Updated at 17.26
DURING A RECENT interview with The42, Shamrock Rovers legend and outgoing Bray Wanderers boss Harry Kenny was asked to name a modern player that reminded him of his former team-mate John Giles.
Kenny, of course, was quick to point out that no Irish player was currently at the level of Giles, but there was one player he identified that shared some comparable traits — Stephen O’Donnell — who similarly to the Leeds legend likes to play the ball to feet and try to dictate games.
That gives a sense of the respect with which the Dundalk star is held in the league. Few current Premier Division players have achieved more than the 31-year-old midfielder, who has five league titles with three different clubs, in addition to two appearances in the PFAI Premier Division Team of the Year.
But having won three titles on the bounce with the Lilywhites, 2017 was a rare disappointing campaign by their high standards.
In the second half of the season, they were the league’s form team, but it counted for little, as the significant lead Cork City had established at the top of the table proved insurmountable, while Dundalk were also pipped on penalties by their arch rivals in the 2017 FAI Cup final.
A couple of factors were key in denying Stephen Kenny’s side their fourth consecutive league title. The incredible form of Cork and in particular, Sean Maguire, at the start of the season. The loss of key players Andy Boyle, Daryl Horgan and Ronan Finn, coupled with the inevitable time it took for new recruits to adapt. And of course, the fact that the 2016 season involved an intense schedule that saw them play their last Europa League game in December.
O’Donnell is particularly rueful when reflecting on the cup final, with a penalty shootout effectively deciding whether 2017 would be remembered as a good or bad season.
It was a game we probably dominated possession-wise from the second half onwards, but you lose the penalty shootout and whole narrative changes,” he tells The42.
The game had an element of spice owing to a series of provocative pre-match comments. Stephen Kenny, for instance, was not impressed with Mark McNulty’s infamous ‘F*** the Lilywhites’ chant in the build-up. Meanwhile, O’Donnell himself was a talking point, with some debate over whether a Cork player or supporters rang him up to taunt the midfielder following the Leesiders’ 2016 victory at the Aviva, with John Caulfield vehemently denying that his players would act in this manner.
O’Donnell is similarly dismissive, saying that he ignored all this noise and treated the match like a “normal game”.
“There was a lot of chatter, but it doesn’t really matter when the whistle blows,” he adds.
O’Donnell has cherished these last few weeks, spending some time in America as he recuperates from another long, hard season.
Already though, with the fixture list announced last Tuesday, and the first game set to take place in February, the Dundalk captain is starting to prepare for another grueling campaign.
“In the last week or 10 days, everyone’s been back trying to get into a bit of shape, and you need to be at a certain level these days going back into pre-season, whereas years ago, you’d probably just do nothing over the off-season.”
O’Donnell has been adhering to variations of this routine since his teenage years. He grew up in Galway, with GAA and soccer two big passions.
“I played soccer, but Gaelic would probably be my number one sport in the sense of I love watching it,” he recalls.
“But from an early age, once I thought I was decent, soccer did take preference.”
A standout talent from an early age, O’Donnell was offered the chance to join Dublin schoolboy team Belvedere as an 11-year-old, but the thought of travelling up to the capital every weekend was off-putting.
Eventually, it was while playing in renowned schoolboy competition, the Kennedy Cup, that he caught the attention of scouts.
Back then, if there was a good player anywhere around the country, word would spread fairly quickly.”
O’Donnell would subsequently go on to play in Ireland underage sides alongside notable names, including Darren Randolph, Aiden McGeady, Darron Gibson, Paul McShane, Andy Keogh, Leon Best, Joey O’Brien and Stephen Ireland.
The youngster moved over to England as a 15-year-old and joined the prestigious youth set-up at Arsenal — a decision he ultimately came to regret.
“It all depends on the individual. You can get some mature 15-year-olds that are going over to get away,” he says.
“They could go down the wrong side of the tracks if they stayed at home in whatever neighbourhood or wherever they’re living. It could be the best thing that ever happened.
