Hard work will be vital
Valleymount hoping to gain sweet revenge on Ashford
IT can’t be easy for a young manager stepping into a job in a new county for the very first time. It is all too easy for a perception to emerge wherein the fledgling hasn’t appropriately cut their teeth enough to warrant a position accompanied by stakes associated with a team expected to challenge for a championship. For 26-year-old Jason Dunne, any trepidation he may or may not have had before taking the top job in Valleymount did not warrant any consideration.
‘I suppose the first thing is going in as a young coach at 26, going into a room and you’re sitting with lads that are a similar age to me or a bit older. The first thing I had to do was make sure they were on my side and respected me. We all had to play fair.
‘The lads welcomed me with open arms. Look, I can’t thank enough Mick Nolan up there; He is such a nice man and welcomed me to the club and welcomed me to the players, and all of the players respected me from then on.’
Dunne’s skipper, James Fitzpatrick, is one of the player’s who is indeed their manager’s elder, at 33 years of age. The experienced forward admitted that such an arrangement can feel strange at first, but once Dunne got the players onto the training pitch, any lingering doubts were quickly extinguished.
‘Maybe, after the first training, he was just another coach for us. We completely forget what age he is. The way he talks, treats you, everything. We don’t look at him like a young coach; we look at him as our coach. It is nothing different. He is probably one of the best I have played under.’
After a brief bedding in period which included a disappointing defeat to Ashford in Valleymount’s first game of the Junior ‘A’ campaign, the team that came up short in the semi-finals in 2019 proceeded
to go on a roll, beating Enniskerry (2-18 to 0-3), Baltinglass (2-8 to 0-9) and, finally 2019’s beaten finalists Blessington (1-11 to 0-11) to set up a rematch with Ashford, this time in the final.
Valleymount will be all too familiar with Saturday’s opposition. Way back at the end of July, Valleymount kicked off their season with a thorough defeat to Darren Doyle’s men, in a game in which Dunne’s men were comprehensively outfought, outrun, and outplayed.
It is a game that lingers in the minds of both James Fitzpatrick and his manager, who began his coaching career with an internship role with the Kildare under-20s when they were under the tutelage of a certain Davy Burke, who – of course – now oversees the Wicklow senior footballers.
‘Ashford are a very good team, physical team. They have some very experienced players like Brian Coen and that in centre-forward, and they have some very good players in the backline. We are expecting a very good game next Saturday.’
Fitzpatrick was a lot more definitive in his recounting of that first game, describing Ashford as the team to beat in the championship outright, a claim that Darren Doyle awarded Valleymount after Ashford beat Barndarrig in the semi-finals.
‘They are good on the ball. They defend well. They have forwards who – Jesus – kicked scores from everywhere against us the last day. As far as i am concerned, these are the team to beat in the championship. They taught us a football lesson. It is going to be hard, a hard game, but we have to knuckle down, get our heads straight, and everyone will have to work hard for the 60 minutes or whatever it may be.
If you look at the bigger picture, we have earned the right to be in the final, so we have to respect the opponent, but having played them previously, they basically played us off the field. We couldn’t lay a glove on them that day. We will know what to expect so it is going to be interesting. That is all i can say.’
Interesting, it will be. On Saturday, Aughrim will play host to the next step of a rivalry that has been the foundation for this year’s Junior ‘A’ football championship.
Valleymount began their journey with a defeat to Ashford that enlightened them as to the standard to which they would have to rise.
Their road to the final has run parallel with their young coach’s education in the managerial hotseat.
With every game, Jason Dunne and his players have learned separate lessons and applied them to their preparation for the next.
The next objective will be made the more difficult by the added attention to which they will be subjected following their victory over Blessington, but if there is anything that can hold up to such pressure, it is the reckless abandon of youth.