Six hundred and four months

Fresh off a hard-fought draw against 9 men Bohs, Pete Mahon takes his knackered charges to the RSC this Friday for an FAI Cup Fourth Round tie against First Division Waterford Utd.  The FAI Cup has been a cunt of a competition for the Saints, bringing nothing but perennial heartbreak and misery. Gluttons for punishment that we are, we never learn. Every year we fancy our chances and every year we have our hearts broken and vow to never hope again.  The next year we fancy our chances and when we have our hearts broken we vow to never hope again. And then the next year we fancy our chances and when we have our hearts broken we vow to never hope again. And then the next year we fancy our chances and when we have our hearts broken we vow to never hope again…But this year I really do think we have a chance.

No journo or pundit can write or speak about the Saints and the Cup without mentioning how long it has been since we last tasted success. This is bollox. It has only been half a century, which, as any two-bit historian will tell you, is nothing. It was in April 1961that the Saints defeated Bertie Ahern’s beloved Drumcondra at Dalymount Park to lift their second and – as yet – last Cup. A mere six hundred and four months ago, which is only 18,383 days or 26,471,520 minutes.

Seems like only yesterday...

In that time only Shamrock Rovers, Shelbourne, Bohemians, Limerick, Cork Hibernians, Finn Harps, Home Farm, Dundalk, Waterford, Limerick Utd, Sligo Rovers, UCD, Derry City, Bray Wanderers, Galway Utd, Cork City, Longford Town, Drogheda Utd, and Sporting Fingal have won the cup. Athlone Town, for example, haven’t won it either in those six hundred and four months or 18,383 days or 26,471,520 minutes. Do the journos and pundits mention it every time Athlone play a cup game? Do they fuck.

Our greatest hope comes from the subtle ties that bind our squad to the year 1961 and the events that occurred 604 months or 18,383 days or 26,471,520 minutes ago.

In January of 1961, for instance, John F Kennedy was sworn in as the 35^th President of the United States of America, everyone’s second favourite country (after England). Kennedy was widely suspected of having had an affair with ride-and-a-half Marilyn Monroe, former wife of playwright Arthur Miller. Monroe appeared in many of her former husband’s works, but perhaps most notably in The Misfits, which is also the title of Ian Daly’s favourite TV show (minus the ‘the’). Ordinarily not a betting man, that alone is enough for me to wager Daly will score the winning goal in this year’s final.

Marylin Munroe, Hollywood stunner but according to Andy Gray “she would struggle on a cold night in Inchicore,” and would be” beaten up by long balls into the box.”

In February of ’61 Oasis-preludes, The Beatles, performed for the very first time in The Cavern Club.  The links between Liverpool’s fourth best band (after Echo & The Bunnymen, The La’s, and The Coral) are almost too numerous to mention. For starters, Back In The USSR is the official soundtrack to St Patrick’s Athletic’s  Europa League campaigns. Saints forward Daryl Kavanagh sings himself to sleep every night to the tune of Happiness Is A Warm Gun, and then there’s Shane McFaul’s hair…

He is the walrus

In April of ’61 the Soviet Union struck a mighty blow in the space race when Yuri Gagarin became the first man to leave the earth’s orbit. Before asking yourself ‘what the fuck has the Soviet Union, the space race, or Yuri fucking Gagarin got to do with Pats and the Cup?’ think. You might be pleasantly surprised.  The left-leaning people of Scottish town Cowdenbeath decided to mark the twentieth anniversary of the socialist cosmonaut’s feat by renaming a street in his honour. According to Google Maps, Cowdenbeath is a mere 20.7 miles from Edinburgh or 39 minutes on the A90 with an estimated fuel cost of £4.15. Chris Bennion is from Edinburgh. Think about it.

In August of ’61 Barack Obama was born in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city. Obama represented Chicago’s 13th District in the Illinois Senate for several years, during which time he befriended Saints owner Garrett Kelleher who had called at his door asking if he wanted “a bit of carpet”. The two remain close, and Kelleher recently offered to dispatch Dave Mulcahy to Washington to sort out the debt crisis. The offer was politely declined but B O (as Kelleher affectionately calls him) pledged to send unmanned drones to kill innocent woman and children associated with any club who knocks the Saints out of the cup.

An unmanned drone, or 'Plan B'.

Also in August of ’61 construction began on the Berlin Wall. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carré’s classic Cold War thriller about East-West defections, double-agents, and ideological angst was set around the time of the Wall’s construction. The former MI6 man’s novel went down a storm when Stephen Bradley recommended it for the St Patrick’s Athletic Player’s Bookclub, which meets on a fortnightly basis in Caffey’s. Derek Doyle was profoundly struck by the “radical juxtaposition of perceived Western mores and the harsher reality of expediency and opportunism to achieve, frankly, questionable ends,” Paul Crowley said it was “a real page turner,” while Danny North described it as a “veritable tour de force”. There was, however, a consensus among the players that Martin Ritt’s 1965 screen adaptation had failed to capture any of the novel’s raw compellingness, despite a characteristically commanding performance from Richard Burton in the role of Alec Leamas. The point being, we’re going to win the Cup.