Paul Crowley interviewed by Keith Wallace
4th August 2008.
UPON HIS ARRIVAL at Oriel Park last December, few knew much about him. However, despite a mixed start to his Dundalk career and a continued struggle to break into the starting eleven on a regular basis, things are slowly but surely coming together for Paul Crowley. A tough, tenacious and crunching tackler with a keen eye for goal, Lilywhites followers are quickly warming to the midfielder, who has impressed in nearly all of his appearances to date.
Belfield Blues
Crowley, who previously won the First Division title under John Gill at Dublin City five years ago, once against joined forces with his old mentor when he signed from UCD at the end of last year. Had he remained at Belfield, it is widely believed that he would have been an ever-present in the Students’ battle for safety. However, it is exactly that that made the 28-year-old choose a move to Dundalk. “In the back of your mind, when you know you’re going to be competing, it helps a bit,” Paul told the DFC Magazine. “It’s difficult in a relegation battle. At the top, you seem to get the rub of the green sometimes. When you’re down there, it’s hard to get out of things. If you go a goal down in a game, you’re thinking ‘here we go again’.
Striving for Success
“You see the bottom teams in the league are always struggling to score goals, which is, obviously, at the end of the day, why teams are down there. It’s just hard to get out of that rut, looking around the pitch seeing where your goals are going to come from. It’s just a lot harder. Here, there’s a bit of a drive there and there’s a bit of ambition around the whole club. You’re not dropping down to a standard where you’re going out looking for draws. You’re going out to win every game and you’re striving to get to where we are at the moment. It’s great here. There’s a buzz about the club and obviously we’re doing well so the attendances are good. It’s professional and everything is done right, so that’s all you can expect.”
Super Sub
Despite eye-catching cameo displays, not until his wonder goal in Longford did Crowley’s first real chance come, though he acknowledges that there’s not a lot one can do to break into a winning team. “What can you do?” he ponders. “You can only keep training hard, as I have been doing, and keep knocking on the door and getting my goals. I feel I’m doing well when I do play, and when I come on, I just keep chipping away. I look after myself as best I can, but I just feel that I need to be playing to get the best out of myself – and obviously for Dundalk to get the best out of me.”
Starting Place
During the opening half of the season, Crowley had a long run of substitute appearances. However, after impressing during those, he has now had a run of starts in the side – something he is hoping to keep going. “I’ve been happy enough when I’ve been playing,” he admits. “I’d just like to play a bit more regularly, for fitness as well. It’s hard coming in and out, trying to keep your fitness levels up. You’re training all week, you’re training as hard as you can and you’re doing your own bit at home, but I feel that you just need to be playing games to get the best out of yourself.”
Promising Position
Dundalk go into this evening’s game two points ahead of Crowley ex-club and tonight’s opponents Waterford United. And, he feels that top-of-the-table encounters will be key to whether or not the Lilywhites can maintain their current standing. “There’s nobody getting carried away,” Paul states, “because this club has been close in the last couple of seasons and it hasn’t happened. There’s nobody getting ahead of themselves, but, obviously, we’re delighted to be at the top looking down on people. We’ll take it game by game and we have another big match tonight. It’s about taking points off the teams around you. We’ve done our work recently against teams down the table, but these are the sides that are pushing you towards the last phase of games. This will be a big week, but we still have to play everyone again, so I’m sure there’ll be twists and turns along the way. But I’m pretty sure we’ll be up there challenging at the end.”
Rovers Beginnings
Starting out his League of Ireland career, Crowley joined Shamrock Rovers at the age of only 16 and signed as a professional just a year later. “I was playing schoolboy and the two managers we had, Dermot O’Neill and Peter Sinnott, knew Pat Byrne at Rovers,” he explains. “They were finishing us up that year, so they recommended I went and tried it out. I signed for the reserves straight away and went on from there. I made my debut for the first-team when I was 17 against UCD in Belfield. I was in and out and coming off the bench. I was doing well enough but there was a big squad there that time and I was never going to nail down a regular place. Damien Richardson came in then, I played a bit for him, but I just wanted to play regularly, so then I went on-loan to Home Farm Fingal. Johnny McDonnell was there at that time. I met with Rovers then again at the end of that season and I decided that I wanted to keep playing regularly, so I stayed at Home Farm.”
League Winner
After McDonnell’s departure and a poor subsequent season under his former assistant John Toal, John Gill arrived at Dublin City from Kildare County to taste management for the first time. After a seventh-placed finish under Toal, a title challenge looked unlikely. However, despite starting at odds of 20/1, the Vikings took the league crown to give Crowley his first piece of senior silverware. “There was a big clearout but I stayed on and we won the league,” the midfielder recalls. “It was good. It was close to the spirit that we have here now, it was a good bunch of lads. It wasn’t expected in John’s first season, but we still wanted to be there or thereabouts. We had a good start and a good middle, and then it came down to the last day against Bray. There was a playoff that year and we obviously wanted to avoid that, so we got the result we needed against Bray.”
