Daniel Sexton

Dundalk Football Club Daniel Sexton

A former chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland once described the League of Ireland as a "difficult child for the Association." Despite such sentiments, and the perceptions they feed, the story of Dundalk Football Club stands out as a story worth telling. This is the story of a football club formed in 1903 for the men of the Great Northern Railway works in Dundalk. It is a club that did not "aspire to any great heights," only promising "a couple of clever elevens." But it has grown to become the most successful club in modern Irish football. And yet this is also a football club that has barely survived when so many of its peers have vanished. It is a club that has been visited by the phantom of extinction with a crushing regularity and is only alive today because of the determination of people for whom the word 'supporter' seems inadequate. Generations of board members, volunteers, players, staff, and supporters have ridden a roller-coaster of highs and lows that have seen the club's motto become: "We see things they'll never see." But memory is a highlights reel... this is Dundalk Football Club, in black and white.