Paul Fennessy

OF THE 20 League of Ireland clubs, Alan Reynolds has at some point in his career had an affiliation with nearly half of them.

He has either played for or been on the coaching staff of Waterford, Longford Town, Cork City, Shamrock Rovers, Shelbourne, Derry City, St Patrick’s Athletic, Dundalk and now Bohemians.

Reynolds’ involvement in the League of Ireland spans four decades, having debuted as a player for Waterford in December 1991.

Yet when he steps into the dugout at Tallaght Stadium tonight, it will be the first time he has managed a League of Ireland club outside of Waterford.

Reynolds had a short stint as player-manager of his hometown club in 2004, guiding them to that year’s FAI Cup final, where they were beaten 2-1 by Longford.

He returned as manager in 2017, guiding them to promotion from the First Division and helping them achieve an impressive fourth-place finish in their first season back in the top flight.

However, despite the hugely promising start, the wheels ultimately came off primarily owing to problems behind the scenes.

Players and management were laid off temporarily at the RSC during the pandemic and Reynolds opted to leave permanently soon after.

In his absence, the club struggled to recover the stability that had characterised much of his three and a half years in charge and they were relegated the following season.

Paul Keegan was an important player during the early part of his Waterford stint.

After six and a half years in England with Doncaster Rovers, the midfielder returned home and signed with Reynolds’ side in the summer of 2017.

Reynolds gradually built a talented squad of quality League of Ireland players like Keegan, Kenny Browne, and Mark O’Sullivan.

As is the case now at Bohs, he worked alongside Director of Football Pat Fenlon, with whom he shared responsibility for player recruitment.

“At the time at Waterford, he was handling a big squad of players and he managed to keep most of them happy the majority of the time, which isn’t easy,” Keegan tells The 42.

“They brought in quite a mix of players from everywhere. For some reason, it all worked and gelled quickly. We had a great season — we were flying and up near the top of the table for most of the year.

“We had a random bunch of players brought together from England, Belgium, France and all over the world, but Rennie did a great job of bringing everyone together, getting the best team on the pitch and creating an amazing team spirit where people were just really, really enjoying their football.

“And if you look at that team, I think many played some of their best football at that time.”

Keegan, who retired from playing in 2020 and had a job with Bohs’ U19s team relatively recently that he had to give up owing to work and family commitments, cites “man-management” as Reynolds’ best quality as a coach.

“The best thing about Rennie is he knows players, he knows how to look after them, he knows how to treat them.

“We had a group of Dublin lads who would travel down on a Monday. We could train later on Monday. He’d let us come down a little bit later. So we would start later, we’d avoid traffic, we’d stay a Monday night, we’d then train early Tuesday morning, and then we’d come back home, we could be off on Wednesday.

“So he had all these little things to make life easier for lads at the club, which everyone appreciated.

“Like any job or team, people perform best when they’re enjoying the environment that they’re in, and they feel like they can express themselves. Rennie did a great job with that.”

Paul Keegan pictured during his time at Waterford. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

Reynolds made Keegan the club captain ahead of the fourth-place finish in the 2018 campaign, which remains Waterford’s highest league finish in the Premier Division this century — the 1986-87 season was the last time they emulated that position in the table while it has not been bettered since the 1975-76′s third-place finish.

“For a lot of people outside looking in, we were a surprise package, let’s say, but we knew from pre-season training, we knew from the squad was put together that we had some really good players and the intensity of the training was fierce, the competition for places, the tackles, the fitness, everything set the tone going into the season.

“I’ve been lucky to be in many good dressing rooms. But when you look around, and you see the quality of players that you have, and you see: ‘Jesus, there are six people here that could potentially play two midfield positions,’ you’re like: ‘Who’s going to play?’

“Nobody was guaranteed their position at the time. Everybody was fighting for their place within the team. And that just spurred everybody on.”

However, Keegan left at the end of that season more for personal than sporting reasons. The veteran midfielder was preparing for life after football and consequently, Bray Wanderers, who offered part-time football closer to home, was a more attractive proposition.

Unfortunately, without their skipper, the team went backwards.

“Sometimes you don’t realise how good it is at the time until it’s gone,” Keegan says. “If there was more chance of keeping that core team together, then obviously, bringing better players in, I think, they wouldn’t have gone down that road.

“For whatever reason, owners, plans and the way the club went, things just changed, and I wasn’t around to see what happened.

“But I think they didn’t realise how good a team we had. And look, it’s like any team, you either get better or worse — no team stays the same.”

It is only really since Keith Long was appointed manager last year that Waterford have started to recover from this lengthy slump.

Reynolds was back at the club by then — working as Long’s number two before agreeing to take charge of Bohs.

It was one of eight assistant manager stints that Reynolds has had overall, seven of which have occurred in the last 10 years, while some have coincided with time in Jim Crawford’s Ireland U21 setup — a role he may continue in even with his latest gig.

So why has Reynolds seemingly preferred to take on assistant jobs for much of the last decade?

“I suppose, is he a coach or is he a manager?” asks Keegan. “Obviously, in today’s game, you kind of have to be both. I worked with him as a manager. Maybe the coaching previously has helped him because as a coach, you are a little bit closer to players,  you have to have that little bit of a closer relationship and a sense that you’re getting the best out of them, you’re making them feel comfortable, you’re giving them confidence, whereas a manager then has to make the tough decisions, which ultimately means you can fall out with players and stuff like that.

“I think he’s been smart, there’s not a huge amount of jobs either in this country or there’s not a huge amount of stuff around. So I think he’s gone and he’s learned from different people. He’s worked with many good managers — people like Pat, Ruaidhri Higgins or Stephen Kenny.

“He has good relationships with people, and that’s why people bring him in, people want to work with him and that goes back to his character again, people like him, people get on with him and people know what they’re getting from him.

“If you have a bad reputation or personality within the league, news travels fast, and you won’t get jobs and people won’t want to bring you in as an assistant.”