Collins Cull
Crowley and Gill soon agreed terms for City’s Premier Division voyage. However, it didn’t go to plan for the club, as Gill resigned midway through the campaign with Roddy Collins coming in and culling much of the squad. “I was looking forward to the season, obviously,” Crowley admits. “It was my first year back playing in the Premier after leaving Rovers. We started slow enough, but you don’t expect to be flying out of the traps. We had a few heavy defeats and we didn’t really get going. We had a bad defeat in the cup then down in Monaghan, and that was it for John; he decided to leave. You never expect anybody to throw that out, but he had his reasons and you have to respect them. Roddy came in then and assured us all that everybody was okay, but it wasn’t to be. I think 15 of a squad of 22 was let go. Fortunately, I was one of the few that was kept. That was a massive shock. The whole team were just told to report with their training gear and club tracksuits one Saturday morning after him assuring everybody that most people were okay and that we just needed a few to strengthen the squad. Everybody was told to bring their gear and then 15 lads had to leave their training gear behind.
Weird Walkout
“He said there’d be a few big signings, and in fairness there was, Carlton Palmer and Co., but it wasn’t enough to get us out of it. It just took too long for the whole team to settle in again. It was a whole new side, which we didn’t need in the middle of the season – it needed maybe a couple of players just to push us along. Roddy then left for Shamrock Rovers before the end of the season, which was another shock – it was a bit of a rollercoaster that year. That was weird. I was having my tea in work at 10 o’clock and I heard on the radio that Roddy Collins was leaving for Shamrock Rovers – I was only after talking to him twelve hours before that. The radio was the first I heard of it and then the mobile phone started ringing and everybody was talking, obviously. Dermot Keely came in then and tried to rev things up but we were dead and buried at that stage and it was going to be near impossible to get out of it. I think even a few of the English lads went home.”
Rollercoaster Ride III
Following an operation at the conclusion of that season, Crowley decided to leave the Whitehall club and move to Waterford, which, yet again, proved to be another rollercoaster ride for the Dubliner. “I felt staying in the Premier Division was important at that stage,” Paul says. “Just for myself personally, I wanted to stay in the Premier. I enjoyed playing against the bigger teams and I wanted to give it another crack. That was a bit of a rollercoaster season as well. I think I’m a bit of a jinx; I bring bad luck to clubs. There was four different managers that year. I finished top goalscorer in the end with eight goals, so, personally, I felt it went okay. But, as a whole, it was a bit of a mess; there was financial trouble. Alan Reynolds signed me, then Giles Cheevers took over, then Brendan Rea came in and everything was all over the shop, because there were so many changes. Eventually then, Pat Dolan came in and totally steadied the ship. In fairness to him, he was fantastic, and we got out of it in the end.
Fresh Air
“It was a breath of fresh air when Pat came in. Again, we knew nothing about it. We just went to training one morning and he was standing there in his shirt and waistcoat. He was different class to be fair, I really enjoyed working with him and he’s probably the best that I’ve worked with. The evidence was there. We hadn’t won in eighteen games. We had a two-week break because we were out of the cup, he took us for two weeks, and then Bohs came down to Waterford and we beat them 2-0 in his first game. He just steadied the ship completely and was very good. We stayed up, but there was so much trouble down in Waterford, talking to a lot of lads towards the end of the season, there was a lot moving on. The squad was depleted, and, to be fair, the travelling was a lot. Near the end, we were travelling down twice a week for training and then a weekend match. If we hadn’t got a weekend match, we’d be down there for training instead, so trying to balance work and travelling to Waterford wasn’t really working out.”
Vikings Death
Despite achieving the goal of safety, above reasons saw Crowley leave the RSC as he took up an offer of a return to Dublin City, who had regained their top flight status. However, the club folded in midseason. “That didn’t go too well either!” Paul jokes. “It was another bit of a ropey season! We were going alright, we were huffing and puffing, we weren’t getting hammered by anyone and we were a solid enough team. Then there was a phone call one morning to meet in the hotel, we hadn’t heard anything about it. The lads were talking and the rumour kind of got around before we got to the hotel. We got there then and there was a few sad faces around with Rocky (Ronan Seery) and Breda. The writing was on the wall, we met up and the chairman said the club was folding. He just basically told us that he couldn’t do it anymore and that it was too much for him. He was having problems off the pitch with what was going on with the club, and that was understandable. It was a big shock, because it was in the middle of the season and it’s not something that you expect.”
Student Days
With the end of the transfer window fast approaching, many players were left in limbo. However, Crowley soon found himself a new home as Pete Mahon offered him a deal at UCD. “Obviously, everybody was waiting around,” the 28-year-old recalls. “Some lads got fixed up quicker than others. Pete Mahon came in for me then and off to UCD it was. Again, I was delighted to stay in the Premier, and to get back playing as quick as I did. Lads just wanted to get back playing as soon as they could. It’s very easy to fall out of touch with the league if you’re out of it for so long. I got back playing, kept fit for that season and got a contract for the following year. I enjoyed it there. It was very good training, and, again, I was playing regularly. The crowds were very poor though. It’s obviously nicknamed ‘The Graveyard’ for a reason. It does help playing in front of a crowd. We haven’t been behind a lot here at Oriel, but it’s very hard in the likes of Belfield when you’re behind and you look around and there’s ten people in the stand looking over at you. It helps sometimes when the crowd gets behind you when the chips are down, or when you’re on top. It’s a big help.”
