Robbie Dunne interviewed by Keith Wallace, 12 August 2007.
He may have missed the boat three years ago, but now, Dundalk’s ‘Mister Versatile’, Robbie Dunne is hoping to this time be part of a John Gill led Premier Division squad, after suffering the disappointment of being released by the boss directly following Dublin City’s First Division title triumph of 2003.
Outsiders to win the league, City were given little or no chance by the experts, but they went on to defy the odds by capturing the title. Dunne played a key role in that success as he appeared in 31 of the Vikings’ 33 league games, and he admits: “To be honest, at the start of the season, I think a lot of players there just thought it was a year to get their heads sorted, work hard on themselves and get playing football and get their own careers back on track. We knew early on that we had a good squad, we performed very well in pre-season and we kind of hit the ground running. As we got through the first series and a half, you started to realise ‘we’ve seen everyone now, we’re not worried, we can push this all the way’, and a lot of belief came into the team. We had Robbie Horgan and Tony O’Connor, two very successful players, to guide us along the way, and it paid off. It came down to the last game of the season. We needed a win or a draw against Bray and we went out and we got the draw. While it was close on paper, our noses were in front for the last ten or eleven games, and we never dropped behind, and in fairness, we held our nerve. So, while on paper it looked close, really, we were strides ahead because we always kept our heads above water. I was disappointed to leave at the end of the season. I had played most of the games, we won the league and I felt I had earned the right to play in the Premier League, but these things happen.”
So, where did Robbie begin his League of Ireland career? After getting a four-year scholarship, he made his league bow with college side, UCD, in 1998. During that time, he made 42 appearances and scored four goals, and he admits that it was a time he enjoyed greatly. “It was fantastic. I remember Peter Hanrahan saying to me that you’ll get a real culture shock when you leave UCD, and he wasn’t kidding. It had gym facilities, all-weather pitches, floodlit and indoor pitches, training gear and towels all laid out for you – it had everything that you’d need. And really, the standards haven’t been matched at any club I’ve been at in between UCD and Dundalk. It’s one of the best run and one of the most professional clubs in the country. I’d say the second and third seasons were probably my best there. The second season was when myself and a lot of players broke into the first-team, the likes of Alan Mahon, Barry Ryan and Clive Delaney. We had all come out of the reserve team. We finished sixth that year which was the highest that UCD had finished. Then, the following year, we went on and finished fourth and got into Europe, so those two seasons were probably the best two out of the four. Playing in the Intertoto Cup was a high point. We played a team called Velbazhd Kyustendil from Bulgaria. They were a small enough team, about 30 miles out of Sofia. It was a nice enough town, but it wasn’t the best pitch to be playing on. We drew 0-0 away and we drew 3-3 at home, so we went out on the away goals, but it was a good experience.”
From there, Dunne was forced to go on-loan to Cobh Ramblers in the middle of the 00/01 season. And he explains the reasons behind that strange move. “It transpired that I had to move down to Cork to finish my degree. I was commuting up to UCD for the first half of the season, but then the Foot & Mouth crisis broke in and it just became a pointless task. I ended up spending the rest of the season on-loan to Cobh, which suited me grand because I was coming into finals of the degree, and with no football being played for I think two months or so, it was the better option for all concerned. It was only a very, very short spell at Cobh. Time wise, it was a long spell, but the bulk of that was during the Foot & Mouth where there was no football. Really, my focus down there was on getting my degree and I certainly didn’t play any of my best football there; I regret that as well because they’re a great club and they’ve got great support. In hindsight, I would have liked to do an awful lot more for them but it was needs must at the time. In fairness, Cobh is a great place. Cork people have this idea that Cork is the ‘People’s Republic’, but Cobh is like it’s own little separate principality on top of that. It’s a great town. They love their football there, and it’s not a town where if things are going bad that they’ll get on the backs of the players. They’re very supportive and I think that comes through in the way that the players play. They have a never-say-die attitude, they go out and give their all, and I think that’s a general mood and feeling to the whole place down there. I enjoyed my time there; it was great.”
After returning from that short spell on the south coast, Robbie was deemed surplus to requirements by UCD and went on to spend one season stints at both Saint Patrick’s Athletic and Drogheda United. “UCD had decided to cut their wage bill considerably, so a lot of the young players weren’t given retainers because there was no Bosman ruling at the time. If you had been there more than one season, you had to be sent a retainer. They basically said we’re not sending you a retainer, so if you wish, you can go find another club. I decided after four years, it was probably time for a change, and I got a few offers. I got an offer from St. Pat’s and I was kind of seduced by the offer of the big club thing, so I took a chance at it. It didn’t really work out for me at all, but I learned a lot from the club. The standard of coaching had improved immensely; there was a lot more focus on the technical side of things. At UCD, it was more about hard work and being dogged, and that’s something you had to be, because it was a young, inexperienced team. At Pats, it was the total reverse. It was purist football almost and it brought on an awful lot of my game, which was needed I suppose. I went to Drogheda for a season then as well. I still maintain that I played some of my best football at Drogheda. I played a lot of games there, but it was the first time I really had a taste of the bad side of League of Ireland football. Wages stopped getting paid, players were getting flown in from England to play games, and if a player came over from England this weekend and fancied it, you got dropped. If he came over and didn’t fancy it, you started. It was very disillusioning and very frustrating. I gave everything I had to the club and I played some great football there, but I was happy enough to walk away in the end, because I just felt it was a shambles compared to the two clubs I had been at previously.”
