Former Finn Harps player Johnny Dunleavy has taken up the role of Academy Director at Waterford FC.
Dunleavy who helped Cork City to a Premier League title in 2017 as a player, joins the Blues as the clubs first-ever full-time Academy Director, having started in the role in recent weeks.
The Ballybofey native currently holds a UEFA A Licence.
Speaking to the club media team on his appointment, Johnny spoke of his excitement & focus on his role and what’s to come in the future with our Waterford FC Academy:
“It’s been great to get started. I knew the start date was coming for a while & I couldn’t wait to start getting going. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with meetings & introducing myself to everyone in the club, and seeing the structure that’s there. Everyone’s been brilliant with me, and it’s great to get started.
This role is a change for me, I’ll have to get used to wearing a half-zip instead of a jersey, but it’s something I’ve always been passionate about and felt I could contribute to in some way. I have experience of being in an academy system when I was young, so I understand what it’s like on both sides of the fence – playing & coaching.
Since I’ve come in, the structures and facilities in place already are phenomenal, and you can clearly see the work that has been done through the years. For me, a lot of the good building blocks that are already in place are just foundations for me to help build on. It’s a brilliant academy with a lot of fantastic people involved in it.
I’ve already spoken with Graham [Coughlan] & Lee [Bullen] about how they see things and what’s important to them, and that’s important for me to know from an academy perspective as well. And similarly with Gary Hunt on the Women’s side, who was doing this job on an interim role along with the Women’s job so he had a lot of work on, but again it was a similar dialogue in terms of what he’s looking for. Both the Men’s & Women’s First-Team staff have been top class with me since I’ve come in, and now it’s important that we continue that dialogue.
To see the commitment from the FAI & the Government, it’s brilliant to see and it will only benefit football in Ireland going forward. Having that full-time staff and focus on the academy system and developing home-grown, local talent, it can only benefit Irish football as a whole, and I’m very privileged to be a part of the first wave of that, and I’ll do my level best to make sure it’s a success.”
