David Crawley interviewed by Keith Wallace
June 18th 2008.
FROM THE LOWS OF GORTAKEEGAN to the slightly more exotic highs of the Estadio Municipal de Riazor in A Coruña, you could say he’s a well travelled sort. Since making his Dundalk debut under Dermot Keely in 1995, he has had a glittering career in League of Ireland football, with his highly impressive CV reading: Three Premier League medals, one FAI Cup medal, one First Division medal, one Premier League runners-up medal and a Setanta Sports Cup runners-up medal. Added to that, he has appeared in European competition 23 times, and has tasted the pain of relegation twice. However, despite his many successful years at the top, David Crawley says he is still hungry for more.
Home Sweet Home
Crawley is now in his second season back at Oriel Park having returned to the club from Shelbourne in January 2007. And, speaking to the Dundalk FC Magazine, the left-back admits that it’s a case of home sweet home. “There was only one club I was going to come to when my time was over with Shelbourne,” David states. “I’m back at Dundalk now, and whatever I have left in the tank, I’ll give it to this club. This is where my heart lies, and hopefully now, we can get back into the Premier League this year. We were all disappointed last year. John and Gerry done everything they could. It was up to individual players, they know who they are, and they let themselves down. If the whole team aren’t pulling together, you can’t do it on your own. We started this year the same way as we did last season, but there’s just a wee bit more buzz about this team. The players are working a wee bit harder, and if you look at the players John has brought in, there’s a lot of young fellas and there’s a lot of experience. There’s a great buzz about the place and around the town now, and, hopefully this year, we can see the final furlong out.”
Bittersweet
Before leaving Dundalk in mid-2002, Crawley had experienced a rollercoaster ride with the Lilywhites as he mixed First Division and FAI Cup winning medals with two relegations. “I’ve had a few ups and downs here,” Davy admits. “The year we won the First Division, we played very well. It’s something like the team we have here now. We worked hard and we had a few lucky breaks on the way. It’s all about getting out of this division. It was tough that year, but we put the work in and we got our rewards in the end and got into the Premier League. Unfortunately, it didn’t go too well there, but I think we were unlucky. I think going into the cup final, we were the form team in the league. I think we lost only one out of our last eight games in the league, and we still went down. We had to go down to Monaghan on the last day and win. All the pressure was on us to perform, and we did that and won 3-0, but, unfortunately, Longford got the draw they needed and we went down.”
Career Highlight?
Following that painful demotion in Gortakeegan, Dundalk had to lift themselves for an FAI Cup final meeting with Bohemians just seven days later. “It was strange,” Crawley admits. “One minute, you’re down, but that goes to show you how football can change. We were down, but we knew, and the fans knew, that we’d give it a go. It wasn’t as if we were going into the cup final having been beaten five or six games on the trot. We were going in in good form, and if we had shown that kind of form at the start of the season, we probably would have been near the top of the table. It was strange in one way, but we never really got to terms with relegation either, because we just went straight back into training for the final. We knew the only way we could give the fans something was to win the cup. Bohs had all the big name players, but on cup final days, big name players don’t count for anything. It’s about who wants it more, and we showed that that day. It was probably one of the best days in Dundalk’s history, and I was lucky enough to lift the cup that day. For me, it was extra special. I’ve been lucky enough to win leagues and to play in a lot of European games, but that day is one of my career highlights.”
Captain Fantastic
Prior to the start of the promotion winning season in 2000-01, Crawley was handed the captain’s armband for the first time by manager Martin Murray. That move came about following the departure of both Noel Melvin and Paul Whelan, who had shared the captaincy the previous season. “I signed a new contract,” Crawley explains, “and then Martin Murray and Ollie Ralph called me into the dressing-room one night and said ‘listen Davy, we want to make you captain’. It was a great honour for me being a local lad. There was times when I was the only local player on the team, so for me, it was a great honour and a great experience. It shows what they were thinking of me, because to be captain of the club at 24 was great. I was very grateful to them, because if they didn’t make me captain, I probably would never have got the chance to lift the cup.”
Turning Red
However, just weeks after that memorable cup triumph, David exited Oriel to take up a full-time contract with Shelbourne. And, he admits that it was not easy to leave the club. “It was difficult,” he says. “I got the call around two weeks after the cup final. I got into the National League squad. We went to Wales, and I was playing with some great players. One of the players came to me and said ‘I think Shelbourne want to sign you’. I was away, and playing with top class players. I got the taste for it over there, and it was an opportunity I wasn’t going to turn down. Yes, I’m a Dundalk man through and through, I wear the crest on my sleeve and I’d go through a wall for any Dundalk team, but I just wanted to see if I could make the step-up. When I went to Shelbourne, it was full-time football as well. I had experienced that at Manchester City, but I got homesick when I was 16 and came home – I just couldn’t get used to it. I never thought I’d get the chance of playing full-time football again. When I went there, I won three league medals and I played in 23 or so European games, and I’m very thankful to Pat Fenlon.”
