THE STATEMENT FROM Dundalk owner Brian Ainscough earlier this week confirming that the club needed investment to guarantee survival until the end of the season was not the first time he caught people off guard by being so forthright.
Back on 15 May, when it was communicated via social media that Noel King would be stepping down as first-team manager with immediate effect due to medical reasons after just four games and 25 days in charge, one supporter took the opportunity to tag an account appearing to be Ainscough and told him to beg Stephen Kenny to return to Oriel Park.
Ainscough replied: “Go f**k yourself u s**t head.”
A club official confirmed that it was the owner and not a parody account. The message was later deleted and the depth of feeling is understandable given the pair’s relationship stretches back to when King coached Ainscough decades ago at Home Farm before he emigrated to America.
Ainscough blindsided everyone at the club with King’s appointment, including chief executive Peter Halpin. Days earlier he had spoken of a thorough process with numerous candidates. It speaks to the nature of a club that has been spiralling amid the chaos years following incredible success under Kenny both domestically and in Europe from 2013 to 2019.
Five years since their Premier Division title – won under Kenny’s former assistant Vinny Perth – Dundalk are now on the brink of collapse again. But how?
Europa League group stage football in 2016 was followed two years later by a takeover from the Chicago-based investment firm Peak6. There have been two further ownership changes since then, not to mention seven managers in charge since Kenny left for the FAI in 2018.
There was even another Europa League group stage campaign – the first time an Irish club qualified twice – sandwiched in for fun in 2020. This being Dundalk, they were led by a manager who didn’t have the required Uefa qualifications, was parachuted in from his job at a New York soccer school, and was not technically allowed to be on the touchline for any of those European games – including glamour ties with Arsenal who had recently appointed Mikel Arteta.
Still, Filippo Giovagnoli will be fondly remembered given the Italian also lifted the FAI Cup four years ago.
Dundalk FC owner Brian Ainscough has released the following statement about the club's financial situation.https://t.co/4HI1FUqhCi pic.twitter.com/sYDY3ZlL0q
— Dundalk FC (@DundalkFC) September 9, 2024
There was also a sporting director around this time, and records do indeed confirm that former Northern Ireland international Jim Magilton left a role with the IFA to join the operation at Dundalk in December 2020.
By April of the following year he was placed in caretaker charge after Shane Keegan, who was the Uefa-qualified coach that made Giovagnoli’s presence possible, departed.
Magilton left the club after 11 months.
So much has happened over the last six years, and yet some might even need a refresher that it was in fact only this season that King was placed in charge at Oriel Park after Stephen O’Donnell was sacked following a disastrous off-season and even worse start to the campaign.
Ainscough only completed his takeover one month after the club’s Premier Division licence was issued in November under the previous ownership of local sports technology firm StatSports and businessman Andy Connolly. They took over from Peak6 in November 2021 and quickly began dismantling the previous structure. Not that they were exactly firm foundations.
The money from Dundalk’s European exploits in ’18 and ’20 is gone, instead there are seven-figure debts, and in January of this year The Currency reported how one former player, Wilfred Zahibo, issued High Court proceedings against the club.
The 1903 Dundalk FC Supporters’ Club this week also started a GoFundMe page that had, as of the time of writing, raised €18,930 of a €100,000 target to help the club survive the short-term.
Interim FAI chief executive David Courell confirmed at the association’s AGM in Dublin yesterday that it was a “learning we need to own up to” that a more robust level of financial due diligence was not carried out as part of Ainscough’s takeover.
If Peak6 and those involved still have any interest in what’s going on at Dundalk they will possibly laugh – or cry – at that statement.
Matt Hulsizer, the founder of Peak6, expressed his frustration about the “bureaucracy” of trying to do business in Ireland in an interview in October 2020.
Within a year he had sold up, and while there were ambitious ideas he did also install his father, the outspoken Bill Hulsizer, as chairman.
The 78-year-old was derided for his lack of football knowledge – like wondering why former goalkeeper Gary Rogers didn’t take corners – and his interference, with one suggestion that a phone line be installed in the dugout so he could contact then manager Perth.
Hulsizer Snr picked rows with the IRFU and FAI over the use of Aviva Stadium, and part of the frustration clearly centred around what his son hoped they could do with the Dublin 4 venue.
Hulsizer explained to this reporter in that 2020 interview how the club had double the wage bill of any other League of Ireland team but were also willing to share the €4 million earned from Europa League success with other clubs.
He revealed how Peak6 offered the FAI and IRFU “a number between €20-30 million” during the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic to run the management company that operates Aviva Stadium.
Dundalk’s former owners were also prepared to absolve both the FAI and IRFU of their losses relating to the Aviva, with the suggestion of a 50/50 split on any future profits they were able to deliver.
As part of that plan, Hulsizer admitted that Dundalk were looking to move up to 10 games each season from Oriel Park to the Aviva.
None of this came to pass, and he and his family are long gone. This week fans continued to throw anything from €5 to €1,000 into the GoFundMe.
When they were bought out by that local consortium of StatSports and Connolly in late 2021, locals rejoiced. Understandably so given the previous drama, but more was to come.
Within two years they, too, were looking for the exit door and in Ainscough they found a willing buyer after the Boston-based businessman initially formed part of a consortium at newly-founded Kerry FC in the First Division.
To his credit, Ainscough also stressed that additional support at Dundalk would be required, but he did paint a far more positive picture.
“We’re definitely bringing in investors,” he said in January. “We have some people on the hook right now, we’ve just got to get them into the boat so to speak. We have some people very keen on coming in. We will probably announce that in early February.”
February came and went, so too March and April.
In May they had their third manager of the season when Jon Daly was appointed having been sacked by St Patrick’s Athletic.
The start of September brough rumours of problems.
Daly confirmed last week that wages went unpaid after they lost at home to St Pat’s and were rooted to the bottom of the Premier Division.
Those monies did land in accounts this week, one which ended in defeat away to Waterford.
“I am working hard to keep it going but my immediate concern now is that the club can carry on for the remainder of the season,” Ainscough said.
At that FAI AGM yesterday, Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland general secretary Stephen McGuinness thanked the FAI’s League of Ireland office for the work they had been doing but offered a stark reminder of the state of play. “Within the next couple of weeks, [the club] could go out of business.”
One of the names to the forefront of any possible deal to revive the club is another American businessman, Jeffrey Saunders. It would be fitting given he set up the Metropolitan Oval Academy in New York, where Giovagnoli worked when Dundalk first turned to him.
As is typical of football, the chaos and drama could come full circle.
