It may surprise you to learn that the biggest social event in the accountancy student calendar is not an annual knees-up or a fancy black-tie dinner, it’s a soccer tournament that runs over four weeks every summer and which this year will involve more than 600 participants.
Organised by the Dublin Chartered Accountants Student Society (DCASS – pronounced ‘dee-cass’), previous participants include past presidents of the Institute, amongst them Martin Wilson and David Simpson, both of whom, thoroughly, involved their involvement in the contest. Because team members needn’t necessarily be trainee accountants – working with a trainee is enough to qualify you – David competed in the competition long after he qualified, playing ina
total of 21 consecutive DCASS Summer Soccer Tournaments!
Participation in the tournament has grown steadily over the nearly 30 years that it has been in existence, mainly as a result of the fact that the number of new entrants entering the profession has grown steadily, says DCASS chairman Killian Dirwan, who takes his final exams this year. “This year’s tournament will involve 52 squads of 10 players in the men’s seven-a-side competition and 16 squads of eight in the ladies’ five-aside contest,” he said. “Next year, I see an even bigger number of teams, because the overall number of accountancy students is growing – two years ago, my firm KPMG took on 150 new entrants, this year it is taking on 250.”
While smaller practices may only muster enough players to enter one team, the bigger practices – Ernst & Young, KPMG and PWC – will have half a dozen teams or more in this year’s contest. Additionally, there will also be ‘old boys’ teams, made up of players who work for different teams but who studied together at UCD, DCU, Trinity or UL. While the majority of players on a team have to be trainee accountants, squad members can include a trainee accountant’s co-workers, whether they be qualified accountants or other office staff.
Old boys
One of the first ‘mixed teams’ to take part in the contest was put together by Martin Wilson, who in 1970 was a trainee at Fay McMahon, a small practice in Harcourt Street that never would have been able to field a team on its own.
“There was consternation when we beat Craig Gardiner in the finals,” he says. “But the rules were changed to allow amalgamated soccer teams – indeed, I think the accountancy soccer teams started merging long before the accountancy firms themselves did!”
These days, the players nearly all have their own corporate strips, professional referees are used and the tournament matches are all played at one venue; in Martin’s day, the accountancy students played in borrowed soccer club strips or in matching t-shirts; the referees were volunteers provided by one side or the other and matches were played at venues across the city, from Bushy Park on the south-side to St Anne’s Park on the north-side with the choice of venue going to the team who nominally had ‘home advantage’.
Such slapdash arrangements were ended about 15 years ago, when DCASS started employing professional referees for the tournament and decided to hold all matches at one venue. For more than a decade, all matches were played at the VEC Grounds in Terenure but, following last year’s summer washout when the waterlogged pitches there were unplayable, a decision has been made to run the contest on the allweather artificial pitches at DCU in Glasnevin.
The contest is organised along a Champions League format – teams are placed in groups of four and play a league contest against one another, the top two teams in each group enter into a knock-out competition for the DCASS Cup, while the bottom two teams in a group are entered in a knock-out competition for the DCASS Shield. The semi-finals and the finals in both competitions are played on the one day, with the finals being followed by an end-of-competition barbecue. Traditionally, this barbecue was held in Brady’s of Terenure, the usual venue for post-match pints. Now that the DCASS summer soccer competition has moved to the northside, it remains to be seen what hostelry will become the post-match watering-hole.
Referee
For 16 years, Noel Mulhall, who used to referee FAI Premier League matches and who was coach of the Republic of Ireland’s international ladies’ team, has headed the team of referees. Now aged 70, Noel organises the refereeing roster and will keep an eye on how his colleagues are coping on competition nights, while also being on stand-by as an extra official to deal with any injuries that may occur during the games. He says there is a big difference between refereeing professional footballers and the students of DCASS.
“The higher up you go in football the easier it is to referee,” he says. “If a player knows what he is doing, you can read their body language and have a fairly good idea what they are going to do next; but if a player doesn’t know what they are doing, there is no way that you can read them!”
“I’ll still referee one or two of the ladies games. A big difference between the girls and the boys is that the girls’ games are a bit slower paced. When the girls show up on the first day of the DCASS competition, some of them don’t have a clue – but they learn very quickly, with some of them getting coaching from lads in their offices. By the end of the three weeks, you wouldn’t think they were the same players.”
“I’ve seen some of them go on to join soccer clubs and become regular players after their experience in the DCASS contest.
“With the lads, the main issue is that some of them will have come from a rugby or a Gaelic background and the soccer lads wouldn’t be too keen on some of their tackles! It’s not like Gaelic where you can play the player, in soccer you have to play the ball and early on the referee has to tell some of them ‘Hang on, that’s not the way we do it in soccer!’”
An FAI Youths Cup medal winner, a former UCD captain and Irish Universities international, and a former FAI League medal winner with Shamrock Rovers, David played in 21 consecutive DCASS competitions! He first played as a trainee accountant on a Stokes Kennedy Crowley team in 1975. After qualifying he was included in teams as a trainee’s co-worker, a status that continued to qualify him for participation in the contest long after he co-founded the Simpson Xavier practice in 1982.
“We won the competition the second year I played in it in 1976,” he says.
“We were against a team from Oliver Freaney in the semi-final and it was one of the roughest games I was ever involved in – most of their players were Gaelic footballers with St Vincents. Funny, I don’t remember who we played in the final, but I’ll never forget that semi-final!”
These days the Gaelic players don’t make as big an impact, says Noel:
“The referee’s primary job is to be in control of the game and to make sure everybody is safe, as a sports injury could put you out of work for weeks. I tell them we are here to play football and enjoy ourselves, and there is never any trouble.
“It’s a really good contest with a great atmosphere. They’re a very nice bunch of young people, all from good homes! It’s great to see the same people turning up again and again and asking them how the year is going for them.”
According to Noel, when more than one team from one firm enters the competition, you can usually spot that one of them is an ‘A team’, packed with the firm’s best players.
Go
I met Coach Keyes in Dublin Ireland in 2007 and to my surprize he lived in Texas USA, infact he lived 30 mins from me. We had a good conversation about soccer and he invited me to bring my two kids to his soccer camp. Coach Keyes told me he was bringing over Coach Noel Mulhall the former ladies international coach, so when we got back to Texas we looked him up and signed up for the week long camp. My kids loved it, they are looking forward to Coach Keyes bringing Noel mulhall back in summer 2009 and I can tell you it,s the best soccer camp in Texas period. Thanks to you guys my kids will have another great soccer camp.
I would like to thank DCASS for printing my comments about Noel Mulhall. Noel was and is a very good friend of mine and one of the best coaches along with Noel King that I have had the pleasure of learning from. I am from Dublin and played with Home farm and Stella Marris as a kid growing up in Ireland. I currently have my own Soccer academy in texas. I hold National coaching liscense from FAI and USSF along with Soccer management and Scouting course I just completed. I would love to emulate noel and one day Coach the womens Irish national team, its a dream of mine. Thanks again and keep on kickin. Coach Brendan Keyes
I met Noel mulhall in 1992 when taken the F A I course. Noel and I became good friends and he has been over to my soccer academy in Houston Texas a couple of times. He will be here again in july 27th 2009 for his final camp. I am looking forward to having coach mulhall for one last time, the kids love him here in the states. Coach mulhall deserves alot of credit for all the work he does and I for one am very grateful to him. Thanks again Noel. Kind regards
Coach Brendan Keyes