Back to the Future
“I sat down, and they made me a good offer. I was young. Steve Williams was up there too, he was living in Dundalk, and I travelled up with him every day for five seasons. It was a great experience. I can remember when we won the league here in ‘95, I was on the bench in Drogheda against Malmö (Sweden), and then I was on the bench over in Sweden as well, and I was thinking to myself ‘will I ever get this experience again?’. That’s what you thrive for as a young fella; to win things and to play in Europe, and coming out in stadiums with big crowds. I’ve been lucky enough to experience that. But, as I say, I’m with Dundalk now. I don’t gloat on it. Whatever has happened in my career is gone. It’s when I’m sitting down when I’m finished, when I’m around 40, I can say ‘I won that or I played in that’. But whatever I done now is gone. I’m with the present now, and I want to win more, because at the end of the day, every footballer will look back and it’s about what you won. I’ve been lucky enough to win medals. I’ve been lucky enough to play in a lot of competitions that players that are better than me haven’t. But I’m not looking back – I want to look to the future now.”
Out of Hand
In David’s time at Shelbourne, the club enjoyed incredible success with three Premier Division titles in the space of four years. However, when going for what proved to be an unsuccessful attempt to win three-in-a-row in 2005, Crawley believes that that is when the situation at Tolka Park got out of control. “We signed players that were good players, but the squad we had was too big,” the 31-year-old admits. “Pat was trying to keep too many people happy. They were a good club, but things just got out of hand. We signed players and they were on massive money. Coming towards the end, we knew a lot of the squad would be breaking up. We were struggling with wages, and there was weeks where we weren’t getting paid. At the end of the day, that was our full-time job. There was weeks we weren’t getting money, and then you were going home to your missus and your kids.
Memories
“There was a lot of players whose contracts were breached. I don’t know, to be quite honest, how we won the league that year. We stayed together and kept our heads down, but there was a lot of players that were going to leave that year. They struggled for support too. Once Dundalk are winning, whether it’s in the First Division or in the Premier, there’ll always be a big crowd, but at Shels, we just weren’t getting the support. We were always challenging for the title and playing in Europe, but the crowd still never came out. I just want to mention Ollie Byrne, Lord of Mercy on him. He was a top man, and I got on very well with him. Anything I wanted, I always got. He was a real, real Shelbourne man, but, unfortunately, things just didn’t work out in the end. I’ve not got a bad word to say about Shelbourne – they were good to me, they gave me some experiences that I never thought I was going to have, and they were excellent to me to be quite honest.”
European Nights
Many of those unforgettable experiences came in European competition, with the highlight for many Shels fans coming against Deportivo de La Coruña in the Third Qualifying Round of the Champions League in August 2004. However, while that tie also ranks high for Crawley, he chose the round prior to that as his most memorable European night. “Beating Hajduk Split 2-0 in Tolka Park,” he decides. “To a man, we played very well and we battled. In some European games, the Irish teams sort of fluked through, but we didn’t that night – we actually battered them. We played really well, and then we went on to play Deportivo in Lansdowne Road and then over in Deportivo – playing in front of nearly 35,000 people. I can name three or four, but probably Hajduk Split at home. When we were up against it, we showed what a quality team we were.”
Oriel Ending?
Now back to the modest First Division, however, Crawley is hoping to lead the Lilywhites back to the Promised Land, and is hoping to remain at Oriel Park for the remainder of his career. “Well, hopefully,” he says. “There’s no other club I want to go to. I love coming up here, I love coming training, and I’m enjoying myself now. I’m home here, I’m working away and I have a family, so hopefully there’s three or four years left in me yet. I’m not going to take it as guaranteed that I’m going to get a contract every year. I have to work hard. You look at the likes of Shane Grimes now pushing me. I remember when I was Shane’s age, I had John Coady and Martin Lawlor. There was so many great players, and I was saying to myself ‘will he ever…’. But I just take it game by game now, and I have to keep on my toes. I’ll keep my head down and take it year by year, and keep fit. I look after myself, I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, and, hopefully, I can play here for as long as I can.”
