Luke Dennison reveals how Drogheda United move saved him from ...

IT COULD have been the four months without a club in 2019, it may have been the Covid lockdowns far from home or it could have been the two-year wait for a league appearance.

But, no, Luke Dennison’s toughest time in Ireland to date was at the start of this year when he believed he would start the season as Bohemians No  1 only to see it snatched from his grasp.

It is why ending a challenging year by winning the FAI Cup would win so much to a player who was on the bench for Bohemians 12 months ago when, for the second time in three years, they were defeated by St Pat’s in the decider.

Dennison was born in San Francisco, grew up in nearby Pinole, was on the books of the San Jose Earthquakes and has the accent to boot.

But he will not be caught out when Amhrán na bhFiann is played today. The son of Finglas mother and a dad born in Sligo and raised in Kells who met in an Irish pub in New York learned the words of the national anthem as a kid, just in case.

The chances of him lining out at the Aviva Stadium for Ireland are slim. He is 28 with just 12 top-flight appearances under his belt, all of them in the past 15 weeks.

That he is playing in domestic football’s showpiece event — in front of his parents who have travelled over — is an achievement in itself, and not something that looked on the cards only four months ago when he was third choice at Bohs.

James Talbot stepping away from football temporarily to deal with mental health challenges had appeared to open a door for Dennison.

He recalled: “The start of this year was a real low blow for me.

“I was the only goalkeeper in pre-season, because JT was dealing with what he needed to deal with. They had brought in a couple of goalkeepers on trial but they weren’t really up to the standard.

“I was playing really well through pre-season, training really well. We had a trip up to Glasgow to play Rangers and Celtic.

"I did well and there were only two weeks left until the start of the season and I was thinking, ‘This was a real chance for me to be the No  1’.

"Speaking to the goalkeeper trainer, it seemed like that was a reality.

"Then we had the final pre-season game and Kacper Chorazka came in and did well.

“Dec Devine was the gaffer and he basically said on the Thursday, look there is one guy who is really missing out here and it’s Luke Dennison, because Kacper is going to start tomorrow, and I was like, man, that’s a bit of a heater. It hurt a little bit.”

He would have preferred the bad news to be delivered differently.Dennison said: “Obviously one-to-one would probably have been better, and I said that to him as well.

"He said they brought Kacper in on a fee and he was already in the middle of a season, so he was fresh playing competitive games week in, week out. So I understood and completely backed Kacper.

“But then JT came back, the gaffer left, Alan Reynolds and Stephen O’Donnell came in, and it was a real shift in a lot of things at the club.

"I was kind of relegated to third string without any real transparency of what was going on. I never really got told.

“So that was kind of a low moment where I was just training away, 28, and I didn’t really see what the end goal was.”

His fortunes changed when he got a phone call from Drogheda assistant boss Daire Doyle.

With Jethren Barr sidelined, United needed another keeper and he was immediately thrown in ahead of Andrew Wogan who had agreed to a move to Stockport County, although he remains with the Boynesiders on loan until the end of the campaign.

Doyle was also around for his first break in the League of Ireland when he arrived in 2019.

He said: “I kind of didn’t know what was going to happen. I came over on a whim. I didn’t have any connections, no agent, but my family had a few connections.

“It was my cousin’s friend’s brother who played for Kilnamanagh in the Leinster Senior League, and the Kilnamanagh keeper worked in the Shamrock Rovers academy.

“I did a one-on-one session with him and he sent me over to first-team goalkeeper coach Jose Ferrer.

“I did two sessions with them, the transfer window had closed, and basically they said, ‘We can help get the name out, but you can’t just keep training with us’.

“I think they helped a little bit. I had a few other connections within the FAI. I sent a football resume out, I was training with Leixlip United, Maynooth Town University, Wexford, and then Daire Doyle gave me a call when he was the assistant manager with Neale Fenn.

“He said, ‘Come on out for a training session and we’ll see what happens’. Then, Neale Fenn offered me my first amateur contract, and the rest is history.

“If Neale never offered me that amateur contract, I don’t know what could have happened.

“I might have ended up going back home, because it would have been very tough to keep plugging along. I didn’t really want to play Leinster Senior League, I wanted to play League of Ireland.”

Progress was slow. His only first-team outing in his first two years was an FAI Cup tie against Cork City, by now managed by Fenn. Longford lost with the last kick of the game in extra-time.

A loan move to Galway United provided his first taste of league football before he established himself as Longford’s No  1 in the 2022 campaign, leading to his move to Dalymount as back-up to Talbot.

It has not, to date, been a lucrative career but Dennison has kept his eyes on the prize.

He said: “Luckily I’m very blessed, I was living with my aunt for the first year and a half in Celbridge and then I rented a little bit through the Covid spell in Lucan.

“I met a few really nice people there that I am still friends with. The rent was expensive, but it was really a blessing to have my family here and there is a family house that I can live in in Phibsborough.

“So it has all kind of worked out. But don’t get me wrong, the bills are still expensive, the WiFi and electric bills are no joke.

“I got my Irish passport when I was 12 or 13 and I remember telling everyone ever since that once I finish college I’m going to go over to Europe and play European football.

“I was chasing a dream. But it’s one day at a time in pursuing my end goal, which is to play European football, play in Europe, and hopefully win the FAI Cup.”