Paul Shiels interview by Keith Wallace
1st July 2009.
Up to seven of Dundalk’s league-winning squad from last year could line out for Drogheda United in this evening’s Louth derby. However, one of those – perhaps the most unsung hero of the Lilywhites’ dramatic promotion success – midfielder Paul Shiels doesn’t think that the septet will gain any “extra motivation” ahead of tonight’s clash after being released by the club at the end of last season. Along with Shiels, Paul Crowley, Robbie Farrell, Robbie Martin, Jamie Duffy, Davie O’Connor and Ian Ryan also arrived at United Park in the close season, and after being thrown together in a short space of time, Drogheda are finally finding their feet with just two defeats in their last ten league games.
Win bonus
“Not really,” Shiels said when asked by the DFC Magazine if the ex-Dundalk contingent will have an extra incentive to win the game tonight. “This is the fourth time we’ve played them this year. The Malone Cup was a hectic game and there was a bit of fire in that one. If this was the first game since then, yes, you would like to go out and prove a point or whatever, but this is the fourth game and we have another one after this, so I think maybe we have forgotten about that, to be honest. We have all been around the league long enough to know that these things happen in football. We’ve all had three or four or five ex-clubs. Obviously, we would like to win and beat Dundalk up there, them being an ex-club, but I don’t think it’s an extra motivation at all. For us, we need three points to get out of the bottom three and that’s the main motivation for us, to be honest.”
Striker reinforcement
The 29-year-old is also confident that the Boynesiders can pick up enough points to avoid a relegation playoff come the end of the campaign. “We’ve played every club in the league now,” he said, “and I think the three lads we’ve got in in the transfer window, especially Guy Bates and Brendan McGill, add a bit of quality to us. I think if we can keep Guy Bates and Shane Barrett fit, we have a great chance, because they’re two proven Premier Division players and two fantastic players, and they give us a real bit of quality up front. I think we’re solid enough at the back and in the middle, and I think we’ll scrape enough results to get through. In saying that, you can go through a bad patch and drift away, but hopefully we can keep focussed and just pick up enough points here and there and maybe stay out of it at the end, please God.”
Drogs life
Shiels has appeared in 19 of Drogheda’s 20 league games this term and scored his first ever Premier Division goal when netting in a 2-2 draw at home to Shamrock Rovers back in April, and he says that life at United Park is extremely enjoyable. “I’m enjoying it,” he said. “We all knew when we signed what the circumstances at the club were but to be fair to Alan he has created a great atmosphere there and everything is done right – we’re treated fantastically, in terms of training facilities, food after training and everything you want is there for you. We want for nothing. Obviously how you’re enjoying it depends on results as well, and after the first round of games, if you had asked me how I was enjoying it I might have had a different answer. But I think we’ve kind of turned a corner a bit, in terms of results anyway, maybe not in terms of performances because they were kind of always there. But in terms of results, we have turned a corner and obviously that makes enjoying it a lot easier. With the performances and obviously with everything going on in the background in terms of how we’re being looked after, I have to say I really am enjoying it. Also with the squad we have, there is a great bunch of lads there. I knew a lot of them from Dundalk and previously, and they’re a great, honest bunch of lads, which helps as well.”
Mathews motivation
“I think Alan has been great,” Paul continued when asked about life under Alan Mathews, his first time playing under the former Longford Town and Cork City boss. “It has been very difficult circumstances for him to go in there. Everybody knows what went on with how little time he had to put together a team, but I think he has been fantastic. He’s very understanding; obviously we’re part-time and we’re trying to compete with full-time clubs. We have jobs and he’s very understanding if you really need to work that you might need to miss training now and again, and that you have a life outside of football as well. I suppose that really helps that when you do go to training that you’re 100 percent focussed on it, and the training sessions he puts on are very good. He just creates a good atmosphere about the place where you can go up and enjoy it, and you can enjoy your football as well without being under too much pressure.”
