Up and Running
Here it is then. My website. Or, rather, the website for Dave Allan Communications. It’s been quite a journey getting this far and it’s just one small but important step along the road for my business.
Getting this far has been an adventure. I’m going to come clean with you and admit that Dave Allan Communications is not the fruition of a long-held dream of mine to run my own PR business. I’d always liked the thought of working for myself but, deep down, I knew that I enjoyed my job too much to make that leap out of my comfort zone into a new unpredictable world.
Working for a football club does that to you. Well, that was my experience of working at Middlesbrough Football Club anyway. As a lifelong Boro fan, it was a dream job, second only to playing for the team. That was never going to happen, on account of me being useless (one substitute appearance for St Michael’s, possibly the worst school team in Middlesbrough, is testament to that).
Riverside Reflections
I lived the dream for 17 years. I joined the Boro in 1994 soon after Bryan Robson’s arrival had ignited the ambition of thousands of lifelong cynics that maybe, just maybe, ‘typical Boro’ might finally change. And change they did.
My first season was Ayresome Park’s last. The club signed off with promotion. When we held the pre-season photo-call the following August, it was on the Ayresome pitch. The Riverside Stadium was still a building site and would remain so until literally hours before kick-off of our opening home game with Chelsea.