Gerry Scully interviewed by Keith Wallace
July 7th 2008.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, he stood in a dressing-room of Dundalk greats such as Tommy McConville, Barry Kehoe, Richie Blackmore and Martin Lawlor, to name a few. The glory days. While his spell at the club as a sprightly teenager was relatively short-lived, however, now, as John Gill’s sidekick, Gerry Scully is a Lilywhite once more, and is hoping to make it third time lucky as he bids to lead the Black & White Army back into top table battle.
Oriel Arrival
Gerry arrived at Oriel Park as a promising left-sided midfielder back in 1982 under the reign of Jim McLaughlin, a move which came about partly thanks to Tommy Connolly. “A guy by the name of Liam Brien – a former manager of Drogheda and Longford – was up here for a number of years with Dundalk, and ran the B team with Mick Lawlor and then Mick Leech,” Gerry explains when speaking to the Dundalk FC Magazine this week. “With Liam being in Finglas, he knew about me, and that was the contact. Him and Tommy Connolly invited me to play with the Dundalk Youths over in Lorient in France. They invited me over, and I went over and played in a tournament, and then I signed for Dundalk when I came back.”
Good Company
Trying to break into the Dundalk team of that year was always going to be a difficult task, however, Gerry admits that just getting his first-team debut with the club was memorable. “The first season as an 18-year-old was just a great experience,” Scully says. “The Dublin based players used to train down in Mount Temple, and the Dundalk players trained up here. But it was great to train with players such as Pop Flanagan, Paddy Dunning, Noel King, Sean Byrne, John Archbold etc.. They were all great players and I learned a lot just from training with them. In the first season, as a young lad, you were never going to get in, but the next season, when John Dempsey came in, there was a lot of comings and goings, and a lot of players left. That’s when I got the appearances that year, even though I was young and inexperienced. They were in the LSC and the League Cup, but it was still a great experience to make your first-team debut and to get another couple of games out of it.
Awestruck
“It was always a great club. When I came up the first season, Dundalk were League Champions, so they were the best side in the country. They had great crowds and there was always a great atmosphere at Oriel Park. As a young lad coming straight from schoolboy football, it was an eye opener. It was just great to be involved – awestruck. After the two seasons then, I was asked to go up to Shamrock Rovers. Tommy Connolly (then manager) rang me and asked me about coming back up here, and after being an amateur for two seasons, I said to Tommy that I’d be looking for a few bob. After playing for the two years, it was like serving your little apprenticeship, but Tommy told me then that they didn’t have anything in the budget.”
Rovers to Shels
As a result, Scully soon took up that offer from Rovers, as he renewed acquaintances with Jim McLaughlin at Milltown. “It was similar to Dundalk in a way,” Gerry recalls, “as I made a few appearances in the LSC and the League Cup again. I actually scored in the League Cup against Drogheda in United Park when we beat them 3-2. That was a great experience. Rovers were the League Champions then, so, again, you were training and playing with the best players in the country, which again brought me on a hell of a lot. After a season there, I moved to Shelbourne then. The situation was, I was playing in Milltown against Drogheda, again in the League Cup, and Johnny Byrne, the Shels manager, was in the crowd. I had a good game that night, so at the end of the season, he came in and offered me a two-year contract.
Falling Out
“I went there, but I had a bit of a knee injury that I brought with me. It was in the First Division – we actually got runners-up that year, and we went up with Derry. That was the time that Derry were bringing the big crowds with them, which was a great experience. I played the opening half of the season, but the knee injury got worse, and I was in and out of the side then. The following year then, I had a little bit of a falling-out with Johnny Byrne. We didn’t really see eye-to-eye, so I left then at the end of that season. Tony Higgins, who was with Kilkenny City at the time, made an offer, so I went down there then. At this stage, I had moved back from left-midfield to left-full, and I got ‘Player of the Year’ down there, and that’s when Drogheda came in for me.”
Double League Winner
Scully made the move to Boyneside in 1988, where, along with John Gill, he helped Drogheda to two First Division titles in three years. “Giller was right-full and I was left-full. He was all savagey and I was all guile and craft!!” Gerry jokes. “I spent three seasons there. We were like yoyos. We won the First Division, then got relegated out of the Premier, and then we won the First Division again. It was again a great experience. It was probably the best time I’ve had, obviously because you’ve picked up two league winners medals, which was great. The second year we won it, you only played each other three times, so you only actually played 27 games. We were 26 matches unbeaten, and we went into the last game against Finn Harps. Richie Kelly gave a terrible back-pass and Robbie Horgan took one of the Harps fellas down for a penalty in the last minute. If Richie Kelly had just kicked the ball out of the ground, we would have went through the season unbeaten, but it wasn’t to be. But they were great memories and great times. We had a side which was too good for the First Division and not good enough for the Premier.”
