IRISH SOCCER: Dundalk FC yesterday officially launched a €1.7 million project to renovate Oriel Park and dramatically improve the club's finances. Work on the first phase of the plan, the laying of an artificial pitch at the stadium, was already underway as chief executive Seán Connolly announced the main stand would be renovated and fitted with new seating, dressing-rooms, a fitness centre, bar and conference facilities.

Connolly, who admitted the club came close to going out of business towards the end of last year, was confident the new pitch would have an almost immediate impact on the club's finances.

"The savings will be substantial," he said. "At the moment the costs involved in maintaining it are between €30,000 and €40,000 and even that's not really enough to do the job we would like to. The new surface will cost less than one tenth of that amount while allowing us to generate revenue by hiring it out. We have already had a number of inquiries about it and we are confident that it will make a very worthwhile contribution to our operating expenses."

The work will involve major improvements to the main stand with the modernisation of spectator facilities, the provision of better dressing-rooms and a fitness suite as well as redeveloped and expanded bars.

"On the one hand we want to make things better for the people who come to see our games and we will be putting new seating as well as moving the pitch so that it is closer to the main stand," said Connolly. "Another major aim is to generate considerably more revenue from the facilities that we have here, and that's what we will be able to do when this work is completed."

Club chairman Tony O'Kane said the aim was to return the club to their former eminence. "We have come through some very bad times in the past few years. Now we have a long-term plan and a strategy to bring the club back to the very top. The more obvious things," he said, "involve a serious upgrading of the ground but equally important will be a major restructuring of the club's administration and financial arrangements."