Following that came the aforementioned promotion winning season with Dublin City that should have resulted in Robbie making a quick return to Premier Division football. However, it wasn’t to be, as the Dubliner was let go by Gill. But, while admitting it was obviously disappointing to be let go, Dunne was clearly happy to have signed on for Dundalk at the beginning of 2004. “It was great to be signed at a big club but to be more hands on involved more so than I was at Pats. That was a great experience, because when the going was good, it was really good, like it is at the moment. And, when the going was tough, it was really tough, and it was great to get the experiences of both. Both managers, Trevor (Anderson) and Jim (Gannon), put a lot of faith in me and they really improved my confidence, especially Trevor. He does have a bad press, but he really instilled a lot of confidence in myself through the pre-season and in the first few games. He did have a lot of time here, but don’t let us forget that in the last game that he had here, if we had won, we would have been second in the table. It just happened that we didn’t. Now, I know there’s only so much patience you can ask fans and a club to have, but we can’t forget the technicalities of it either. Jim came in, and again, he had an awful lot of time for me. He played me in every game that he was in charge of that I was fit to play, and I appreciated that.”
One of those games, on 4 November against Bray Wanderers, saw Robbie write a little bit of history as he scored a unique hat-trick. After giving Bray the lead with an early OG, he came out to score two second-half goals at the right end to help Dundalk recover from 2-0 down to win 3-2. So, how strange of a game was that for the player? “That was a very peculiar evening. I think I had a suspension and I had been out of the team for a game because of that, and in my first game back, instead of playing on the right side of midfield, I was coming in at centre-half. We hadn’t been training for a while either because of the strike that the players went on with the money issue. At that stage, we were owed seven weeks wages. It was a bit strange to come in, and then to go a goal down, it was like ‘oh, Bray Wanderers, here we go again!’ and then another went in. The first one was an OG, and I just thought ‘oh jaysus’. Then the second went in and I thought ‘don’t tell me it’s going to be another one of those nights’. We got in at half-time and had kept it at 2-0 and Jim basically said to us, ‘look, we’ve been here before, what have we got to be afraid of? Let’s just go out there and play’. He said, ‘some of you have probably played great football with schoolboys teams that never trained week in, week out, so just go out there and enjoy it’, and we came out and we really did turn it around. We got one back, we felt good, and then Trevor (Vaughan) scored a cracker to get us level, and at that point, I think we were all just happy that we weren’t going to get thonked this time by Bray. I was just delighted I had kind of cancelled out the OG. Then, we got another set-piece, and we said ‘why not! we may as well go for it’. The crowd had their back up and Bray were starting to rock a bit, because they had been on a bad streak and they had lost such a great lead, so we said ‘they’re here for the taking, let’s just go for it’, and we did. It wasn’t just the goals, it was the whole way the game went that made it a great night. I think in a bad season, it was probably one of the highlights, and not for me just because of the goals, but because of the way that we had been beaten by Bray before. To turn that around at an extremely crucial time for them in the season, it just added a bit more importance to the game, so it was a great night.”
And, ironically, that star performance against the Seagulls would partly lead to Robbie signing for them, after they went on to gain promotion despite that damaging defeat in Oriel. His time at Bray was to last only one season and fourteen games, however, and in 2006, Dunne returned to Dundalk, with the versatile player coming out of retirement to sign for the Lilywhites. “Midway through the season with Bray, John had been given the Athlone job and he got in touch with me. He asked me was I interested in going to Athlone, and I thought about it. At the time, I was out of the team at Bray, but I’ve never quit on any other club, so I was going to stick it out – I wasn’t going to let them grind me down. I told him I was flattered and appreciated it, but foolishly enough, I said I’d stick it out at Bray – hindsight is foresight for gobshites, as they say. I got to play in the semi-final of the cup and I played more football then for the rest of the season, so maybe I was right to stay. But at the end of the season, I honestly felt like quitting. Then John got the Dundalk job and again he rang me straight away, and within 25 minutes of a phone call with John, I just couldn’t wait to get back playing again. Before the phone had rang, I wasn’t going to play in the league again. That’s the impact it had. To be honest, Dundalk was the only place I was going to go. If any other club or any other manager had rang, I wasn’t playing, I had had enough. I wasn’t looking for a club and I wasn’t taking any calls. Only John’s name and number had still been in the phone. Out of respect, I took his call. Numbers I hadn’t recognised, if I had answered the phone, I would have told them no. I literally had enough – I was sick of it.”
