Student Till I Graduate ; A chat with Declan Hughes

                                                       Every club has an historian. A fact finder. A go to man that can reel off the most unique or obscure statistic. A know-it-all for the ages! Recently I caught up with the fountain of knowledge that is Declan Hughes and his specialized subject, UCD.

1. Declan Hughes. Club historian. Passionate Fan. League of Ireland lover!

As a UCD supporter you are aware crowds are small at the Bowl, yet the club itself is very sustainable despite this. With 25,000 students on campus does it annoy you that more don't check out the action right on their weekly doorstep?

Brian, I've been watching the team from the end of the second season 1980/81 and at no time during my tenure as a supporter has the club enjoyed significant support from the Student Body. Back then the Student population was only around 11,000 but the crowds attending regularly were around 20% on average higher than they are at present. Some of our fan base left when we changed our home venue from Belfield Park which was on the N11 ( Stillorgan Road) side of the campus to UCD Bowl which is on the Clonskeagh side of the campus. There are many factors playing into this issue.  Firstly a lot of students are from outside the city and county of Dublin and go “home " for the weekend which means they are not there on Friday nights when the games take place and hadn't gotten back to Dublin yet when we played on Sunday afternoons. Secondly a lot of students fall into three other camps GAA fans, rugby fans and LOI is shite fraternity.

Thirdly the percentage of supporters who already are turned on by the League of Ireland are already fans of other existing League of Ireland clubs when they get here.  Fourthly when we played on Sunday afternoons and the other teams moved to Friday nights we became a lot of fans “second " team  as they came to Belfield on Sundays to supplement their football fix each weekend.  We had a number of regular fans of Bohs and Shamrock Rovers in particular whom I got to know personally over the years and became firm friends with. They still come out to the occasional game but as we play on the same night as a lot of other teams they are no longer free to indulge their passion for their “second" team and that too has had an effect on our attendance figures.

 2. Every first trophy, or only trophy, at any club is special. For some it's something they do annually, for other clubs it's a moment in time to savour. Tell me your most vivid memories of the '84 cup run & eventual victory.

  Brian, firstly we won the Leinster Senior Cup in 1980/81 season on St. Stephen's Day. Not big news anywhere else very important in establishing the club as a League of Ireland rather than just an intervarsities entity.  To go to the Cup run firstly the outstanding memory is that we got drawn away from home in every single round! First round drawn away to Sligo losing 3-1 with 10 minutes left in the game and scrambled a 3-3 draw. The replay which we won 5-0 midweek on an afternoon because we had no floodlights was the only game of that Cup run which took place in Belfield Park. In the Quarter-Final draw we ended up away to Home Farm. When we beat them we got drawn against your team at Tolka Park. Because the two strongest teams , left in the last four got drawn against each other in the other semi-final , namely Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne, who were enjoying a respectable season in the League in 1983/84, people reckoned we had a shot at making the final but Waterford United we the bookies favourites to win that tie. Another thing we did on the way to the final was we had the good sense to lose a League game at home to Rovers 0-2 in April which lulled them into a false sense of security lol!  On the day of the original match which incidentally was very sunny day, the club had asked O’Neill’s to make up some scarves in the Dublin colours to sell at the game. UCD were boosted by the temporary support lent to us for the occasion, by St. Pat’s, Shelbourne and Bohemians as we took on Shamrock Rovers at Dalymount Park. We kept the most prolific League goalscoring partnership of the season, Alan Campbell and Liam Buckley scoreless in a 0-0 draw. The replay played before a much smaller crowd on the following Friday night. The Player of The Year night the following Tuesday was a great occasion and was the time I got to know that team particularly well and I was a regular season ticket holder in the 1984/85 campaign, despite being unemployed all year... got a Student ticket which I earned by compiling a quiz for a giveaway during Freshers week in 1984.

3. Some readers may not be aware that when Shamrock Rovers played in Milltown, UCD were actually the closest club logistically. This led to several players making the trip to the Hoops from Belfield. Did it leave a sour taste in fans mouths or did they expect it as some kind of inevitable progression for their players?

