Paul Doolin
In memory...
Championship Manager Profile
JUMPING SHIP
A Pete Goulding poem
Captain Doolin mopped his brow,
And gazed around the clipper,
Reflecting wryly, dryly, how
He’d come to be its skipper.
Upon the rocks they had been snared,
Beset by foul disasters,
The punctured bow had been repaired
With tons of sticking plasters.
The crew jumped ship at every chance,
To seek for better quarters,
While those who stayed did look askance
At calmer, deeper waters.
And as the waves did lash the stern,
The fo’c’sle started creaking.
The Captain looked with great concern
To where the hull was leaking.
The mast had snapped one summer past,
When tempests were abounding,
The broken rudder would not last
Another vicious pounding.
Upon the deck, the cabin boy
Abruptly raised his spy-glass
And shouted shrilly, “Ship Ahoy!”
As Doolo fixed his eyeglass.
Another ship came into view,
Although the storm was raging,
Its decking painted red and blue,
Though limpet-strewn and aging.
The other ship at last hove to,
Beside the College Clipper,
And Captain Doolin then strove to
Speak with the other skipper.
“No skipper on this vessel, Cap’n,”
The First Mate answered quickly.
“His death did very sudden happen,
He didn’t look that sickly.”
“No skipper, eh?” the Captain cried,
And stroked his chin quite slowly.
“It isn’t right,” the mate replied,
“Unnatural, unholy.”
“Then catch my bag,” the Captain roared
“And catch my trusty parrot.
And catch me when I jump aboard,
And take me to the garret.”
“Captain Doolin, won’t you linger?”
His old crew wailed, confounded.
The Captain raised his middle finger,
Which left them all dumbfounded.
And as the Captain jumped, his crew
Were left to muse and wonder
How long their ship could sail the blue,
Before being dragged down under.
The good ship Drogheda, on which Doolin finds himself stuck.
DOOLIN RANT ALERT!
STIG wades into the free-for-all which has been raging in the media recently
[Note: this article first appeared in STIG in Volume 4 issue 7, in September 2004]
So Paul Doolin made another less-than-triumphant return to Belfield Park. The first game in particular saw Drogheda second-best for long spells (a view echoed in the match reports which actually had more than three lines – AERTEL!!!) and even the Drogheda fans had to admit that if any team deserved to win, it was us. And the second game wasn’t a huge amount different either, though it was just different enough that my summer holidays have been altered for next season at least.
None of which has anything to do with my point. I’m just putting it on record.
My rant initially had to do with the inane previews UCD v. Drogheda matches invariably get in the eL media. When they get previews, obviously. Much is usually made about Doolin returning to UCD, where he had a successful 2½ years as manager. Now, we will acknowledge that the first year was good (five points off Europe, a first away win ever against Shels, away wins against Pat’s, Rovers, Cork and Longford, Robbie Martin PFAI Young Player of the Year), but certainly not all 2½! (Interestingly, most previews this time said that Doolin was returning to Belfield for the first time since leaving us, which, being completely inaccurate, was at least in line with eL coverage in general!).
Anyway, I digress again. I apologise. The Irish Independent took an unusual, and welcome, tack in its preview, daring to suggest that Doolin hadn’t been much good for us at all. Now, as one who thinks the new tabloid-size Indo is apt for what was previously a tabloid in disguise, I was surprised to see the paper asking Doolin about any grudge UCD might harbour or use as an extra motive. For reasons known only to himself (and also a small mangy plague-ridden rat in a New York sewer called, coincidentally, Paul), Mahon’s reply, which was also published, led to a remarkably bitter outburst from Doolin, with him claiming responsibility for everything from our great Cup performance to turning all our players from donkeys to what they are now to clinching world peace. But much of what he said was laughable in the extreme, and in the interests of ensuring a balanced view, we feel we have to rip apart his meagre arguments
Doolin’s initial comments were that he did a good job at UCD. “I think people forget what we actually managed to do – staying in the ten-team league with a team predominantly based on young scholarship players. I thought I left the club in a good condition.”
Strange, that. If he’d kept us in the ten-team Premier Division, shouldn’t we be in the ten-team Premier Division now? If he’d left the club in a good condition, why did we have an eleven point gap to make up to avoid relegation? Why did we have one of the worst U-21 teams in the club’s history, even scratching one match as we couldn’t field a team?
Those comments appear to have been prompted by Pete Mahon claiming that the players still hadn’t recovered from the Doolin regime. However, it was the tête-a-tête which followed the Cup game (and which was reported in the Star, the Mirror and the Indo) that really got things going. We’d like to look at each comment in turn and point out just why each is complete nonsense…
1) “If you look at that UCD team out there, you will see that most of them were at the club when I was in charge. See how well they performed against us over the two games – Pete is being disingenuous about the facts of what he took over when I left UCD.”
So apparently, our good performance was because of Paul Doolin, not because of Pete Mahon. However, we played Drogheda in the Cup last year as well. The team rolled over and Drogheda had a very comfortable 2-0 win. Doolin left shortly after that, so presumably the improvement between the two Cup performances was due to Doolin transmitting psychic advice to our players in order to improve a team he wasn’t connected with any more. Or maybe – just maybe – Pete Mahon was at least partly responsible. But sure, that’s silly talk!
Interestingly, of the 16 players on duty in Drogheda for the replay, nine were signed by Pete Mahon. In other words, less than half the squad was there when Doolin was manager. Seven of the 14 who played were signed by Mahon. So Doolin’s comment that most of the players were there when he was manager is also not true.
