It was like a scene from Phoenix Nights, Ollie Byrne playing the Brian Potter role.
Good old Ollie ruled Shelbourne with an iron fist as well as a fistful of dollars. All his players loved him. Everyone outside of Shels hated him.
And he didn’t care.
“Shelbourne Football Club is my life,” he used to say whenever he attempted to justify his latest behaviour.
On this occasion, in August 1998, he decided to plant himself in the middle of the first team dressing room ahead of his new manager’s first match in charge.
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Big mistake. The new manager was Dermot Keely and if Ollie considered himself fiery, well, Keely was fierier.
“I walked in, had prepared my speech and saw him seated there, right among the players, bold as brass, staring right up at me, like an 18-year-old kid besotted by the fact he was surrounded by footballers,” Keely recalls.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Keely asked him.
“I’m waiting to hear you talk,” Ollie replied.
“Well, you’ll be fucking waiting a long time,”Keely retorted. “Get out.”
Asking Ollie to move out of a Tolka Park dressing room was a bit like asking Oliver Reed to set down his drink and leave the bar. But Keely was fearless. Once, as a young man, he’d been asked to sign for Celtic. “But you need to shave off your beard,” the Glasgow club told him.
He never bought the pack of razors.
Now, nearly 20 years later, he was right at the cutting edge again as this stand-off with Ollie ensued.
“Get out.”
“No.”
“Get out.”
“No.”
A few choice words were delivered by both men, Byrne saying that Keely’s predecessor, Damien Richardson, used to allow Byrne remain in the dressing room. “Ollie, you fucking sacked him,” said Keely. “Now get the fuck out.”
The manager won the argument. And 90 minutes later his team won the match. “And after it, Ollie came right over to me and gave me a big hug,” says Keely. “That was him. He could be confrontational; he loved chaos. We won a double. Everything would be going smoothly and he’d create chaos. That was how he functioned.”
And yet he tells this story not to undermine his former boss.
“I loved the man,” Keely says. “He was hilarious; life was never dull. He was absolutely brilliant at what he did and was such a larger than life character. Those years at Shelbourne were some of the best of my life.”
It’s a life he has chronicled in the best League of Ireland football book ever written, one that was published earlier this month, Keely embarking on a whistle-stop tour across his former haunts, Dundalk, Drumcondra, Inchicore, Glentoran, Sligo and Derry to deliver a series of talks.
Given his contribution to the game here, as well his longevity in it, he deservedly merits a place on the Mount Rushmore of League of Ireland greats, along with Jim McLaughlin, Liam Tuohy and Stephen Kenny.
Of Kenny, once a young rival, he now has the greatest respect, describing the performance of his St Pat’s side in Tallaght a few weeks ago as the best he has seen by a League of Ireland team since the 80s. “Every team Stephen has gone to, he’s been brilliant,” Keely says. “Ireland didn’t work out; that can happen in management. He’s an exceptional talent the way he gets teams playing.
“You see, I don’t need to watch Manchester United. I don’t need Liverpool. I don’t need Real Madrid. I love the League. When I saw Rovers and St Pat’s, that was my El Classico. It’s ours. That’s what I love about the League. We are part of it. We’re the underdog. People look down on us. But we keep going. It’s just like life. You have your ups and downs but you keep plugging along.”
The worst moment of his 70-year-old life came three years ago when his son, Alan, died suddenly with a clot in his lung.
Soon enough he discovered how the grieving process is like being in a car crash.
You might come out of the car but you do so with a limp and that limp is with you every day for the rest of your life. That’s what mourning feels like.
Even when the rest of the world moves on, a mourner cannot. Life can never be the same again.
Yet the best of humankind comes out in people when others are in need.
At Alan’s funeral, Pat Dolan came to offer his condolences. For a long time he and Keely were sworn enemies. “It was only football,” Dolan said to him at the funeral. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Reflecting on that now, Keely says: “It genuinely touched me in a way I can’t properly describe. For years we didn’t speak. There was a huge divide between us. Yet for Pat to go out of his way to do that, it meant the world. It was an enormous gesture. It meant so much and still does to this day.”
He tells this story because it sums the League of Ireland up. Enemies always end up friends. They look out for each other when times get tough.
Kenny losing matches as Ireland boss, that hurt Keely because it was one of his own getting flak.
When Keely lost his son, Alan, Dolan knew where he had to go. “The fact we were rivals was irrelevant,” says Dolan. “Dermot’s a fantastic human being, a League of Ireland legend. You pay your respects because your respect for Dermot and Alan is enormous.”
When he thinks about this story, Keely pauses for a moment, which is unusual for those who know the man well.
Yet while he likes to be understated - summed up by the title of his book, ‘Better Without The Ball’ - he has always been an emotionally intelligent man who easily connected with people.
As a quintessential League of Ireland man, one who won nine League titles as a player and a manager, there is a reason why people like him and Dolan always end up coming together.
“The GAA look down on us, and that’s understandable because it is a rival sport,” Keely says. “Rugby people look down on us. Again, rival sport, I get that.
“But the League of Ireland, whenever I was in it, I always felt that our own governing body were dismissive towards us.
“Ah, ‘it’s only the League’ always seemed to be the attitude.
“You look at John Delaney. I have absolutely nothing but contempt for him. No respect whatsoever.
“He called the League a problem child.
“Well, it’s pretty clear now who the problem was.
“He didn’t serve Irish football. He served himself.
“You look at the current situation at Dundalk. A giant club, not a minnow, is in massive trouble. The FAI has to accept their share of responsibility for what has happened there.
“How did they not foresee this happening? How did they not intervene a year ago, two years ago and be in a position to notice that they could not afford to keep going?
“That’s why League of Ireland people stick together. We have to. Because we feel no one else will do it for us. And do you know what, when you are in your hour of need, League of Ireland people will be there for you. It’s why it is a special place.”
Dermot Keely’s book written with Neil O'Riordan can be purchased here, email [email protected]
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