Game 5

Dundalk 1-1 St Pats

There’s a Josh Ritter song called “You Don’t Make It Easy Babe”…

“I’m trying hard to love you, you don’t make it easy babe, I’m trying hard to love you, there’s gotta be an easy way.”

Could very easily be about football right now couldn’t it? I mean, it’s about sex toys but you get what I mean…

Saturday was one of the strangest days I can remember. News comes in of Shane Keegan handing in his gun and his badge on Friday night, followed by rumours of Robbie Keane ordering a roll in McCreeshes on the Avenue Road, no football on at 3pm because of a funeral, followed by reports that Filippo was handing in his gun and badge, followed by Jim Magilton becoming the interim manager, followed by a football match, during said match hearing that David Healy was getting the job, then googling Ger Lyttle’s record at Sligo and then screaming at Paddy Barrett to get the fuck out of the way.

The teams performance was fine in the circumstances, they fought back from a goal down and very nearly won it at the death.

It was very hard to concentrate on the match when there was so much chaos happening off the pitch and as usual so little clarity and cohesion.

We now know that Filippo is leaving. A man who had never managed at anything close to the level he was thrown into, a man who by his own admission didn’t even apply for the job, a man who moved to Dundalk and continually spoke with class about the town. I am sad it didn’t work out because it would have been one of the greatest football stories ever told.

The fact that he managed to win the FAI Cup and coach in the Europa League is pretty incredible though isn’t it?

Unfortunately though it hasn’t worked out and the same can be said of Shane Keegan, a good man in a pretty horrendous set of circumstances.

The club is a shambles, no plan, no strategy, two seasons in a row replacing a manager during the campaign. And I’m well aware that if the next appointment is a good one, all of this starts to slip away and we all get back to enjoying the team and looking forward to Friday nights again. But who has any confidence that the next appointment will be the right one?

That’s all that’s happening in the football world right now isn’t it? Good, glad I covered it all.