‘After I watched Cork City flop against St Pat’s, I broke down and cried’

You always remember your first FAI Cup final. Mine was in 1989: Cork City v Derry City.

It was in Dalymount Park, back when the northside Dublin stadium resembled something from a survival horror video game. It’s no architectural triumph today. But in 1989, Dalymount was dystopian with post-apocalyptic ribbons attached.

The steps behind the goal were a running battle between weeds and boulders of rubble. The toilets glowed in the dark – and also in the daylight. When Dave Barry hit the post, and all the Cork City fans jumped at once, I wondered for a moment if the terrace might open and swallow us whole.

I’ll remember my most recent cup final too – Bohemian FC vs St Patrick’s Athletic last Sunday. Not out of any affection for either team. In a perfect world, both would have lost. But because the game, at the Aviva Stadium, drew a record sell-out attendance crowd of around 43,000. As I pushed through the throng, I couldn’t help thinking: what’s happened to League of Ireland soccer?

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What’s happened is that the League of Ireland (LOI) has become fashionable. Attendances are increasing almost everywhere. It’s just a few years since I was one of a crowd of fewer than 3,400 who turned up to watch Cork City play St Patrick’s Athletic at a dead rubber tie in Inchicore. Today, Pats average more than 4,000 per home game.

The scenario is similar at Dalymount Park. Bohemian FC started as an offshoot of the Royal Hibernian Military School and are part of the long history of Anglo-Irish institutions in Dublin.

But just a few years ago, the club’s attempts at enticing punters were perfunctory, to put it mildly. The marketing campaign included a troupe known as the “News of the World dancers”, who would come out and wave to the crowd at half-time.

How far Bohs have come: today, the club celebrates not its British heritage extending back to the Royal Hibernian Military School but the more recent history of Dalymount Park, which hosted gigs by Bob Marley and Thin Lizzy in the late 1970s. Craft beer is on tap at the Dalymount bar, recent years have seen the appointment of a poet in residence and a climate justice officer.

It’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of Bohemian’s strategy to establish itself as a community club and to be upfront that social justice is its key mission rather than winning trophies or qualifying for Europe. Attendances have rocketed; the club regularly sells out its home allocation.

There is huge excitement around Dalymount – not something you could have said in 1989 when the only buzz came from the vibrations every time you jumped up and down on the terrace (long since shuttered).

But the turnaround in the League of Ireland’s fortunes isn’t simply about climate justice or St Pat’s admirable efforts to forge a link with its community. It can also be seen as a reaction to the increasing soullessness of soccer – specifically in the UK, the only country in Europe with which we in Ireland seriously compare ourselves.

Soccer in Britain has become as plastic and empty as the identikit town centres that litter England. Consider Manchester City – previously a club for underdogs and misfits, now a stultifying steamroller financed by Gulf investment.

Ireland and the LOI offer something different. The Aviva final was glamorous, but glitz remains in short supply around the LOI. To this day, many grounds carry in their hearts the spirit of Roy of the Rovers from the mid-seventies.

There are other quirks which give the league its very distinct personality. Fans of Shamrock Rovers, for instance, refuse to say the first part of the club’s name out loud. Fair enough: I’d be self-conscious if Cork City were called Shandon Shillelaghs or Leeside Leprechauns. There is also a constant boom-to-bust cycle.

Six or seven years ago, City and Dundalk were on top. Both have now fallen from grace to one degree or another (to be fair, City have fallen much further), and Shamrock and their Dublin rivals are again in the ascendancy. But it could flip on a dime, and some other team might dominate. That’s the thing about Irish soccer – there’s always a shock right around the corner.

There are also personal connections which run far deeper than anything you can experience sitting down to Sky Sports.

As I watched Cork City be relegated against Waterford in Tallaght last week, I thought of my friend Barry. I remembered all the City games we went to together – the 1992 FAI Cup Final against Bohs in the old Landsdowne Road, City’s flailing European win over Cwmbran Town in 1993, our underwhelming home draw against Dundalk in 2017.

Barry passed away a few months ago. Every time City play, my first instinct is to text him. He’d have had a lot to say about the disastrous conclusion to the season. After he died, I became convinced City would reach the cup final this year and play Bohs, just as we had when my dad drove Barry and I to the final in 92. It didn’t happen. We flopped against Pat’s in Turner’s Cross. Afterwards, driving up the M8, I broke down a little and started to cry.

I went to the Aviva anyway. There were a lot of teenagers and 20-somethings there – more than had been at Dalymount when I went in 1989. That cheered me up. If they keep going, in a few decades, they’ll have the same reservoir of memories: good times, bad times, the time you got trapped in a tunnel with the News of the World dancers because you went in the wrong entrance at Dalymount.

You don’t get those experiences from gawping at the TV in a replica jersey. And that is surely why the League of Ireland is going from strength to strength and the reason this year’s cup final heralds brighter days ahead.