League of Ireland Monthly: July 2016

volume 3 / issue 05

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july 2016

INSIDE: A EUROPEAN ODYSSEY: DERRY IN PARIS ANDALUCIAN ADVENTURES THE LOST MUNSTER LEAGUE PT II

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FOOTBALLING ADVENTURES IN ANDULACIA Dave Galvin visits Cadiz, to see local football in the flesh in Spain, as CF Cadiz battled Racing de Santander for promotion to the Segunda Division.

Sun, smashing supporters, and plastic bottles o Cruzcampo are all on the menu!

Editor: Kevin Galvin

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Designer: Kevin Galvin Social Media: David Downey Thomas Aaron Cawley Photography: fai.ie wikipedia.org Contributors / JP Fahy Mícheál Ó hUanacháin Dave Galvin Kieran Burke Cover Page / THE BRADY BUNCH: Robbie Brady secured his place in Irish sporting history with his late headed effort to secure another famous victory against Italy in Lille.

Source: Barry Masterson barrymasterson.com The use or redistribution of any part of this magazine is strictly prohibited unless explicitly authorised by LOI Monthly

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THE LOST MUNSTER LEAGUE: PART II

Mícheál Ó hUanacháin regails us with the story of the ‘lost’ Munster League that took place between 1901 and 1904. This second part documents the death of the Munster FA

EUROPEAN ODYSSEY: CANDYSTRIPES IN PARIS

JP Fahy takes a nostalgic look back ten years ago, when Derry City travelled to the Parc de Princes, to take on the French giants Paris Saint Germain

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WHY THE GREATEST FANS IN THE WORLD MIGHT BE RIGHT With so much said in League of Ireland circles about the effect of Ireland’s success at Euro16, Kieran Burke asks, maybe Irish fans are correct?

@kjgalvin93

where attendences for all three clubs in the Europa League were below expectations.

Performances, too, were less convincing by the League of Ireland sides, and for St Patrick’s Athletic and Cork City, they will really have to raise their game if they expect to progress to the third qualifying round at the expense of Dinamo Minsk and BK Hacken respectively.

Hello all once again and welcome to the July 2016 issue of LOIMonthly, Volume 3 Issue 05.

I’m really excited about this issue, as it’s a bit of a European special, with some absolutely cracking articles from a wide spectrum to keep you entertained.

European trips carry with them a certain magic, travelling across the continent to support your local band of heroes as they take on Europe’s best, and again this year presents League of Ireland fans a fantastic opportunity to see the latest edition of Ireland v the Continent, after Ireland’s exploits at Euro 2016.

I was really pleased for Martin O’Neill, Roy Keane, and all of the players and management who were involved in the national side’s success at the recent European Championships. It’s been a bit of a tournament for underdogs (despite one C Ronaldo’s comments!) and all of our Boys in Green can be extremely proud of their efforts on the far side of the channel.

Former Shelbourne player Wes Hoolihan was idenitfied as one of Ireland’s best players over the course of the event, with Derry City’s James McClean representing himself brilliantly, and former Sligo Rovers right-back Seamus Coleman captaining the side.

After such a disasterous time four years earlier, Ireland were so close to knocking out tournament favourites (and finalists) France in Lyon a few weeks ago, and their excellent performance has reinspired Irish people about football in Ireland.

However, that once again didn’t quite convert following the tournament, particularly in Europe

For Shamrock Rovers, a miserable season continued as the Tallaght side went out pathetically to Finland’s RoPS. A disgraceful 2-0 defeat at home marked the deserved end of Pat Fenlon’s tenure, and while Stephen Bradley’s side got a much improved 1-1 draw away from home, the damage was already done.

Alan Cawley spoke recently about the fact that Shamrock Rovers are living in the past, and while his further point about the need to drop expectations is an invalid on in my opinion, he has an excellent point about Rovers’ backwards thinking.

The aura of superiority on Dublin’s southside is palpable whenever one visits the Tallaght Stadium, with constant reminders that you are indeed in the presence of ‘Ireland’s number one club’.

Dundalk, are indeed, Ireland’s number one club, and have been for the past two years. It may change this year, but at least for the moment their moniker is safe. Shamrock Rovers could indeed be Ireland’s number one club again; call me a traditionalist, but usually that involved winning the league.