2) “The task I faced (when I took over Drogheda) was to keep the team up in the Premier Division and that’s what I did. Pete Mahon had as many games at UCD as I had at Drogheda to do the same and he failed.”
No, really, he did say that! You just couldn’t make it up, could you?! Completely ignoring the rather important fact that, because of our woeful start in the 2003 season, Drogheda had a 14-point headstart on us by the time Doolin took over! By the end of the season, the gap was down to seven points. Doolin had finally tried to keep us up by nearly getting Drogheda relegated, as he started with one win in 14 there!
3) “I managed UCD for three seasons and I kept them up for two seasons in a 10-club Premier while working within a tight budget.”
Now, irrespective of who got the club relegated, Doolin certainly has some imagination if he thinks he kept us up last year, the second year of the ten-team Premier. When you consider that a form table from the day Pete Mahon took over UCD until the end of the season had us fourth, just two points off “Europe”, I think we can easily conclude that it was Doolin who got us relegated. His comments mightn’t grate so much if he actually accepted this fact, but to switch the blame to Mahon is ludicrous.
4) “He (Pete Mahon) said last week that the players hadn’t recovered from the time that I was there – I think that most of the players there were average players before I arrived.”
Another strange one. The season before Doolin arrived, we’d been in Europe and drawn both our games against a decent Bulgarian side. We’d qualified for Europe by virtue of finishing fourth in the league. Most of the players who played that European tie were still with the club when Doolin took over. They don’t sound much like average players to me! Pete, incidentally, came back with the rather caustic “He would only have to ask them (the players) to know that for himself.”
5) “They say a team mirrors their manager and the one thing I always had in football was character, and my team showed it tonight.”
Shame his team didn’t show it last season, when they lost the first nine games (including the League Cup tie to Bray). Shame his team didn’t show it when losing in the Cup to Drogheda last year, as mentioned. Yet the current UCD showed plenty of character this time around. Does that mean Mahon has character and Doolin doesn’t?
6) “We all know what happened to Pete Mahon when he came under a bit of pressure at Bohs. He ran away from the job. When you enter the arena of professional sport, you have to accept the criticism. He used an excuse about someone being abused… My wife and kids have been abused, I’ve been abused and that’s the difference between professional people and junior people.”
This appears to be completely tangential to anything! Tangential criticism is often self-reflecting. Doolin brings up pressure for some reason – maybe he’s suffered too much with the two Cup games? Maybe he can’t handle it? It’s worth bearing in mind that Mahon left Bohs after his family came in for personal abuse from some Bohs fans. Mahon responded by saying “There’s no shame in that (resigning for the reason he did); my family are the most important people in my life. If Paul’s wife and kids are being abused, why does he not do something about it? Is it because he comes first and nothing else matters?”
7) “He’s living off the back of work that others have done. He was left a good club in a good condition – not as bad a condition as I picked it up in after a 6-0 beating in Dalymount.”
Living off the back of Doolin’s work?! He’s living off the consequences of it anyway with a First Division campaign. Maybe Doolin signed many of the players in the squad at the moment? Well, no.
The composition of the team in the home game against Drogheda contained just one player signed by Doolin (Seán Finn), while another (Pat McWalter) was used as a sub and started the replay. Four of the starting eleven (Quigley, Kenna, Dicker and Doyle), along with four of the bench (Gannon, Kierans, Foley and Whelan), were signed by Pete Mahon. Three were signed by Martin Moran (Sully, Robbie Martin and Allie Mac). Another three old fogies were signed by the Doc and Theo Dunne (Micko, Robbie Mac and Alan Mahon). The likes of Tony Mac (Doc O’Neill signing), Neil Gallagher, Philly Hughes and Anto Murphy (all Pete Mahon signings) missed the game through injuries and ineligibility.
Maybe we had a lot of young players coming through? Well, no. In fact, as had been mentioned, we forfeited one U-21 game because we couldn’t field a team.
Maybe Mahon used our start to the league season as a catalyst to success? Well, no…! In fact, it’s hard to see quite what Doolin left us. Apart from a new-found desire to lift our game against Drogheda!
Doolin also makes a big deal about the fact that he took over after a 6-0 defeat against Bohs (technically, he didn’t – Martin Moran was manager for one more game, so Doolin actually took over after a 0-0 draw with Pat’s), and he uses this solitary freak result to indicate how bad the team was then. If we are to take single moments in time as being all-defining, we may as well add that the previous week, our 1-0 win over Longford had seen us go top of the league.
8) “I would never use any excuse if I fail other than that I’m not good enough.”
You just have to laugh, don’t you?! We got relegated (i.e. failed to stay in the top flight) and, as Mahon correctly points out, Doolin “jumped ship before he was sacked”. Yet Doolin uses excuses about a small budget, the team breaking up every year, the poor condition the club was in when he took over, the average players he had…
I think any fan can accept relegation, give the manager responsible some stick over it while thinking no less of him as a person. Doolin’s tirade, however, has gone into the realms of personal attacks and factually incorrect points. It is hard to see how anyone at UCD – and, to a lesser extent, in the league in general – can actually hold much personal respect for him afterwards. Mahon, on the other hand, has come out of this very well, by and large refusing to get drawn into petty arguments and generally talking with the air of one who wished the annoying kid at the other end would take a hint and go away…
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