I probably wasn’t mature enough to go over to England at 15 and grasp what it was all about, what it took to be a professional.
“Your athletic shape and size, you are going to be totally different as a 19 or 20-year-old to when you went over as a 15-year-old. So it’s a bit of a lottery. You can never sign a 15-year-old, bar an exceptional talent.
“He could be a tall 15-year-old and small in first-team when you really need to make it and vice versa. So it’s very hard to tell at 15 if a player’s going to make it — it’s far too much of a gamble to take with players education-wise, to leave all that, throw all your eggs in one basket, go over to England on a wing and a prayer as such.
The pathways at the time probably weren’t there (when I was growing up) for young Irish lads to stay in Ireland. Going down the route of getting an education with a League of Ireland club, maybe getting into the first team in the League of Ireland at 18, 19. If you’re good enough then, it won’t be long before people realise it and take a chance on you, whereas now, you have the 15s, 17s and 19s, then the League of Ireland.
“I think it’s a far better pathways for kids. You look at the ratio of lads going over from the League of Ireland playing first team (in England), most of them succeed. The captain of the Irish national team, Seamie Coleman, being the prime example. How many lads in that Ireland squad now have played in the League of Ireland? James McClean, these types of lads.
“If I had a child, that’s definitely what I’d be doing (keeping them in Ireland). Other lads, maybe their hands are forced with their upbringing.”
Despite these regrets, O’Donnell did take plenty of positives from his two-and-a-half year stint in London, particularly as he arrived at the club during a time when it was flourishing.
“The training facilities were unbelievable — the pitches and the coaching, how you’re taught to play football. We were over there in the time of ‘The Invincibles’.
“So you got to see a home game every second week. You got to see one of the best Premier League teams ever and one of the best teams in Europe, the best players in the world playing every second week, so that was great.
“But I probably wasn’t mature enough or smart enough to grasp it at the time, to give it your best shot and be as dedicated as you should. It’s something I wish I had back then, but everyone’s different and I suppose everything happens for a reason.
I wouldn’t have made that Arsenal team but I’m saying it (in relation to) a bigger career elsewhere. They’re the things you need to be doing.”
After Arsenal, a 19-year-old O’Donnell spent two years playing for Falkirk in the Scottish Premier League — a time he looks back on with mixed emotions.
“(You’d be) playing first-team football and going to Ibrox, Celtic Park, Tynecastle, Easter Road, Pittodrie, all these places.
“The league would have been strong — the Hearts team with (Rudi) Skacel, Paul Hartley and Steven Pressley, and the Hibs team: Steven Whittaker, Kevin Thomson, Gary O’Connor, Derek Riordan, all these players who went on to play for the Old Firm or in the Premier League in England.
“It was a good learning experience. We played with a diamond and I was left of the diamond and found myself out on the left-wing a lot of the time. I wanted to play centrally so that’s what ended my time there (in 2007). But it was great playing in their stadiums with top players.”
Having played in both, O’Donnell believes there is still a gap in quality between the Irish and Scottish top flight.
It’s easy for people to say the Scottish league is rubbish, but on the whole, facilities-wise and all that, there is a big enough gap still, albeit our top teams would definitely compete against the middle-of-the-road to bottom Scottish teams. As a league as a whole, facilities and strength-wise, you’d have to say that the SPL is still a fair bit ahead of the Irish league, there’s no doubt about that.
“You can see that with David McMillan, one of the top players in our league, joining St Johnstone. You still get to play in top stadiums like Ibrox and Celtic Park. The strength and depth of the league is far stronger than the League of Ireland.”
That said, O’Donnell feels the gap is narrowing and that the League of Ireland’s standard has improved considerably over the past five years.
“The first place you start is fitness-wise. A really professional environment has taken over the league. That wasn’t there before. Even in the off-season, you’re expected to come back to pre-season in good shape, which wasn’t there before, truth be told.
“There are lads that are far stronger, fitter and quicker now. You can see with what Dundalk did in Europe and the way we played, the last 20 minutes of a European game. We weren’t tiring at all because of a lack of fitness.
