Daniel McConnell

But I...

There was something quite compelling I thought about him.

Not to give a guy a free pass, but I genuinely thought this is a guy who seems to have a clear air of professionalism around him.

He knows what he wants to do.

It's a decent strategy document here in Fulton.

They have, I think, a fair win now behind the boat between the women's team and the men's team are doing reasonably well at an international.

Huge amount of work at grassroots level.

And again, you see it, you know, there's a body of work there to be done to tap into that volunteerism or the voluntary kind of nature.

There's a huge groundswell of people who are willing to give up their weekends to kind of stand on the side of football pitch.

He spoke about growth in commercial revenues.

He spoke of, you know, I suppose that there is

potential there both in the sort of premium market you know in the kind of premium sales because again that was another travesty of the bygone or the Delaney era the whole premium level tickets.

Like you know we asked him what success would look like and he kind of gave his answer but I think a true measure of the success of his era was that if we can get through another podcast with him and we don't mention John Delaney once I mean that would be success if after three or four years you're talking about Euro 2028 you're talking about

the growth of numbers, you're talking about the refurbishment of grounds at League of Ireland level, you're talking about, as he said, new playing procedures for kids at grassroots.

I do hope they deliver on that Allianz season in terms of their kids.

But his answer was almost in what he said.

Like, the answer to the problem was, we're an outlier.

We're the only one of 55 organisations to not have an alliance season.

Like, that...

But I see it, you probably see it, you know, like kids playing in the depths of winter makes no sense when they're not playing in the best weather months of the year.