David Sneyd

WHEN THE 42 visited Galway United’s rented training facilities in Drome in early February, manager John Caulfield had a clear focus ahead of this Premier Division season.

He didn’t just want to change the perception of what it meant to visit Eamonn Deacy Park as an away side. He wanted to continue his aim of re-shaping his team and the club in his own image.

The former Cork City player and boss thrived previously in his adopted county because he felt like he could tap into that mixture of underdog spirit and superiority complex that flows throughout Leeside.

“It’s the Rebel City for a reason, because they’re anti-everyone,” the New York-born, Roscommon native said.

Galway felt different when he arrived in August 2020. A place where an away game was relished by opponents and visiting fans because it was a weekend to savour.

Three points and three pints. With a chaser.

Caulfield remembers how it was not even seen as the done thing for his own players to work through the Galway Races in the summer.

“I saw it all around me. It’s a festival city, a party city. There is huge wealth here with people. Some great people, fanatical, but for a lot it didn’t matter if the team lost,” he said.

Caulfield struggled to get his head around the mentality but didn’t attempt to try and understand it and adapt. With the backing of club owners the Comer brothers, sticking to his edict eventually paid off with promotion to the top flight last season.

Faith in his methods from those above was also the reason he stayed in charge after not securing a place in the Premier Division sooner.

The arrival of former Finn Harps manager Ollie Horgan at the start of the successful 2023 campaign proved inspired, an example of Caulfield’s willingness to broaden horizons when required.

“Football is full of suspicion and people looking after themselves but with Ollie, it was simple. He was someone who could make us better and help players improve,” he explained.

That is a method Bohemians boss Alan Reynolds also followed this week when they confirmed the appointment of Stephen O’Donnell as his assistant on Wednesday.

It was a stunning appointment – coming 24 hours after Jon Daly was sacked by St Patrick’s Athletic – given that O’Donnell had been forging a career in management before being let go by Dundalk a month earlier.

Galway are embracing their own kind of controlled chaos amid a week of more League of Ireland madness, even if the season started in ominous fashion.

An opening-night 1-0 defeat at home to St Patrick’s Athletic would have had plenty ready to write off Caulfield’s methods in a changing league, one that was younger, softer and apparently requiring more refined thinking.

Caulfield may have delivered a Premier Division title for Cork in 2017 – winning the FAI Cup that same season – and was runner-up to Stephen Kenny’s Dundalk in ’14, ’15, ’16 and ’18 during their epic battles, but in football, you can quickly become yesterday’s man.

At 59, he is second only to Noel King as the oldest manager in the top flight – even if it was only in the last decade that he was able to commit to the game full-time and give up a job in sales – but his intense drive continues to straddle the line of acceptability.

Tonight’s derby at home to Sligo Rovers is the last of a five-game suspension for different incidents in recent weeks.

He was sent to the stands during the closing stages of a crucial 1-0 win over league leaders Shelbourne on 19 April and received a two-game ban as a result.

Caulfield disobeyed the punishment in one of the subsequent fixtures when he was spotted in discussion with Horgan near the touchline and the FAI then added a further two games for that infraction.

The FAI also added a fifth match to the punishment for what was described as “offensive behaviour” when he confronted a referee assessor in the stands during that Shelbourne match.

Amid this controlled chaos his players seem to thrive.

No team has a better defensive record than Galway this season. They’ve conceded just seven goals, and of the six other teams who have played 14 games, the next best tally is 15. Champions Shamrock Rovers and challengers Derry City have conceded more than twice Galway’s total (15) while it’s 10 for Damien Duff’s Shels.

You only have to check the goals for column to see that Galway are walking a tightrope, though, with just eight scored. Only bottom side Dundalk (seven) have netted fewer.

Success and failure is defined by a fine line. A win tonight will keep them in fourth spot – potentially within a point of Rovers and Derry City – while a two-goal win for Sligo would see the Bit O’Red go above their western rivals.

But this is what Caulfield wanted.

Galway are living on the edge in their own way.