The Kilcoynes - failed dreamers or villains?

[noby]

The numbers protesting were less than our average gates

I'm another who doesn't know better, but even on the footage last night that was my first thought. There was a shot of a march, where there were probably a few hundred, but any other shot was of a lot smaller crowds.

[Stuttgart88]

The programme failed to mention that the Kilcoynes bought the ground from the Jesuits for £50,000 shortly before selling it on for £1,000,000.

The Jesuits themselves claimed they were fleeced as far as I can remember. They said they were tricked into handing over the title, believing the Kilcoynes wanted to develop the ground.

I attended pretty much every home game from '82 through to the start of the boycott. I can remember crowds ranging from the hundreds to the thousands. Frequently there was less a lot less than 1,000.

I started in UCD in 1985 and the only Rovers game I went to at Tolka was supporting UCD in a cup game around '88 I think.

[btid1]

I attended pretty much every home game from '82 through to the start of the boycott. I can remember crowds ranging from the hundreds to the thousands. Frequently there was less a lot less than 1,000.

I started in UCD in 1985 and the only Rovers game I went to at Tolka was supporting UCD in a cup game around '88 I think.

Dont understand this.If you were a Rovers fan surely you would support them through thick and thin and not just when they were playing in a certain location??

Some people seem to use the sale of Milltown to justify them giving up on Rovers and that baffles me.

[OwlsFan]

The record crowd at Milltown was 28,000 in 1968 v. Waterford.

I was probably at that game. Did we lose to a Johnny Mathews goal or something but I find it hard to believe that Milltown could hold that number with the small stand and terraces that weren't exactly huge. Might be though as I remember imitating a sardine on occasions. WOrst ever crush was in the Waterford Cup Final which Rovers won 3-0. As a kid I literally got lifted off my feet whenever the crowd swayed and the hundreds on the roof of the shed at the school end. I thought Dalymount was a great stadium then

[OwlsFan]

Some people seem to use the sale of Milltown to justify them giving up on Rovers and that baffles me.

I gave up going to Rovers after they sold Milltown. I would get the 44 bus to Milltown with my friends and home again. To me Rovers and Milltown came as a package. I didn't travel cross city to Tolka and thus lost the habit. Still supported (i.e. looked for their results etc) them but gave up going to the games.

[pete]

My comments above re: crowds v protesters wasn't a criticism of Rovers. Its an Irish thing.

The only thing i remember of Milltown is the mention by Eamonn Sweeney's eL book about being unable to score in Milltown

[Stuttgart88]

Dont understand this.If you were a Rovers fan surely you would support them through thick and thin and not just when they were playing in a certain location??

I went to UCD and actually played football there (not for the firsts or even close to it). Instead of going to Milltown or standing outside Tolka I went to Belfield which I did regularly enough if Rovers were playing outside of Dublin anyway. I knew half the UCD first team personally as well as the coaches, management, Dr. Tony O'Neill etc. I think it's pretty understandable, no?

[Saint MacDara]

Just a thought,does anyone think that the boycott of Tolka was just as damaging to the Rovers support base as the sale of Glenmalure?

I realize that the boycott also had the purpose of forcing out the Kilcoynes but it made SRFC suffer even more something that the club is still reeling from today.A smoother transition to Tolka might have kept attendances stable.

In hindsight do you think the boycott was a mistake?
And would the Kicoyne family eventually have sold their remaining interest in the club?
(give the fact that they would have never been forgiven for their sins)

[khoop]

In hindsight do you think the boycott was a mistake?

Yeah, right - let's move Pats to Dalymount and flog Inchicore for flats and then see how you feel.

Would you say "Hmm - better go along with it, otherwise my club might suffer"? Or would you regard your club as essentially close to dead anyway - meaning that no holds are barred?

It's easy for everyone else to philosophize - especially in hindsight.

[dcfcsteve]

RTE sold the public a proverbial pup on the Miltown saga.

The reasons behind the Kilcyne's decision to sell the club are merely secondary in the affair. The core issue is that the Kilcoyne family decided to sell the ground to property developers.

Faced with the choice of keeping the club they say they loved as a viable entity with its own ground, and making a finnacial killing by almost killing that club, the Kilcoynes chose the latter. Louis even blamed the rest ofn the family for this on the show last night - syaing th edcision had been forced on him. It is only due to Rovers fans that the club survived - most other LOI teams would have died under similar circumstances.

And then the FAI had the temerity to make Louis Kilcoyne Presidnet after he had done a hatchet job on the most famous club in the league at that time.

So the background of dwindling crowds is not the core issue - doing a property deal on the stadium is. The Kilcoynes had no interest in selling the club on to people interested in maintaining Miltown as a ground. RTE let them totally off the hook in this regard.

[CollegeTillIDie]

Stuttgart 88

Who do you support these days? Where are you when UCD could do with you these days?

The Kilcoynes did lie about the numbers but one fact is true. Each year that Rovers won the League during the four in a row , the crowds got slightly smaller each season. This was despite the fact that they were without a shadow of doubt, the best team in the League and they played a decent brand of football into the bargain. Attacking , passing football . They took on Arsenal and Man United in glamour friendlies during 1985 and 1986 and beat United 2-0 on one occasion. It wasn't all doom and gloom on the crowds front , in fact one thing that Louis neglected to tell all you TV viewers was the fact that against Celtic in the European Cup in the autumn of 1986 there were 18,000 in Milltown that night. I was there myself and I can vouch for the fact that it was the largest crowd I have been amongst at a competitive game involving a League team from here in their own stadium.