We’re as fit as the top teams we were playing. Definitely in recent times, there has been a big improvement in terms of fitness and athleticism and professionalism.”
After returning to Ireland, O’Donnell gradually established himself as one of the league’s top players. He enjoyed year-long stints with Bohemians, Cork, Galway and Shamrock Rovers, before signing for current club Dundalk in 2013.
The Galwegian enjoyed relatively swift domestic success, winning a league title with Bohs in 2008. He then repeated the feat during a short stint at Shamrock Rovers in 2011, before going to enjoy well-documented success with the Lilywhites.
Of Irish club football’s two biggest achievements in Europe over the past decade, O’Donnell has been integral to both. He scored the winning goal from the spot against Partizan Belgrade, as Shamrock Rovers became the first Irish team to qualify for the Europa League group stages. He also captained the Dundalk side that went on a historic Europa League run in 2016.
Because we were the first team ever to do it with Rovers, that was our objective achieved — the rest was a bonus in the group stages.
“The mentality was different in Dundalk, especially after the performance against BATE, beating them 3-0.
“We weren’t really outclassed against (Legia) Warsaw (in the Champions League qualifiers that year), so we knew we could be competitive with whatever group we were in.
“With Dundalk, we were in the group to compete.”
It was a journey that O’Donnell could scarcely have imagined when he signed up for the club in 2013. At that point, Dundalk had not won the Premier Division title since the 1994-95 season, yet they were about to undergo a seismic shift under the management of Stephen Kenny.
When I joined, the manager was only after taking over. The first game of the season you hadn’t a clue what was going to happen, whether we’d be mid table or fighting relegation. We ended that season coming second, which was an unbelievable achievement considering we were just thrown together on a small budget.
“Gradually, we knew we had the base of a good team and if we could add a couple of quality players in the off-season, which we did, we knew we’d be competitive again, so we went on and won that league and won the next two.
“But I’d be lying if I said I knew it was going to happen.”
O’Donnell adds that being the first League of Ireland side to fully embrace strength and conditioning was key to the Lilywhites’ success.
“We got coached early enough about being the fittest team, everyone bought into that — that was a massive advantage for the first couple of seasons, being the strongest and fittest team.
I think it might have encouraged other clubs and realised what Dundalk were doing. They’ve also put an extra onus now on the strength and conditioning.
“It’s brought up the whole league — everyone’s wanting to match each other — so it’s bringing up the standards year on year.”
Consequently, with every Premier Division team seemingly having caught up with their innovative preparatory methods, regaining the league title in 2018 might just be the biggest challenge yet for O’Donnell and co.
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Didn’t Donegal play Tyrone in the first round? And Dublin will play Kildare in the next round, as will Cork and Kerry, and it’s not the GAAs fault that Galway have melted into a shambles. We would then have had Mayo v Galway too in the first round. All of this before the end of June. Then you have the real payoff, the excitement of seeing the very best teams against each other in August and September, the way any worthy competition should be. The GAA has plenty of flaws but I think this article is a very unfocused knee-jerk reaction to a few hidings dished out by teams on top of their game.
Dave agree entirely
A Dubs fan
Lot of people talking about Mayo this year but where have we heard that before
Wouldn’t write off Kerry either S a lot of people seem to be doing
I’m a Dubs man meself Declan. I think this Mayo team is a different proposition from previous years, there’s a hard edge to them which I think makes them serious contenders.
I think Dublin, Donegal, Cork and Mayo are all around the same level (one from each province too, which is nice) then there’s Tyrone, Kerry and Kildare a level just below that. 7 realistic contenders for the All Ireland, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Yes agree 7 teams with varying degrees of optimism
If they had that in the premiership they would be laughing!!
Mayo have new fitness coach so let’s see
A dubs fan passing a comment about another team being over hyped early in the year.. Oh the irony!
