Reeling In The Years II: December 3rd 2006

This Sunday November 4th 2012 Trevor Croly's St Patrick's Athletic take on Derry City in the second leg of the FAI Cup Final, with the Saints trailing 4-3 from the first leg (which took place all of 6 years ago at Lansdowne Road, or The Old Aviva Stadium as it was known at the time.) All memory of December 3rd 2006 was immediately expunged and pushed deep into the subconscious, and it's only after a lengthy period of psychoanalysis in an exclusive asylum on the outskirts of Vienna that The ExPat can confront its demons and speak of what unfolded that fateful day. Here goes...

The Old Aviva Stadium

Quite why 6 years separate the first and second legs of Irish football's blue riband event is anyone's guess, but what is known is that on and off the field of play both clubs are virtually unrecognisable from those which went head-to-head (or, in Clive Delaney's case, head-to-chest) on that tempestuous December afternoon.

To be honest, I don't even know if I'll still be here in six years. Probably Not. Mark Rutherford

With a 7th place finish in the league (a full 25 points behind Derry), the Saints went into the first leg as confirmed underdogs, a tag manager John McDonnell was only too happy to accept.

"Listen," he candidly told journalists in the week leading up to the match, "I really don't know how we managed to get this far at all. Barry Ryan's 5'2", Stephen Brennan doesn't know the offside rule, and I only signed Mark Rutherford for a bet."

 

Added to which, these days were amongst the very darkest in Saints' history when money (to paraphrase Mark Quigley's favourite recording artist) was too tight to mention; before Garret Kelleher rode in on his gilded horse and spent a king's ransom to win the 2011 Leinster Senior Cup. Indeed, so dire were the club's financial straits in 2006 that the squad travelled to The Old Aviva on the DART from Pearse Street via a 78A from The Workmans' Club on Emmet Road. Stephen Quigley, meanwhile, in a misguided attempt to save money, had resorted to cutting his own hair.

Stephen Quigley, came within a hair's breath of legendary status

Not that Derry City were entirely without their money problems. The week leading up to the first leg saw the Pound fall dramatically against the Euro, increasing their supports' matchday expenses by an average of 8%, and it was feared that few would make the trip across the border. But, credit where it's due, the Official Derry City Supporters Club travelled in great number, though - truth be told - they were outsung for much of the match by their erstwhile comrades, the Provisional Derry City Supporters Club, while both the Continuity Derry City Supporters Club and the Real Derry City Supporters Club continued their boycott of the cup, refusing to recognise the FAI's jurisdiction and seeing themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the old IFA Cup, despite the club being formed in 1985.

Mark Quigley, Holding Back The Years

 The game itself was played in conditions best described as cunty. RTE pundit and self-styled dandy, Damien Richardson, felt sure the game would not go ahead.

"The nebulosity of the day really ought to have been a harbinger of what has since befallen," he began. "And the copious precipitation coupled with relentless wind is not conducive to the uninhibited movement of an Association Football football."  

An Association Football football

Dave Barry could only agree. "It's fucking pissing out," he said. "You'd want to be a mad cunt to play that."

But the match did go ahead, or - as Rico himself might put it - go ahead the game did do.

Both sides lined up with a conventional 4-4-2, this being a few years before Liam Buckley invented tactics, with the Saints sporting a claret and blue stripped jersey in apparent homage to then Segunda División side Levante UD. Derry City, as the designated home side, wore their trademark red and white candystripe strip <insert paedo joke here>.

To say Derry were formidable would be a gross understatement, but the Saints did anything but cower before their more illustrious opponents, with Dave Mulcahy doing a stellar job in shackling In The Name Of The Father extra Paddy McCourt, pint-sized Trevor Molloy terrorising the towering figure of Clive Delaney, Paul Keegan bossed fellow bus-pass-holder Peter Hutton, while both Mark Rutherford and second-half substitute Sean O'Connor gave a hard time to Derry's makeshift left-back, a certain Killian Brennan.

A Barber's Warrant For The Arrest Of Patrick James McCourt

The game began and ended, the sides sharing 7 goals between them, 4 for Derry, 3 for the Saints. 6 years have passed and the Saints are stronger, Derry weaker; the heartbreak of December 3rd 2006 lingers, but the 3 away goals scored that day afforded the belief that the tie remained alive. And so it remains. A solitary goal this coming Sunday would be enough to put the Saints ahead on away goals, securing both the 2006 and 2012 FAI Cups and ending half a century of regret and missed opportunities. Whoever scores or however they do it couldn't matter less.