Athlone Town surprised many in the league this week with the announcement of a new management structure at the club following the departure of the foreign investors. It was an extremely turbulent year for the midlands club, however they hope to move on now after announcing the managerial appointment of former manager Aaron Callaghan, with Roddy Colin’s taking up a new post of General Manager.
Callaghan spoke exclusively to us this week about his appointment and how it all came about.
He said, “To be fair it came about through Roddy really, because I think the last couple of years, it’s well documented now that, it’s taking a bit of a toll, in terms of the clubs that we’ve been at, I worked with Roddy at Waterford as well. It’s been well documented that wages hadn’t been paid at clubs and stuff like that. So we got talking between ourselves over coffee, like we do. We we meet on a regular basis and we were talking about the European model where they have a Director of Football/General Manager with the manager working underneath him.”
“I thought no more about it until he rang me up last Thursday and he said, look we might have something in relation to that thing we were talking about, which was the General Manager/Director of football who just looks after the operational side of the Football and doesn’t get involved in anything from the strategic side so it appealed to me when we spoke about it. So I said look we’ll sit down and talk about it and see where it goes from there.”
On Roddy’s new General Manager’s role Callaghan said, “It's the same principles that we had at Bohemians, to protect the identity of the club and I think that Roddy will do that through his work as General Manager. I won't be ringing the Chairman, I won't be ringing the Director, it will just be a case of ringing Roddy if I have got any issues, and he'll look after all the strategic side of it for us. The operational thing from my point of view is what I do best so I hope it will be a good fit, and it's probably something that maybe that a few other clubs could do with having a look at as well.”
When asked if the structure was similar to Waterford’s with Pat Fenlon as Director of Football overseeing manager Alan Reynolds, he said it’s very different, “I don’t think Pat Fenlon will be as active in terms of bringing in the finance, I think he’s more Director of Football, whereas Roddy will be looking at the vision of the Club where it’s going forward in terms of the funding, hopefully trying to get businesses on board, getting the community on board, and I’ll be just concentrating on the first-team and the operational side of things with all the underage players at the club. That will please me, as that means I won’t be up in the board room discussing A, B and C and the experience that Roddy’s had in the game will help me going forward. It’s like a mentorship as well because I will be listening to his input. I’ve worked with him before on numerous occasions. He still has a lot to offer as a manager, but he’s decided to have a little bit of a break, I think it’s actually great for both of us really.”
Callaghan returns to the Athlone hot-seat after 13 years away, and he feels like he has unfinished business at the club, “Yeah, it is a bit like that. Unfinished business. I was going through a difficult time, the club back then as well. I left for personal reasons at the time so I always felt I had unfinished business there, but sometimes it can be very hard to get back in. However, it’s nice to be back.”
With the outside investment now no longer available the club, what will that mean going forward for the 2018 season? Callaghan said, “We will predominantly be an amateur team, so we will be looking to develop our own players within that structure and try and get and many into the first team as we can.”
“While we’re going to be an amateur side, if we can get some players from Dublin, Galway, Ballinasloe or any of the local area I would be fantastic. The one thing we offered players when they went into Bohemians, when I was there at the time, was we gave them a stage to play on. That’s what we’ll be offering the young players.”
“In the First Division now that it's gone to 10 teams, there's some good clubs and some good grounds that your going to be delivering at Galway, Dublin etc. There's a good platform for young kids to go out and express their talents.”
“The first year I was at Bohemians we sold Kevin Feely, he was a young player being promoted to the first team and after his first season we sold him to Charlton. If down the line we can get one player away and get a few bob for him we can re-invest that money back into the club, then so be it. But from their prospective to get some normality back to the club, that would be the ambition. To get some normality back into the club and try to get the supporters coming back to support their local club and anything after that I think is a bonus, particularly after the last couple of years and the scandals etc.”
Speaking about the young players, we spoke about the brilliant success of the clubs U-15 team, managed by Dermot Lennon, who won the National title by beating St Patrick’s Athletic. He said it’s development of these young players that the club want to do, “Yeah it’s brilliant. Any national title at any level is fantastic. It’s well documented about what went on at the club, so I can’t comment on that as it nothing to do with me, but what I can do is look at the whole development of the club particularly from the U-15, 17’s and 19’s side of things.”
He has gone into many jobs with clubs in financial difficulties, we asked him did he enjoy that! “No, not by choice. I’ve applied for positions when they’ve come up.”
He did however talk about his time at Bohemians, where he managed the club during huge financial constraints, but managed to guide them into a comfortable mid-table finish. He said, “The Bohemians experience was unbelievable for me because prior to getting the job the club was going to close its doors. From my perspective, working with a very, very good chairman in Chris Breen we managed to turn the fortunes of the club around. We worked off a really low budget compared to what Pat Fenlon had worked with the year before we took over. But, we saved the club.”
“The biggest success for me at Bohemians was the fact that Bohemians Football club was still operating. I was working for Dublin City Council at the time and I was very prevalent in getting the council to look at buying the ground, which they’ve now done so the partnership they’ve done with the NDSL which gave the club access to 10,500-11,000 kids when they had no academy or underage structure. So we did an awful lot of work off the field from an operational point of view. Those projects that we put in place at that time are coming good for Bohemians now.”
“To be fair to Keith Long, he came in at a good time. From my perspective, I felt a little bit harshly done by when I had to leave, but I can feel very proud of the legacy that I left there.”
As for his ambitions for the 2018 season, Callaghan says that he’ll be realistic, “When we put the squad and the team together we'll be as ambitious as anyone else in the league because throughout my career as a player, coach and manager, you go out onto the pitch in every game and you try and win the game so it just might be a little too much this year.”
“We’ve got to take a look and say you've got to look at the reality of the situation and say that the club probably wouldn't have been in operation. It’s held it’s ground, all the scandals that we've had in the last couple of years. I just think we need to get a bit of normality back into the club, get some supporters back into the ground and I know the way teams operate, sometimes they get a community behind you. You know we done that at Longford.”
“Literally we're trying to get the community of Athlone behind the club and get a bit of normality back at that level cause it's a fantastic club. It's a hugely popular area for football and I've known that throughout the years, and I've got some very good friends down there; Padraig Dully, just to name one. It would be nice down the line to get promoted, don't get me wrong, but I think that next year would probably be just a bridge too far.”
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