Best option for St Pat’s job is Jon Daly – the interim boss hiding in plain sight

Robbie Keane and Kenny Cunningham are two of the names linked to the vacant managerial position at St Pat’s.

In football, though, there is always a significant distance from rumour to an actual appointment and it is worth remembering that Cunningham’s name was connected to the St Pat’s job before, back in 2018, following Liam Buckley’s departure. On that occasion Harry Kenny ended up getting it.

Yet Cunningham remains an intriguing option, his profile high following a brilliant playing career, which included a three-year spell as Ireland captain under Brian Kerr’s management.

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Then there’s Keane, Ireland’s most capped player, highest goalscorer, and longest serving captain. Currently working at Leeds United, on Sam Allardyce’s coaching ticket, a switch to a League of Ireland club is unlikely, even if his Leeds gig ends up being a short one.

While all this speculation is playing out, a potential successor hides in plain sight, having stood in the Pat’s technical area at Turner’s Cross, Richmond Park and Tallaght Stadium over the last two weeks.

Jon Daly may not have Keane or Cunningham’s profile, or indeed their Ireland caps, yet in three games as interim manager, Pat’s have collected six points. That’s six stronger points than any candidate can write on an application form.

It is a CV worth examining closely because it runs to several pages, dating back a quarter of a century to when Daly was one of the biggest prodigies on the Irish schoolboy scene, the standout player of his age alongside Keith Fahey.

“Dinty (Daly’s nickname) had his pick of clubs,” says Sean Dillon, the former Shels defender from their 2006 title winning side, a contemporary of Daly’s from Clondalkin and later his team-mate at Dundee United.

“The rumours were rife: ‘Manchester United are interested in Dinty, Liverpool are’. I’d say half the Premier League wanted him when he was 15. At our age, he was the main man. The fact he chose Stockport County surprised some people but not me.”

There’s a good reason for that, Daly’s pragmatism stretching back to the unpressurised home he grew up in. Once, after seeing him score twice against Belgium in a European Under 19 championship game, your correspondent got speaking to his late father, who’d travelled to Norway to watch his son play in that tournament.

“So long as he’s happy, I don’t care what team he is at,” his father said, as we scanned through a team sheet that showed his contemporaries employed by higher-profile clubs, Liverpool, Spurs, Aston Villa, Newcastle.

While those employers offered the possibility of glamour, Stockport provided opportunities, Daly debuting for the club in a friendly when he was 15, scoring for them in a competitive game at 16. Then came the injuries, his cruciate going at 17; his ankle causing him trouble, his dream of making it seemingly dying when his employer changed, Hartlepool United getting him on a free transfer.

By January 2007, he was the forgotten man of Irish football, no longer tagged in the ‘next big thing’ category, worn down by injuries and the grind of lower division football.

Dillon too had moved on and was sitting in a hotel in Dundee, when a text came through on his phone. “Are you signing for Dundee United?” it read.

“Yeah,” Dillon replied, naively, before firing off a second text.

“Who’s this?”

It was his former Irish underage colleague, Daly, who had grown up in Bawnogue, a neighbouring estate of Dillon’s homeplace in Clondalkin.

“That was Dinty, always one step ahead,” says Dillon, who is still playing professionally at 39 in Scotland, but was back home this week, observing training sessions at Bohs and Longford. Again Daly texted. “I hear you’re in Ireland,” he said.

“You’re wondering how he knows these things,” says Dillon, smiling. “He’s just so sharp.”

That’s the feedback coming from the St Pat’s camp since he became interim boss after Tim Clancy’s departure two-and-a-half weeks ago, players such as Chris Forrester publicly backing him, others speaking privately to friends within the game.

“The word is that he is really liked (by the Pat’s squad),” says Graham Gartland, another contemporary, who once lived next door to Daly in Dundee.

Now an underage coach at Shamrock Rovers, and a veteran of the League, having won a title with Drogheda, and Cups with Longford, Gartland has his ear to the ground.

He’s heard about his old friend’s attention to detail, his calm demeanour and organisational efficiency.

“Football’s a small village,” says Gartland. “If you are a good guy, everyone quickly finds out.

“So you look at Dinty’s career. He’s a brilliant captain for Dundee United, he helps them win the Scottish Cup, just the second time they’ve ever done that.

“Then Rangers call. So, Irish Catholic, signing for Rangers, some people made it out to be a big deal. But it wasn’t. I remember being asked about that at the time by reporters and I remember what I said, that it was a non issue. Still, fair play to Jon for doing it. I’d have done it. But I’d never have signed for, say, a club with Zenit St Petersburg’s ethos, with the way their fans treat black players. People here, I don’t think, realise how big Rangers are in Scotland.”

Dillon, however, does know.

So the Rangers move, a Dubliner going to a club that wears red, white and blue, whose fans have been known to sing sectarian songs, that took courage.

“I was made up for him,” says Dillon. “Like he’d been at Stockport, Hartlepool for large parts of his career. And look, here he was getting asked to go to play in front of 50,000 people at Ibrox every second week. At 30, he was getting the chance to sign for a huge, huge club – having turned down the chance of a Premier League club at 15. He’s a family man, Dinty. I lived 50 yards away from him in Dundee. This was a chance of a lifetime. He had to take it.”

He has taken every chance since, coaching jobs at Hearts, TPS Turku in Finland, then from December 2021, with St Pat’s.

It’s a long way from when he and Dillon drove an hour from Dundee to Stirling to start their Uefa coaching badges back in 2011. “We’d be fretting going down that road,” Dillon says, “wondering how we’d put on a session. Then on the drive home, we’d say, ‘why were we worried?’ Now look at him, he’s miles ahead of where I am, coaching wise.”

And this Pat’s job, remember, isn’t his first taste of management. Back in 2017, he also took charge of Hearts on an interim basis, securing a draw at Ibrox, while also overseeing three other games, including one at Celtic whose then manager Brendan Rodgers criticised Hearts’ recruitment policy.

Daly instantly replied, strongly defending the club’s position, suggesting Rodgers mind his own business. That stance won him plenty of respect.

He was just 34 at the time, yet the pressure of taking a team to Celtic Park or Ibrox didn’t phase him. There were 58,843 fans at that first game, 49,677 patrons at the second. That context is needed when we weigh up his alleged inexperience.

“Inexperience?” asks Dillon, a little bemused by the perception. “This is Dinty’s 25th year in professional football, his eighth as a coach. I grew up a Pat’s fan. I know the club. More importantly, so does he. He’s been there a couple of years. I’ve been in a dressing room with him and know what he brings to it. He has presence. Every club would want to have a Jon Daly in it.”

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