The club's Canadian owner has spoken to the Lennox on his first year - including making a managerial change, the call to move to an artificial surface and hopes for the future both on and off the pitch.
The club's Canadian owner has spoken to the Lennox on his first year - including making a managerial change, the call to move to an artificial surface and hopes for the future both on and off the pitch.
It’s been a whirlwind first year at the Dumbarton helm for Canadian owner Mario Lapointe - but the affable businessman is ready to bring success to the Rock on and off the pitch after a tough start. The Montreal electronics mogul was confirmed as the new man at the helm in G82 last June, rescuing the club from a rocky administration which had threatened the very existence of one of Scotland’s most historic clubs.
A strong start to the season gave way to a brutal winter as Lapointe was forced to dispense with the services of long-time Sons gaffer Stevie Farrell in an attempt to stave off dreaded ‘Club 42’ status. The appointment of Farrell’s assistant Frank McKeown failed to raise the temperatures for some sections of the Dumbarton support, especially after a rocky start which saw Edinburgh City almost claw the Sons in.
But spring brought better fortunes as Dumbarton went on a long unbeaten run, inspired by shrewd January business, to pull themselves free and ensure attentions could turn to the 2026/27 campaign. Speaking to the Lennox, Lapointe looked back on his year in the job, including the impact of a damaging 4-0 home defeat to West of Scotland cracks Auchinleck Talbot in the Scottish Cup on his call to move on from Farrell.
He said: “I’d say on the field, I was expecting better but I wasn’t putting a lot of pressure on that initially.
"We had six or seven undefeated at the end and we had nine games at the end to bring us back from the relegation, but it was rough in between and it cost Stevie his job and we went on with Frank from December. “The focus when I came in was not to make any big changes, it was about status quo and seeing how things went.
“I had to take the decision over the manager after the Talbot game, that game was worth around £60,000 to us in reality and the players were flat and didn’t show any emotions. I knew that was the end for Stevie at the time. “We wanted to bring more character and attitude to the team, a team which reflected more closely the fans we had in the stands, that blue-collar identity.
”He also discussed the process of looking for a new boss - and how a heart-to-heart with McKeown led to the call to promote the trusted lieutenant to field general. Lapointe said: “The thing we wanted was a Scottish network because people don’t realise that if you are not a UK citizen, you can’t come and play here in the lower leagues, in Leagues One and Two.
“When you look at coaches, that network is important; I must have had candidates from all over the place, but unless they have that Scottish grounding, you can almost throw them away unless they come with a huge package of knowledge. “We had a director of football at the time and he knew most of the people on the list and had made comments on them. Frank then raised his hand and asked to be part of it.
“It’s very hard to come in the middle of the season, it’s not the same as coming in during the season and re-tooling things your way - you see that with the big boys in the Premiership who have not done so well. You might want to take on a guy with a strong philosophy in the summer time to help give time.
“Some people would think Frank was a disappointment because he was part of the old regime but at the same time, he knew the players and the league the most and the team he was associated with before was his only dark spot. “He had a good discussion with the director of football and then the discussion with me and we kind of saw that there wasn’t much of an imprint for him as an assistant on the previous team.
“The one thing I like from my season is the decision I didn’t make after January and into mid-February on the manager because you have the thought that you have maybe made a mistake and change again. “The strength of Frank and his network was to pull off a great window and now we have the chance to rebuild what we want - a team which is aggressive, has great character with the talent to go along with it.
“I don’t mind us losing games, but there are ways of losing games this year that I hated to see, we didn’t scratch and fight enough. ”But he emphasised the importance of the club’s growth off it - with the installation of an astro pitch at The Rock and the success of the recent Dumbarton Rocks festivals offering a template for his ambitions.
Lapointe continued: “I think setting expectations this early is like telling a Formula One driver that he wants to win the race without seeing what car he has to drive. We want to see what Frank comes up with over the next month in terms of signings and then we can look at expectations.
“I will keep our budget to myself right now, but it is not top range and not bottom range, it is reflective of what it should be as an average in League Two and definitely of one which is trying to keep itself straight after administration. “As a club, we have no debt. We do have losses and we’re trying to do different projects to come up with new revenue streams to patch those.
“The astro will hopefully give us a surface which will provide between £8,000 and £10,000 per month of new revenue. “The stadium and grounds are ours, we have space and we can do a lot of projects to compliment the money coming in, whether that is the music or the comedy shows. “We have to increase the usage of our facilities because we are only using it 30 per cent of the time with the level of demand.
“We want to make the pitch that if people are holding an event that they think of us, but the problem is that the club was not positioned in the market for these events, so we’re not the first choice and we’re trying to become part of that discussion. ”
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