Priceless promotion
Last year’s promotion was Shiels’ fourth such success and he counts it as his most enjoyable. “I would say last year was (my most enjoyable), yes,” he said. “The one in Monaghan, I was very young and I probably didn’t realise the actual achievement it was at Monaghan at the time. The next one at Dublin City was very good again, but we didn’t win the league so there’s only so much you can enjoy of that. The Rovers one, I only signed halfway through that season, we won the league fair enough, but because I wasn’t there the full season, I probably didn’t feel as much a part of it as I did last year. I had the full season and Dundalk, I’ve always said it, are a great club and there’s great fans there. It was actually fantastic, I really enjoyed the year regardless of whether we got promotion or not. Myself and the boys do talk about it and it was a great year. Obviously winning promotion crowned it off and made the year in itself. Last year was the most enjoyable promotion I’ve had. I suppose the only downside of that was that I would have liked to have done it in a better way than we done it. I think with the team we had that we should have had it wrapped up long before we did. I just don’t like people being out there saying Shels threw it away, that’s slightly disappointing, but we went out and won the league and that’s it.”
‘No surprise’
The midfielder also says it came as no surprise when John Gill and 20 of the 23-man squad were released despite bringing the club back to the top flight after a seven-season absence. “Obviously, before the end of the season, we knew that there was something going on with John, with the Board and that,” Shiels recalled. “There were rumours going around with two or three games to go that Pat Scully was getting the job and John was getting sacked. We had a meeting with the Board and we were asked if everything was alright, so we knew that something was going on. At the time, I think we all felt it was silly, because we had gone through a bad patch but we were still right in it, and it would have been mad to change manager at that stage of the season. Even after the season, we knew that there were rumblings going on and there was stuff going on behind the scenes, so it was out of our control really. When we got the news that John wasn’t getting the job and they were advertising it, it was no great surprise, to be honest. When Sean Connor got the job, I actually thought it was a very good appointment – he has got a proven track record in the Premier Division. And when he released the majority of the team, again, it was no great surprise, because I think Sean hasn’t really worked with any of the lads that were there and he obviously wanted to come in and bring in his own bunch of lads. As much as it was disappointing the way it worked out, I wasn’t really overly surprised, to be honest.” Shiels was, however, disappointed at not being contacted by the new manager. “To be honest, that was the most disappointing thing I felt,” he stated. “I understood that he was going to come in and change it around and bring in his own lads. That was fair enough. But I never spoke to Sean Connor in my life and that was slightly disappointing. I thought I could have been treated with a bit more respect than that.”
Top-flight enjoyment
Shiels returned to the top flight this year after a one-season sojourn back in the First Division, and he admits that he is enjoying his football, even though he had reservations about playing at the highest level again. “I remember saying last year a couple of times that I didn’t know if I could give it the commitment that it needed,” he recalled. “The standard of the Premier Division has come down, it has lost a lot of quality players with the financial downturn. A lot of the big players, like Keith Fahey and Paddy McCourt, have gone over to England and Scotland, and I feel that the standard has dropped from what it was a couple of years ago. Obviously, it turns out that Dundalk went full-time and I couldn’t have stayed anyhow, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter if Sean Connor spoke to me or not. But if Dundalk had been in the Premier and been part-time, I probably would have signed. I actually think maybe my fitness levels have improved this year, even on last year. Maybe it’s the Friday night matches. Last season, with the Thursday night matches, you had the long weekend before you got back into a proper training routine – you had the gym. The fitness levels are actually very good this year, but the group of lads that are there are all fairly experienced, we’ve all dabbled in the Premier Division at some stage of our career and we kind of knew what to expect. As I said last year, I think the standard of the Premier Division has come down this year from what maybe it has been at its height over the last couple of years. Maybe that’s part of the reason I suppose, but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s a huge difference between the Premier Division this year and say the likes of Sporting Fingal and Shels, and maybe Waterford and UCD in the First Division.”