As a lot of the people for whom we were their second team were actually Shamrock Rovers fans they had no problem with it. You realise the nature of the role of your club when you are a Home Farm type club or a University club in our case, because winning the League is not a realistic option for us 99 times out of 100. So the players themselves who are ambitious and talented look to move on to what is perceived to be a bigger club. Over the years Gary O'Sullivan, Paul Cullen, Paul Kavanagh, Jason Colwell all left UCD for Shamrock Rovers in the early 1990's and later on were followed by Terry Palmer and then there were a number of years when for some reason we didn't lose many players at all and even fewer to Shamrock Rovers. Now they are firmly ensconced in Tallaght after decades of nomadic existence, the flow seems to be happening again.  In fairness to Shamrock Rovers, and I don't use that phrase often, the traffic hasn't been all one way.

In 1983 we got Alan O'Neill and Robbie Gaffney from Shamrock Rovers who were pivotal in us winning the FAI Cup and coming fourth the following season.

 We currently have two or three players who began their careers with Shamrock Rovers either as schoolboys or at best their Under 19's. Mark Langtry is one example of this. But if you look at the current Shamrock Rovers side they have Patrick Sullivan, Daniel Ledwith, Ronan Finn and they have farmed Ciaran Kilduff out on loan. UCD was the making of Ciaran Kilduff a young North Kildare lad who joined Shamrock Rovers. They loaned him to Kildare County during the Thoroughbreds final season in the League. He came to UCD on a 2 year scholarship and scored 29 League goals in two seasons which was a remarkable strike rate for a UCD player. For a variety of reasons not least of which was a major injury in 2011 it hasn't worked out for him at Shamrock Rovers he's becoming a firm favourite on Leeside. This is currently Kilduff's third spell at Shamrock Rovers and I am not sure he will ever make it there. But he has the talent to be a Premier Division League of Ireland striker of the highest calibre somewhere else.

 

4. We've often had chats about Summer Soccer, the in's & out’s, pros & cons. I remain confident it was the right move for the league but I know you had  reasonable reasons for this not being the case (stating the clubs still folded in summer soccer - Sporting Fingal etc) Do you still feel the same and what change would reverting to Sept-April footy be? 

While I am convinced summer football has been disastrous from an attendances standpoint I do understand why that is the case.

1) Holidays , schoolchildren are off between June and September in the case of secondary schools and late June and late August in the case of primary schools and families go on their annual summer holidays during this period smack in the middle of the season.

2) GAA, we lose that clash of cultures with the vast majority of cases and the amateur association gets the Entertainment Euros ahead of the FAI when it comes to making a choice.

3) The weather reason offered doesn't hold water in Ireland. Most of our summers hold a lot of water and in fact 2013 has been only the second one with what you would call decent weather since the switch to summer soccer. Now admittedly it is slightly warmer in the summer but not significantly drier. And as the season starts in March these days and includes September and October the number of warmer months is actually only half of the so called summer season.

4) When the weather does appear decent families find other things to do with their time such as go to the beach and other summer related activities rather than go to football games.

5) We lost a club a year between 2007 and 2011 Kildare County, Kilkenny City , Cobh Ramblers, Sporting Fingal  and Galway United most of whom went to the wall. From 1977 to 2003 only Thurles Town, Cork Celtic,  Cork United, Newcastlewest, St Francis and St.James's Gate and in the case of the latter three they just dropped into lower Leagues so we actually only saw three League of Ireland clubs go to the wall in 26 years.

6) Media coverage, especially in the newspapers,  goes down when you are up against the GAA and the attitude of some national broadcasters( yes I mean you Newstalk) that somehow League of Ireland doesn't merit regular coverage on their one hour nightly Football Show  but gets a miserable 19 minutes a week instead.

5. I long for the days of fanzines, and every LOI club should have at least one. Tell me of your involvement with the excellent 'Student Till I Graduate' the UCD fanzine of days gone by.

Well quite frankly I have written for the Match programme off and on since around 1985. I've edited, co-edited the programme and even in the days when it was merely a team sheet I was the one responsible for compiling the opposition's squad. But there were occasions when the powers that be wanted a different style of programme and my services were not called upon. On those occasions I contributed either to opposition programmes writing about UCD or in some cases their women's teams. I also contributed to general fanzines that took a look at the League as a whole and for a while was a regular contributor of articles to  a Bray Wanderers fanzine.  In the 2000's we had a fanzine called”Student Till I Graduate" and they asked me to contribute to their issues. Eventually all of us were subsumed into the programme again and eventually the fanzine bit the dust. 

6. Dr Tony O'Neill is embedded into the history of UCD, and so many ex-players I interviewed for the book had such warmth for the man, which came across in their interviews. Personally what did he mean to you & the club?

