JON DALY has revealed how taking the Dundalk job has gone down like a lead balloon at home.
There were just 16 days between Daly being sacked as St Pat’s boss and him agreeing to take on the challenge of trying to save Dundalk from relegation.
That meant a much shorter spell at home with wife Linda and daughters Sophie, 15, and 13-year-old Shannon, who are settled in Scotland where he spent much of his playing career.
And he even had to pull out of a family holiday as he prepares for games at home Derry City on Friday and away to St Pat’s on Monday.
Dubliner Daly, 41, said: “It’s been fairly hectic.
“I was disappointed to leave St Pat’s, nobody wants to lose their job, but my silver lining was ‘right, I’m going home to my family, I’m going to spend time with my kids, I’ve missed a lot of them growing up’.
“I’ve lived away from them for the last three-and-a-half years. It was nice to go home and see them, the excitement of me coming home and being there with them.
“So I spent a lot of time with them, picking the kids up from school, dropping them to school, bringing them to training, a lot of the stuff that other parents get to a daily, weekly basis and then obviously this opportunity comes up.”
FAMILY MATTER
But he admitted: “It went down like a lead balloon. But if my wife and kids were not supportive, I genuinely wouldn’t be here.
“They are fully in support of it and they are looking forward to it, coming over and getting to see the place. The biggest thing was we’d booked a holiday for this Thursday, to Turkey, I’m obviously not going.
“They are going, I made them go, they weren’t going to go but it’s important to have that and we managed to convince Linda’s sister to go with them and her kids.
“So it’ll be nice for them to have that time with their cousins and I will get away at the end of the season hopefully.”
The ex-Rangers and Dundee United striker conceded that being away from home was an occupational hazard.
He said: “If it was the other way around, if I was in Scotland and they were here, it’d be easier as you’d have family around.
“Linda is over there with the kids but you have no real kind of support network, just your friends and that’s the difficult side.
“If the kids were not at the ages they are at, I probably would have come home.
“But they are in important years in school, it’s something we need to manage but I am fortunate to have a very understanding wife and my kids are very resilient and resolute, they love football so they love sitting and watching the games on a Friday night.
“They were huge St Pat’s fans and now they are Dundalk fans, I’ll need to get them the jerseys and all the Pat’s stuff will go in the bin.
“That’s the life of a football player and manager and coach, the family supports where you are and I am lucky that my family are supportive.”