San Marino get hammered every time they play but you don’t see fifa changing around the format of the European/world cup qualifiers so they can win a few games
If counties are not up to the standard why should the gaa change around the format to try and suit them, the football championship is very strong and some teams will get left behind
They change the format every few tournaments! And they do it to allow a more desirable geographic spread off WC finals competitors
The fact that there are eight competitive teams places the Gaa in an enviable position . It can’t be said of other codes. How many EPL winners have there been since its inception . The GAA championship compares very Favourably. It’s not long since Dublin and Donegal were on the wrong end of a few such drubbings . In 2011 London almost beat mayo who then made an all Ireland semi final , beating the all Ireland champions en route. Louth contested a Leinster final . Wexford likewise on a couple of occasions. Similar knee jerk reaction were pedalled out in 2010 when none of the provincial finalists reached the semi finals . September is the time to make a more considered judgment
GAA is fine as is.
If other counties want to perform they can pay for more training sessions and try and get more people to come to the matches.
I agree in part. But I don’t think it means we need to rearrange the format of the championship. Every time a team gets hammered some people talk about the need to level the playing field. The system is fine. It has been changed once, with the back door, if they change it again like they did with the league over and over again people will lose interest.
We had years of Galway hurling people blaming the structure of the championship for them not winning, now it’s the championship structures that Galway footballers are rubbish,
Derry were not well beaten, in fact they played some of the best football of the championship to date in the best game to date. Diagonal balls to Bradley and his destruction of Down defense in first half was a joy to watch.
Westmeath got a day out in croker they saw the level they need to aspire too its all a learning curve / and that’s always the way it’s been how else are you going to improve
The money and the people involved with the Dublin team vs small counties like w.meath is very unfair.Maybe a large populace county like Dublin should field two teams a city and county team.
As Kerry do each year and how All Ireland’s have they won with a small population
The whole thing is a farce lets do away with the provincials 8 groups of 4 top 2 into the the A final bottom 2 to a B Final and in the last 16 -an open draw when your out you are out at least the teams in the final get to play the same amount of games.
Yeah, everyone would get three games and the eventual finalists would get 7. Seems fair
I wouldn’t do an open draw for the last 16 though. I’d run it like a Heineken Cup. The best performing team plays worst and so forth, to reward consistent good play
The championship is fine the way it is. They should give division 3 and 4 teams home advantage when playing division 1 teams.
The championship format is fairly rubbish to be honest. It’s not fair in my opinion to the Ulster teams especially. The Connaught and Munster Championships and somewhat Leinster are absolute dire. They should have a Champions League style format of 8 groups of 4 teams and the top 2 from each group enter the Last 16 of the All Ireland with the top from each group playing a 2nd placed team. The groups would also be seeded from their National League position meaning all Division 1 teams would be in a separate group and so on. At least every team would get 3 Championship games, the prospect of an open draw would also do much to enhance the game….and I’m not from Ulster!
I don’t see how ulster is any better. Donegal are near certainties for ulster this year and that will be 3 in a row and before them Tyrone and Armagh shared it for the previous ten years.
Leinster and ulster have to win more games to win an all Ireland however which is definitely unfair.
Kerry and cork basically don’t have to do anything until August because the rest of Munster are light years behind them. This is extremely unfair on the rest and plays a large part in Kerry’s success in my opinion despite their producing some excellent teams.
Some people suggest that it’s better for Kerry/Cork to take the back door route as they get more competitive games. As it is they get to play Each other in their only tough match before Aug and arrive untested into the Knockout stages.
These two scenarios get played out whenever Kerry/cork reach the QF and either win easily or lose comfortably.
If they get to QF by winning munster and win easily its cos they are fresh from easy matches. If they lose its cos they are untested.
For decades ulster was the weakest province, now it’s the most competitive. Why, they work hard but helped as all the counties place football number one. In Munster only Kerry place football 1, all the others are hurling or 50/50 in corks case. Munster will never have 6 strong teams
Maybe picky, but Derry WERE Division 2 and Down WERE Division 1, but Derry got promoted, Down got relegated, so division 2 team beat division 1 team.
(Best game if championship so far – great advert for GAA)