From his amateur days at Bohemians, to the English First Division and international football, from the free scoring forward at Dundalk and Bohemians, to a trophy-laden management career at Athlone and Dundalk , the career of Dundalk’s 1988 double winning manager Turlough O’Connor was one long series of highlights. Speaking exclusively to the Dundalk FC Matchday Magazine Turly talked us through his extraordinary career, and corrects the misapprehension that the much derided 1988 FAI Cup final was far from a classic!
You started off you playing career with Bohemians in the mid 1960s…
Yes, we had quite a good team. Bohs were still completely amateur at the time, but we held our own in the League of Ireland.
And from Bohs you moved to Fulham in 1966. It must have been an interesting experience, just after the 1966 World Cup, with Fulham in the First Division?
Fulham had some great players at the time. At right back there was George Cohen who played for England in the World Cup winning team, there was Bobby Robson, the first £100-a-week professional in England- Johnny Haynes, and the striker at that time was Allan Clarke, who had a great career with Leeds and England later on.
You made you Ireland debut while at Fulham, away to Czechoslovakia.
Yes, in Prague. We actually won that one, 2-1, and I was lucky enough to score the winner.
That was some result!
It was, I don’t think Ireland won another away game in the next twenty years!
After Fulham you came to Dundalk.
Tommy Rowe was manager then, he got a very, very good team together.
Dundalk had a couple of interesting games in Europe at that time.
Yes, we beat the Dutch team, Utrecht, which was a great result, one of the best by an Irish team in Europe. Johnny Morrissey got the winner in extra time. That set up a tie against Rangers. It was very difficult in Europe back then, we really were part time and when we came up against fully professional teams, it was tough. But it was much more entertaining, the football was more open and you really went out to try and beat the other team rather than try and keep the score down.
Around that time Liam Tuohy came in as Dundalk manager. How did you find Liam as a manager?
Liam was a fantastic manager and a great motivator. Liam was a bit unlucky, he had a few good years there at Dundalk, we were unlucky not to win anything at that time. Liam was a very, very good manager.
From Dundalk you moved to Bohs, and further success. Bohs were a professional club by then, weren’t they?
They were, and they were successful, we won the league in 1975, and again in 1978. And there was an FAI Cup win in 1975.
Ah yes, against Drogheda, it took them another thirty years to win it! You were top scorer in the league at Bohs, twice, and you’re the third highest scorer in league history [behind Brendan Bradley and Pat Morley].
Well I was lucky enough to play with some great players, at Bohemians and Dundalk. And the football was a bit more open in my time. That’s why Dundalk were unlucky under Liam Tuohy too. We scored a lot of goals, but it just didn’t quite work out for us.
From Bohs, you went on to Athlone as player-manager.
I was lucky enough to be able to go to my home town club and get involved at the start of something. It was a wonderful experience to be able to help to bring the club on. We did very well, and won 3 or 4 League Cups, and of course a couple of league titles.
And you were lucky enough to play with your two brothers (Michael and Padraig).
Exactly, yes, that was in 1981, and we won the league again in 1983. It was a great experience to play and manage a good team, in my home town.
Then it was on to Dundalk as manager.
That was 1984. I actually ended up spending nine years as manager of Dundalk. I see now, and then, if you got four or five years, at any one club as a manager, you were doing exceptionally well. It was a good run, and it wasn’t easy coming in at a time when Dundalk were after having great success under Jim McLaughlin. Jim was a fantastic manager. He continued that success at Rovers and Derry afterwards, so to follow him and last as long as I did afterwards was a success.
You ended up as real rivals as managers, with Jim leading Dundalk to success, then there was you at Athlone, Jim at Rovers, then you at Dundalk. How did you view your rivalry?
We had some great battles on the pitch as players, and then off the pitch as managers. I always had great respect for Jim, but I always enjoyed getting one over on him… and likewise him with me!
You had some great players with you at Dundalk at that time.
I had a very good team, some very good players. We were lucky, in a sense, in that when you manage a ‘town’ team it’s great to have a local contribution. And at the time I was there we had a lot of local players… Tommy McConville was finishing his career, you had Dessie Gorman, Tom McNulty [an honorary Dundalk man!], Barry Kehoe. They were exceptionally good players.
Just how good a player was Barry Kehoe?
