The Sports Writers Association of Ireland player of the year in 1988 was Dundalk forward Terry Eviston. Currently manager of Leinster Senior League side Drogheda Town, Terry took time out from his busy schedule to talk to the Dundalk FC Machday Magazine.
You’re currently managing Drogheda Town in the LSL, how is that going for you?
It’s certainly not without incident! We won 1-0 away to CYM Terenure this afternoon and my son scored from the halfway line. I’m just telling people it was ‘Eviston from the halfway line’! It’s interesting, we’ve had some difficulties, but we’re on a bit of a roll at the moment. We had a great result down in Cork [against Avondale United] so we’re into the FAI Cup proper, which is a great incentive for everybody involved in the club. We’re hoping to get a nice draw in it.
So who do you want… Drogheda United or Dundalk? Or Bohs or Rovers?
[Terry laughs, and diplomatically side steps the question] Ah yeh, we’d like to get a plum draw, you know! The lads deserve it, we’ve been battling against relegation since I arrived, we’re still battling away. So we’re looking forward to that. The lads deserve it, they’ve worked hard for it. At times you feel like throwing your hat at it, the odd bit of lack of discipline and all that, but you never know what you’ll get from this side, it’s a bit of a roller-coaster ride, you know.
Let me take you back to where it all began, at Home Farm in the mid 70s.
I started off at Home Farm, yes, and from there I went to Bohs in ’79 I think it was. [It was ’78 Terry!] I was there till 1983.
Bohs had a fairly strong team at that time…
Yes, they had. It was just after the likes of Gerry Ryan and Pat Byrne and all those lads went to England and Scotland, and I never actually won anything of major importance at Bohemians. So then in ’83 I went across the divide to Shamrock Rovers, and you don’t do things like that, especially not in those days! That was with Jim McLaughlin at the start of the four-in-a-row, but I only lasted a season and a half there, it just didn’t work out and I ended up down in Athlone with Turlough O’Connor.
And then he moved to Dundalk.
Then he moved to Dundalk and I moved with him, and the rest is history… I had seven years, seven glorious years at Dundalk. When I joined Dundalk I would have been 29, so to get seven years, and the double in 1988 and another league, it was fantastic.
It was a fairly lengthy career you had at Dundalk in the end.
Yes, seven years… and then the following year I joined Rovers and won another league!
You were a late starter weren’t you!
Exactly, a late developer, I was bit immature, you know!
And you won a cap for the Irish Olympic team around then.
I did, in Greece, yes, and a good few League of Ireland representative caps. Everybody talks about the Argentina one, we played against most of the team that won the World Cup in ’78, and Maradona scored a goal for them.
You got a bit of travelling in with the League of Ireland team.
We had away trips to the States, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore… yeh, they were great years. I know Louis [Kilcoyne, who was responsible for the sale of Shamrock Rovers’ ground at Milltown] gets a lot of bad press, but he arranged some great trips for the League of Ireland representative teams, they were great times.
Just going back to the double winning season, we started the season with a European trip to Ajax.
Yes, we went out there and did reasonably well until the last twenty minutes. That was a very good Ajax team, Frank Rijkaard was there, and Frank Stapleton scored.
It was a good old battle, the 1987-88 season, it went right to the wire.
It was a great battle, it went down to the Pats match. It wasn’t a spectacular game, they scored early and then Dessie Gorman equalised to win it for us.
Do you remember anything of the classic 3-2 win over Derry towards the end of the season?
Well I was emotionally drained after it I can tell you that much. Unbelievable! We were 2-0 down, dead and buried, an unbelievable result. That would stand out as a high point, definitely. The cup final, in Dalymount, wasn’t a great match. We got that early penalty, and we kept it tight after that. It was a fantastic achievement. We were seasoned campaigners, I suppose you could say.
There were the likes of John Cleary, Joey Malone, Gino Lawless, Martin Murray.
All solid guys, they’d never let you down.
You would have played a lot with Barry Kehoe in your time at Dundalk.
Barry was brilliant, yeh. Barry was injured, I think, for that cup final, I remember him going down to the Blackrock Clinic, he had ligament trouble in his knee or ankle. He actually played on the cup final day, and he was brilliant. Turlough never really played the beautiful game, so Barry didn’t fit into the scheme of things there, but he just kind of had to adapt, and he did.
You came back to Dundalk, as manager after the club’s relegation in 1999.
Yes, I came back as manager, and it was a fine team. Enda McGuill helped me a lot. We had a woeful start, and I think after four or five matches I went in to Enda and said this isn’t working out. He told me it would work out, an we ended up top of the league at Christmas. Then of course you had all the High Court stuff at the end of the season, with the Kilkenny situation, they had been deducted three points. [Kilkenny City, ultimately, went unpunished for playing an unregistered player, costing Dundalk a shot at the promotion playoff.] Alternative history is a great thing, isn’t it? You kind of wonder what might have been. So I kind of drifted out of it after that. But I enjoyed it, it was an experience and any experience, good or bad, will stand to you. Anyway, I found myself at Drogheda Town, maybe I’m going to claw my way back into it, I don’t know. I’m enjoying it here for now.