Anyways, I must digress, and with so much content in this month’s magazine it would be criminal not to give it some sort of introduction.

From Paris to Cadiz to Munster there’s plenty to whet your appetite on the club game, while both Aaron Cawley and Kieran Burke look at the recent performances of Irish fans in France, and ask about its impact on the league. Savour it!

Kevin Galvin Editor, LOIMonthly

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Our intrepid tourist Dave Galvin found himself in the heart of the ‘Fondo Norte’ of Cadiz’s Estadio Ramón de Carranza

FOOTBALLING ADVENTURES IN ANDALUCÍA (With CF Cadiz) It was bound to come to pass at some point I suppose, notwithstanding the best of intentions. A publication dedicated to the domestic game was, sooner or later, always likely to feature a piece whose connection to our beloved League of Ireland was tenuous at best! But hey, it’s the summertime, everyone’s busy, busy, busy, gorging at the footballing trough of Euro 2016, and so struggling manfully to cope with all the pressures (including those of penning a LOI Monthly piece!) that having such tremendous fun presents. So, if you are a LOI diehard, less than willing to countenance any deviation from the sacred indigenous gospel, well…by all means move on now to the excellent content elsewhere in this month’s edition. In short, don’t complain to me (or to the editor for that matter) if you’ve actually gone and taken the trouble to read this stuff!

So first off, we’ll start with the low down.

Two weeks away in sunny Andalucía and desperate to transfer viewing from television to terrace, your humble writer

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finds himself high in the stands at the beautifully appointed Ramon De Carranza Stadium in Cadiz, temporarily in unison with 15,000 other locals, as Racing Santander are in town for the first leg of an end of season La Segunda B play-off. And given the fact that truthfully, the single pitifully tenuous LOI tie-in to be found in this entire scenario is that ex-home grown hit men and former Irish Internationals, Alan Campbell and Liam Buckley, both lined out for Santander in the 1980s, let’s temporarily suspend the need for linkage and simply pitch this one as a comparison exercise of sorts. A comparison that is, between our own weekly LOI match day experience and that at a lower (third tier) contest in a nation truly besotted by the Beautiful Game.

So then, a brief overview of the current Spanish Football League hierarchy and the La Segunda B play-off schedule in particular.

At the top of the Spanish pile is of course La Liga, underneath which is the second tier, La Segunda, both of which geographically encompass the entire country. Next there

is La Segunda B, effectively the 3rd tier, which consists of four regionalised divisions of 20 teams in each, a whopping 80 in total. Finally, there is the Tercera, or 4th tier, made up of no fewer than 13 separate leagues centered on autonomous regions right across Spain such as Catalonia and Andalucía, the latter given its size having distinct east and west divisions. In the past, I’ve attended Tercera fixtures at both Figueres and Palamos in Catalonia, where the standard would certainly not be that of your average LOI Premier Division fixture.

But, coming back to La Segunda B, here the top four finishers in each of the four divisions qualify for the end of season play-offs, so that’s sixteen in total.

Finishing fourth in Group IV at the end of the 201516 campaign, Cadiz CF were initially drawn against Group I runner’s up Racing Ferrol, and having safely negotiated that hurdle, moved on to a meeting with Group I winner’s Racing Santander in the quarter finals, the first leg of which is the subject of this discourse. With two promotion places on offer, the last four clubs left standing effectively contest two unrelated finals, with a place in La Segunda on offer for each winner. All as clear as mud eh? Well, it’s also interesting to note that all the giants of the Spanish game include reserve sides, either in La Segunda or La Segunda B. So for example, Real Madrid 11 as they are styled finished top of Group II while Sevilla II just pipped the aforementioned Cadiz CF to third in Group IV.