Barry Kehoe was an excellent player, a marvellous guy to have playing for you. I think everybody in Dundalk knows that he would have played in England, were it not for his illness. When I took over Barry has just finished his treatment for the first time, and we sat down and had a chat with regard to his fitness. He made a very, very determined effort to get himself physically fit, and he made a fantastic contribution.
Barry was instrumental to Dundalk winning the double in 1988.
He made a huge contribution. Especially when you consider at the start of the year I had actually left him out of the team, but he worked so hard to get himself back into the team. The determination he showed… a couple of weeks later he was back in the team. He made a fantastic contribution to winning the double that year. As a matter of fact, in our very last game in the league [at home to St Pats when Dundalk won the league] Barry didn’t actually play, because he was injured, and of course when it came along to the cup final the scribes were saying he couldn’t get back in the team for the cup final. But I had no choice. He was that good I had to put him straight back in the team… and I left Michael [Turlough’s brother] out of that cup final. I still think Michael is trying to forgive me for that!
I’d say it makes for interesting conversation at family occasions! That was exactly a classic cup final, the 1-0 win over Derry.
No, that was one of the all time classics! Because I was never more relaxed and laid back at a game as I was at that cup final. Well we’d just won the league, and we got that early penalty, the lads that it was our year, and I felt exactly the same. One of the incidents I remember is that when John Cleary scored the penalty he went to celebrate behind the goal, but he was at the Derry end. It was nothing but red and white at the back of the goal, and I remember the realisation on his face, that said ‘I shouldn’t be celebrating here, that’s the wrong end’!
I don’t think the Derry fans were too impressed that the penalty was given in the first place.
No, well we wouldn’t have been impressed if it was given against us, it’s the way these things go in football. It probably spoiled the actual final itself as a game, because we had something to hold onto. I didn’t think we played as well as we could have either.
After winning the league in ’88 we were rewarded with a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade. Was that the best side you came up against, as a manager?
It was one of them. They really were one of the top sides in Europe at that particular time, they won the European Cup the following year.
You went on to manage Dundalk to the league again in the 1990-91 season.
That’s right, yes, that was a hell of an achievement because we had a fantastic run at the end [Dundalk were unbeaten in 1991] and we came back to pip Cork to the title. To get it down to the last match, we did well. To go to Cork, or to go to any place in the country, with some of the players we had – Alan O’Neill, Dave Mackey, Martin Lawlor, James Coll, Tom McNulty, Ronnie Murphy, Terry Eviston – you could go any place with those players, and we were very confident we could do the job in Cork. I don’t think anybody gave us a chance.
It was some result alright.
There was 12,000 there in Cork that day, right behind Cork City- mostly Cork supporters, but we had our own 1,500 that had a great belief that we could do it, and it turned out to be a great day.
After winning that, we played Honved in the European Cup, and Ricky McEvoy was the last player to score for Dundalk in Europe.
We played exceptionally well out there. I think they equalised very, very close to the end of that match, we nearly got a win out of it. In that respect we did the club very proud that day.
Unfortunately we didn’t get the rub of the green in the home leg.
No, we didn’t, we got caught with an early goal. It was more difficult in European matches because of the part-time players against full-time pros.
Overall, how would you summarise you time at Dundalk?
I was very fortunate over the years to be involved with the players I was involved it, but as well as that the people of Dundalk were very good with me and I had great friends and I still have great friends up there in Dundalk. Eamonn Hiney was a fantastic chairman, Stephen Burns did a wonderful job, and you’d miss them a lot from a footballing point of view, fantastic guys and fantastic football people and they really had Dundalk at heart. The other thing about my time there was we didn’t have a lot of money, and I remember we used to sit around before the season would start, and we’d talk about finances and money, and we all had financial problems, like most clubs. I remember sitting down with some of the board there, we spent an hour and we talked about football and somebody was rushing off and Paddy Williams said ‘hold on, we never discussed the budget, for Turlough for the coming season’, and Eamonn Hiney just says, ‘ah sure Turlough will do what he does every year!’ and that was our discussion! They were great guys, and they were fantastic football people to be involved with. A lot of memories, and very happy memories, nothing negative at all from my time. And I have to say Dundalk as a football town is just fantastic, they just love their football. I think Dundalk, with their level of success over the years, it’s just incredible really. I think John Gill has done a great job, and I just can’t wait to see them back in the Premier Division.
