loss and the impact it has had on him and Alan’s partner Maria and children Mia and Daniel.

Despite living out of the country for six years, his legacy is such that he has been able to attract names such as Duff and former Ireland boss Stephen Kenny to different nights.

Even so he said: “I’m s****ing myself, I’ve done everything, played in cup finals, played in Europe, and I was never nervous.

“I was always able to hype myself up and get going, I couldn’t guarantee everyone else was going to play but I could guarantee I would. This is the first thing I’ve done I’ve been nervous about.”

Dermot Keely Question & Answer Sessions

Thursday September 19: The Lilywhite Lounge, Oriel Park, Dundalk, 7:30pm

Friday September 20: The Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, 6pm (prior to Derry City v Shamrock Rovers)

Saturday September 21: The Showgrounds, 6pm (prior to Sligo Rovers v Dundalk)

Monday September 23: Home Farm FC, Whitehall, Dublin, 6pm

Wednesday September 25: Shelbourne FC, Tolka Park, Dublin, 7:30pm

Thursday September 26: Glen of Aherlow Bar, Inchicore, Dublin, 7:30pm

Friday Saturday 27: Tallaght Stadium, 6pm (prior to Shamrock Rovers v St Patrick’s Athletic)

Saturday September 28: The Oval, Belfast (prior to Glentoran v Glenavon)

The book is priced at €20 and will be available for purchase with cash or Revolut at the Q&A sessions.