I was in a politics tutorial with my good friend Charlie McCormick , who was a player in the Superleague and eventually became the Secretary of that and thus became a committee member. Charlie also played for every UCD representative team including making 3 League appearance and 4 in the Shield during the 1986/87 season shortly before he emigrated to Germany.

 He introduced me to Theo Dunne who would be en route to a League of Ireland B game on Saturdays when I was coming out of a morning lecture that day, and Dr. Tony O'Neill who would inevitably be accompanying him. I was introduced to Keith Dignam, Aidan Reynolds, Joe Hanrahan and Ken O'Doherty over the first couple of seasons before I attended my first game which was a friendly against Vancouver Whitecaps in March 1981. There is no doubt he was a remarkable man and a fantastic sports administrator. He served as General Secretary of the FAI from 1988 to 1990 his tenure ended shortly after Italia 90. It was his idea to introduce the football scholarship programme which expanded to all the sports played in UCD and went from 1 a year in its inception season to over 100 athletes now benefitting from the programme. People as diverse as Trevor Giles, David Gillick and Brian O'Driscoll have all been products of the UCD Sports Scholarships Scheme. Over the years I got to know Dr. O'Neill well in a football context. He asked me shortly before he died to take over the running of the match programme with the proviso I wasn't to lose money. I sourced the printer, ( he was a guy based in Kildare that also did the Waterford United programme at the time), and ran it for over two years and was part of the matchday fundraising committee. I was the first person in the club to organise the sale of replica shirts. Now we have a whole range of football shirts, polo shirts and sweatshirts etc for sale. At the time of his death he was on a UEFA committee overseeing the Grounds being constructed in both Belgium and Holland in advance of EURO 2000.

Shortly after I began going to games, we were short a turnstile operator for a game at home to Bohemians. Dr. O'Neill asked Tony Sheridan to get me to man a turnstile which I duly did. It was the first of many tasks I have willingly undertaken for the club. I am still involved with the club some 14 years after the Doc died and I doubt I would be still there or indeed so many of the committee who are also still there 14 years later either.  

7. Naturally I look out for the 'Students' results each week from the graveyard that is First Division football, with Waterford United. Recent years the club have had a canny knack of doing just enough to avoid any relegation despite finishing in the lower half of the table. What are your & the fans realistic expectations at the start of each season?

 Realistic aspirations are mid-table obscurity and maybe another Leinster Senior Cup or a first League Cup win. Anything other than those is pie in the sky stuff that would require DA Hughes winning the Euromillions. And I have to win enough to partially bale out Red Star Belgrade too!

 

8. Finally, I've given you a magic wand and granted you three wishes to improve the League. Off you go.....................................

 Ok we execute the barstoolers and start again with the Irish population lol!  Nuke the entire EPL and the SPL for good measure. Joking aside, while all of these would actually help they are not going to happen so let's try and be realistic.

 I would wish that the mind set of people of this country whereby League's are not taken seriously in any code of sport by the supporters would disappear. Without this fundamental philosophical change of mind, the League of Ireland cannot prosper. The All Ireland Rugby League cannot prosper and the GAA National Leagues will always be the poor relation in comparison to the “Championship”. It's a mindset from the GAA which has polluted the outlook of supporters of every sport in this country and I believe is the main difference between this country and some others. That and the moronic obsession with the English Premier League, the technical level of which is poor compared to Spain, Germany and Italy, and I believe is a remnant of colonialism. I think showing all League of Ireland matches on TG 4, with commentary as Gaeilge, for about 100 years is the only way of curing the image of Soccer as a "foreign game" in some quarters! We need a substantial investment along the lines of what the Russian oligarchs are doing over there and in other Eastern European countries.

 Business men could turn any of the LOI clubs into the new Rosenberg for a fraction of the money wasted on Septic (Scottish Shamrock Rovers impersonators) and the consortium spent on Sunderland.  Unfortunately this is a country of event junkies. There were 25,000 people to watch Shelbourne against Deportivo in 2004. Less than 10% of that number were at the Reds next home game.  We played Liverpool in a friendly at the end of 1994/95 season and there were 23,700 at the game. Unfortunately 23,000 of them were up for Liverpool and the other 700 were made up of dyed in the wool League of Ireland fans lending us their support for the night.

*Pic above (left- to right) Declan Hughes, Brian Kennedy & Bartley Ramsey *author of 'The Finn Harps Story'