Rocky's nightmare now a dream ticket

Rocky's nightmare now a dream ticket

ONE night a few years ago Ronan Seery was sitting at home drinking a glass or two of wine and trying to figure out what to do with Home Farm Fingal.

He was CEO of Home Farm Everton when the sponsorship deal with the Premiership giants came to an end and, after some soul searching, the club decided to abandon its senior ambitions and go back to concentrating on its famous schoolboy nursery.

A son of Home Farm co-founder Don Seery, he persuaded the club to give him their League of Ireland franchise rather than handing it back as he felt he could turn it into a success.

Despite possessing boundless energy and a seemingly unending stream of enthusiasm, Seery discovered that trying to turn Home Farm into a successful League of Ireland club was a bit like pushing an elephant up the stairs with a rope.

In a bid to attract support from North County Dublin he renamed the team Home Farm Fingal but the people of Swords, Skerries, Rush and Balbriggan remained apathetic.

"It wasn't working," he says. "People still regarded it as being part of the schoolboy club and it was proving hard to sell to sponsors. I was sitting in the chair when the name Dublin City floated by me.

"I think was on the second bottle of wine by that stage," he laughs. "I couldn't believe it when I checked that nobody owned the name. I'm sure some of the other clubs had a vision of becoming a Dublin City in four or five years' time but nobody had taken the name."

So three seasons ago Dublin City was born. The playing strip was changed to the county colours of light blue and navy and the three castles were included in the club crest.

Next Saturday evening, Dublin City play Bray Wanderers in the final league game of the season and need just a point to win the First Division title and earn automatic promotion to the Premier Division for the first time.

For Seery, the implications of Saturday night's results are enormous. After years of toil the 43-year-old is just one step away from hitting paydirt.

"Dublin City in the First Division is an extremely hard sell because the First Division is not sexy. But it would be mind-boggling if Dublin City go up. I would be able to raise enough money in a month to clear off the baggage we are carrying and then we can really move forward.

"If we get promotion, I have five or six people who would be willing to come on board and we would have no difficulty raising the six-figure sums needed to keep us in the Premier Division."

Dublin City's supporter base is one of the smallest in the Eircom League but Seery believes that will change if they become the new kid on the Premier Division block.

"A lot of people don't want Dublin City in the Premier Division but we will get there on merit. Anyway, I think a ten-team league is ridiculous. It should be a 16- or 18-team league and give everybody a fair chance."

How Seery has managed to keep his franchise alive over the past seven years is nothing short of a miracle. Gate receipts only provide around ten per cent of turnover but he has managed to come up with all sorts of money-making schemes to balance the books.

"I have a promotions company that runs a football club. I think of ten mad ideas every day and if one of them works that's great."

His latest scheme is a golf classic in Madrid next April that will include tickets to Real Madrid and Barcelona. It's €7,500 for a team of four and aimed at companies who will also get advertising spots in the match programme next season.

One of his best deals was with Carroll's Gift Stores, who became the club's main sponsor and overnight turned the Dublin City jersey into the biggest selling Eircom League shirt by putting it in the front window of their seven shops in the city.

"A friend of mine was at the FA Cup Final in Cardiff this year and met four Americans wearing Dublin City jerseys. I've had pictures sent to me from America, South Africa and Australia of kids wearing jerseys which their parents brought them back from Ireland."

Throughout football Seery is better known by his nickname, Rocky, and now it seems that like the Sylvester Stallone character he is about to triumph against the odds.

"I had a dream, then it turned into a nightmare, but now the dream could be about to come true."