Monaghan thoughts
Drogheda was the only offer of Premier Division football that Shiels received during the close season, and only for it, he may have returned to his hometown club, Monaghan United, where he would like to finish off his career. “John Gill, to be fair to him, was always ringing me and he said that a few people had been on to him – Paul Hegarty at Finn Harps and Dermot Keely at Shels – that they were going to ring me,” Shiels revealed. “But none of them materialised – I wouldn’t have went up to Finn Harps anyway, but Shels obviously would have been ideal for me. Obviously, I could have went back to Monaghan. I never spoke to Mick Cooke but Monaghan is my hometown club and I always knew that I could go back there whenever I wanted, that I’m always welcome. But I kind of just wanted to hold off and see what happened, and then I was waiting to see who got the Drogheda job, because I thought John Gill would have been on to me because he would have been in and around it as well, so I knew that there was something that was going to come about there. When Alan got it, I actually didn’t think then that I would have moved to Drogheda, because I hadn’t worked with Alan before and I didn’t know if he knew me, so I was kind of half thinking that I’ll just ring Mick Cooke and go back to Monaghan, and I wouldn’t have minded doing that, to be honest, because I’ve always said that I wanted to finish up at Monaghan. But Alan got the job, he rang me and I was delighted about it, and, as I said, I’m loving it.”
Bray defeat
Last week’s defeat by Bray Wanderers was Drogheda’s first loss in seven league games and Shiels admits that it was a bitterly disappointing result. “It was very disappointing,” he said. “Going into the game, people were talking about six-pointers, but it’s too early in the season to be talking about six-pointers. Win, lose or draw that game, there was still a long way to go and you weren’t out of it or out of trouble by any means. But, in saying that, it would have been absolutely fantastic to keep the run going and maybe put seven points between ourselves and Bray. But there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs throughout the season, there’s going to be dips and there’s going to be highs and lows. It was very disappointing because we let ourselves down in the first half. We worked very hard to try to get it back but it just wasn’t to be and it will have given Bray a big boost, but, to be honest, if anything positive can come out of the Bray game is that we have a great game this week to bounce back from it. It won’t be too hard to motivate ourselves for that.”
Unlucky loss
Paul doesn’t feel, though, that over-confidence caused the players to take their eye off the ball against Bray. “Maybe a small bit, but, to be fair, we started off really well,” he said. “In the first 10-12 minutes, before they scored, I was thinking to myself ‘we’ve started well here’, we were on top and I don’t think we were out of their half in the first ten minutes. And then, in their first attack, I can’t really remember the build-up, Ryaner and Skinner had a lack of communication and gave them an OG and got them their tails up. In this division, if you give a team a goal start, they have something to hang on to. It’s very difficult to get at them again, and to be fair to them, they were up for the battle, and we knew beforehand that if we didn’t match the battle that they’d overturn us. For about 20-25 minutes after the goal, they had their tails up and they probably won the battle, and then Gary McCabe scored a screamer, and you’re thinking ‘God, this isn’t going well’. But, to be fair, we rallied after, we got a goal back and we absolutely pummelled them for the whole second half, but it just wasn’t to happen. But maybe for them 20 minutes after they scored, maybe we forgot about what work rate it took to get us to where we were, and we didn’t give Bray enough credit maybe.”
Derby revenge
Tonight is the fourth Louth derby of the season with Drogheda’s only success to date coming in a penalty shootout in the Malone Cup back in February. Dundalk then won the first league meeting, 3-0 at Oriel Park in March, before a revitalised Drogs earned a hard-fought 1-1 draw with their local rivals at United Park in May. And Shiels feels that the 3-0 loss was probably his side’s worst display of the season to date. “I definitely think that game was very disappointing,” he said. “It wasn’t nice. That was probably our worst performance of the season. Obviously we had a man sent off and were a goal down after 15 minutes, which didn’t help, but we let ourselves down badly in that game. The second game, when Dundalk had a man sent off, we lacked a little bit of quality to go out to try to win the game, and maybe with the run we were on at that time, we were happy enough with the draw, to be honest, just not to get beaten. It should be a good game because there’s only seven points between the two teams, so there’s a big incentive for us to go out and get a win and try to claw back Dundalk and try to get out of the bottom three. We have obviously signed a couple of players in the transfer window and they have given us a bit of quality and add to our squad a little bit. It will definitely be a tough game, and it will be on-the-night who wins it. Alan will be setting up the team to go out and win. We went up to Derry and won and we won in Bray, and the thing about this league is that there’s no team that good that you can’t think that you can go away and beat them. We absolutely feel that we can go and beat Dundalk, but in saying that, would a draw away to Dundalk be a terrible result? No, I don’t think it would. I don’t think a draw would be a bad result but we definitely believe we can win it and we’re definitely not afraid of going to play Dundalk.”