Ashtown Success
Following that successful promotion charge, and as Drogheda bid to bury their yoyo status, Gerry bit the bullet as Liam Brien made sweeping changes to the United squad at the end of the season. “I was let go,” Gerry states. ”After winning the First Division the second time, Liam Brien decided that, going up to the Premier again, they needed to get players in, so Drogheda actually forked out a few bob and went to get better players. I had an Achilles tendon injury at the time and I was suffering and missing games with it, and I wasn’t able to train properly, so I was losing a little bit of sharpness. I was let go and decided then that that was the end of my time with the National League. By dropping a level to the LSL, you were able to get away with it. I moved to Ashtown Villa then. Tony O’Connell called up to me and I went training with them. At that time, they had an excellent side. The year before that, they had beaten both Dundalk and Derry in the Cup. When people say about the LSL and the National League, there is a big gulf between it, and even between the First Division and the LSL. But that Ashtown Villa side was laden with National League players, and it was very, very strong, so you were joining the best side in the LSL. We did three doubles in the next three years, so it was very successful. I had a great time there and I made a lot of good friends that I’m still friends with. It was a great time.”
Coaching Experience
As the curtain came down on a successful playing career, Scully soon moved into coaching, and returned to the club where he had spent his entire schoolboy career, Belvedere, to gain experience. “I was always interested in coaching,” Gerry admits. “When it came to the end of my time with Ashtown Villa, I went back down to Belvedere and got involved with the young kids team. Morgan Cranley, one of our goalkeepers here, was actually a member of that side. It started from there. I had four years with Belvedere. I was doing the coaching badges, so the stuff I was learning on the courses, I was applying to the young kids. After four years there, I went to do my A-Licence, and obviously needed to work with senior players, so I moved up to Home Farm Everton. I had four great years there under various different managers. I left the league again then and went in as Director of Coaching at Home Farm for two-and-a-half years. When that contract was up, I went up to Saint Patrick’s Athletic under-21s, but I was only there for four or five months when Giller got the job in Athlone in the second half of the season. He asked me to join him, so I went down there for half a season.
Tough Task
“They were bottom of the table. They were a young team and the quality wasn’t good enough. We ended up finishing on the bottom, but we went in and got them a little bit fitter and made them more competitive. We got a couple of results. We actually drew twice with Sligo, who went on to win the league that year. It was a tough job, because the quality just wasn’t there. But it was a good experience nonetheless. After that, I came straight up here to Dundalk with John. Of course, having been with Dundalk before, I knew what a big club it was, so it was just a tremendous opportunity to come up here. We were away ahead of our time by actually getting promotion in our first year. Unfortunately, we all know what happened there, and when you see the situation that Galway are in now, it makes a bit of a mockery of it all. I’ve enjoyed my time up here so far, and hopefully we can make it third time lucky and go and win the league this year, and get this club back where it rightfully belongs.”
Promotion Push
That decision to promote Galway over eighteen months ago is still fresh in the mind for many. And, while Gerry admits that it’s no different for him, he is hopeful that the club can repeat their success of two seasons ago and return to the Premier following a seven season absence. “It does still stick,” Gerry says. “We were deprived of our right to go up. Also, why have a playoff with Waterford when there was nothing tangible at the end of it. That was just a waste, and it just got everyone’s hopes up. It does stick, but I’ve put it behind me now. But when it is brought up, you would still be annoyed over it. It’s a very difficult division to get out of, because if you’re off your game, any of the teams can beat you. You’re up there to be shot at. Ourselves and Shels are the big guns in this division, so every other team raises their game. Your attitude must be right going into the games or you’ll get turned over. We’re long enough in the game now to know that you can play very well and get beaten, you can play very poorly and win, and you can play very poorly and lose. But there’s 20 games to go now, there’ll be a lot of points dropped, and one thing for sure is that this will go down to the wire. It always does. If you look at Cobh Ramblers last year, going on a 27-match unbeaten run, which is three-quarters of the season, and yet only winning the league on the last day. This is going to the wire. There’s going to be blips, and part of the season is taking the ups with the downs. You have to deal with them as well, and it’s coming through that and coming through it stronger.”
Gerry Says No
Despite this being their third season in the dugout at Oriel, however, Scully doesn’t feel that there’s any added pressure to the job now. “No, I don’t, because the pressure is there all the time,” he says. “Giller used to say ‘pressure is for tyres’. You only put yourself under pressure. Nobody else can put you under pressure; it’s just yourself and what way you see things. We’ve got a job to do, we’re going to do it to the best of our ability, and we believe in the players that we have here and we trust them that they’re good enough to win this league. That’s what everybody involved with this club wants. We want to win this league and we want to get up into the Premier Division.” Whatever the outcome, however, down the line, sole management is not somewhere where Gerry is looking to go. “No,” he states. “I’m not a manager. I’ve been caretaker manager when managers have been missing and I’ve ran Pats under-21s. But no, I love the training ground, I love just making out the sessions and doing the sessions. All the hassle that comes with being a manager and the behind the scenes stuff, no, not for me!”