But aside from that big pay day and the glamour friendlies the crowds for the bread and butter fixture were not what one would have expected . Now the fact that it was 4 quid in when there was 300,000 on the dole and 40-50,000 per year emigrating during those years might have accounted for it to an extent. There was also a lot of competition from Live TV on UTV on Sunday Afternoons. They started showing one live match a week from what is now called the Premiership. I remember going to a Shamrock Rovers V UCD match which kicked off at 5:15 on a Sunday afternoon as an attempt to avoid clashing with the televised game.
The crowd wasn't that big on the night( Rovers won 1-0 thanks to an offside goal by Michael O'Connor, so offside even Rovers fans I knew told me they thought it was offside) but it might have been worse had the game clashed with the live game on TV. These games were shown on terrestrial TV so the punters watching didn't have to forkout for a Dish or a Box cause SKY didn't exist back then. In fact it was so long ago that NTL were called Cablelink.

One of the factors behind the dwindling crowds or the lack of new support might have been that the European record , while not embarassingly bad, was poor enough for a team of that quality.

I think the Kilcoynes were initially failed dreamers but ended up villains.

[TonyD]

And then the FAI had the temerity to make Louis Kilcoyne President after he had done a hatchet job on the most famous club in the league at that time.

That's the real scandal in the whole affair if you ask me. It's kind of hard to stop someone like the Kilycoynes doing whatever they like when they own a club, but for the FAI to turn around and reward him like that was beyond belief. He shouldn't have been let within a country mile of the game in this country after that. And for Dunphy to back him shows (again) how much of a hypocrite he is. He loves to slag off the FAI, and then turns around and supports people like Kilycoyne, and Joe Delaney. I only saw a tiny bit if the programme the other night, but I saw Dunphy defending Delaney and the other FAI heads (they were only "doing the Irish thing" apparently) So much for high standards Eamonn.

[CollegeTillIDie]

Yes and get this folks he now represents football at the Olympic Council of Ireland.

[khoop]

What Kilcoyne also forgot to mention was that when fans went in to Glenmalure Park for old time's sake about a year after the last game - while the planning process dragged on - they found Rovers' entire history dumped around the ground.

Match records, photographs, pennants, trophies, all manner of historically important items - just dumped, and for the most part, destroyed by the elements.

We weren't even allowed have those.

Thanks Lucifer.

[geysir]

RTE sold the public a proverbial pup on the Miltown saga.

The reasons behind the Kilcyne's decision to sell the club are merely secondary in the affair. The core issue is that the Kilcoyne family decided to sell the ground to property developers.

Faced with the choice of keeping the club they say they loved as a viable entity with its own ground, and making a finnacial killing by almost killing that club, the Kilcoynes chose the latter. Louis even blamed the rest ofn the family for this on the show last night - syaing th edcision had been forced on him. It is only due to Rovers fans that the club survived - most other LOI teams would have died under similar circumstances.

And then the FAI had the temerity to make Louis Kilcoyne Presidnet after he had done a hatchet job on the most famous club in the league at that time.

So the background of dwindling crowds is not the core issue - doing a property deal on the stadium is. The Kilcoynes had no interest in selling the club on to people interested in maintaining Miltown as a ground. RTE let them totally off the hook in this regard.

It wasn't in that programmes sphere to do a job on the Kilcoynes.
It was more a Reeling in the Years approach not a Panorama investigation.
It provided a balanced enough report between Kilcoyne and Kram.
It's just that the extra suspects, Byrne and Dunphy, didn't help to clarify.
On that core issue you mention, the KRAM guy made it clear that the Kilcoynes refused point blank to negotiate. The program did not ignore that point.

On purchase from the nuns the ground should have been placed in trust. No club should be without it's constitution to protect it's assets.

[fergalr]

Just saw a tape of the program and am shocked and disgusted with the how it was portrayed.

The core fact is irrefutable - Kilcoyne tricked the Jesuits into selling him the ground and then sold it on for personal profit.

Allowing Kilcoyne and his crony Dunphy to misrepresent without challenge smacks of journalistic ineptitude, naivety or crassness depending on how charitable one wants to be.

[Billy Lord]

I gave up going to Rovers after they sold Milltown. I would get the 44 bus to Milltown with my friends and home again. To me Rovers and Milltown came as a package. I didn't travel cross city to Tolka and thus lost the habit. Still supported (i.e. looked for their results etc) them but gave up going to the games.

I take it you didn't go to Lansdowne or Croker to support Ireland after they vacated Dalymount?

[GreenStar]

The Sale of Milltown was number 15 on the list.

The 6 and a half minute piece can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsiZuZA-ku8

[Poor Student]

Dunphy is extremely bitter as a result of his involvement with the Giles 'revolution' part of the Kilkoyne era. He holds a huge and perpetual grudge at the eL for the fact it wasn't a resounding success. The two of them blame the rest of the league for not stepping up to the bar Shamrock Rovers had raised and that the opposition's pitches and style of play were not conducive to their plan and vision for the club.

[Stuttgart88]

Stuttgart 88

Who do you support these days? Where are you when UCD could do with you these days?

Still a bit torn TBH. I like both but wouldn't claim to support either, certainly not by the standards set out by the fan police here!

If I was still in Ireland I'd hope that I'd bring the kids to either when they're old enough. I listened to a lot of the Longford match on Sunday on the radio and was disappointed my local Irish pub with RTE didn't show it on any of their numerous screens (in fairness there was a private party in one of the two main rooms, it did clash with Arsenal vs Liverpool and I do live in North London).

What disappointed me was that I was at a 40th in Dublin recently with a lot of my old college mates, all UCD and some footballers, and none knew UCD was in the semi and frankly none cared.