With kick off set for 8pm local time, my

good lady wife and I decided to head out early at around 5.30 pm to the Ramon De Carranza stadium, having earlier spent a hugely enjoyable day sightseeing in the beautiful city of Cadiz. Even at this early stage, our bus was packed with excited local fans along with a small group sporting the green and white stripes of Racing Santander who had travelled some 950 km, almost the entire length of Spain, to cheer on their favourites, and all the more impressive a trek, given that this was a Sunday night kickoff. Surprisingly perhaps, or then again perhaps not, there seemed to us to be little or no interaction or banter between rival supporters, which was clearly also the case earlier in the afternoon in the City’s outdoor bars and restaurants where the visiting fans were in full voice but good humoured nevertheless.

Allowing for the fact that we are talking third tier football here, Cadiz’s all glass fronted home ground, with a capacity of some 25,000, is hugely impressive, certainly by our own modest League of Ireland standards. Originally built in the 1950s and named in honour of a former mayor of Cadiz and president of the football club, all four sides of the ground were revamped in the early 2000s with every seat; it seemed to me, affording an excellent view. That said, Cadiz, along with opponent’s Racing are among a number of current La Segunda B sides to have featured in top-flight football in Spain in the not too distant past. Both Campbell and Buckley’s time with Los Verdiblancos (the Green and Whites) in the 1980’s coincided with that club playing in the top division.

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Following a very successful spell with Shamrock Rovers, Alan Campbell joined Santander in the summer of 1984. The striker, who won three caps with the Republic, made 63 La Liga appearances and scored 15 league goals during his two seasons at the Estadio El Sardinero before transferring to Club Deportivo Logrones in La Segunda. Here he notched a further 9 goals in 32 appearances before moving to Dundee in Scotland. The current St Patrick’s Athletic manager, Liam Buckley, had already sampled the European game with KSV Waregem in Belgium before replacing Campbell at Racing in 1986. Buckley scored 5 times in 35 La Liga appearances in just a single season before moving to Swiss football with FC Montreaux Sports and back again to the League of Ireland. Liam was capped against both Poland and Mexico in 1984 and also represented the LOI XI.

With admission prices ranging from €25 to roughly € 100, and having secured tickets in the Fondo Norte (North Stand) high up above the city end goalmouth, our first visit was to the impressive Cadiz CF club shop. While mostly selling off a wide range of obviously soon to be updated stock, the current adult home jersey weighed in at €60, roughly on a par with the asking price here at home. Earlier in the week, in the equally beautiful Andalucían city of Seville, a Real Betis (Sevilla’s great city rivals) home jersey was selling at a whopping €75!

Despite being very much at the tail end of the season, the Cadiz shop was nevertheless packed with browsers and buyers, and had queues forming for the cash registers even at this early stage two hours ahead of kickoff.

Out on the streets, home fans were noisy and boisterous, with many, some

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surprisingly quite young it appeared, downing litre bottles of locally made Cruzcampo beer. There was a large police presence on the ground, while a police helicopter constantly circled overhead.

Mind you, the cops seemed to have no obvious interest in alcohol consumption, concentrating their efforts largely at the train station (the club has its own one!) where arriving Racing fans were subject to the heckling, jeering and smoke bomb throwing of the locals. Interestingly, unlike here at home, no one seemed overly keen to actually enter the ground, so that as kick off approached the narrow streets became ever more congested. In the event, there was a mighty last minute rush with security rigorously searching all bags, and allowing in only uncapped plastic drink bottles. Inside, your ticket was swiped at an inner turnstile similar to the type you might see on the Paris Metro or the London Underground, while at the back of the stands on the upper floors, was an impressive selection of hot food, snacks, and drink (soft and otherwise) outlets.

As the game kicked-off the atmosphere was well charged. Particularly impressive were the chants that rang out from the ‘ultras’ on the Fonde Sud (South Stand) across to the crew in our own Fonde Norte and back again. To be fair, any lull in the home’ racket’ was impressively filled by the estimated (by me) 500 visiting fans that certainly made their voices heard too. Virtually everyone that I could see sported a jersey, while what were obviously vintage ones seemed a popular. Whether or not that’s a reflection on Spain’s recent economic hardships or a commentary on the style and design of Cadiz’s more recent jerseys, I couldn’t say! As to the quality of the play in the opening half hour or so, I suppose you would have to allow for an understandable nervousness and caution for what was after all the first of two legs.

The streets of Cadiz were flooded following the Andalucian side’s promotion to the Segunda division at the expense of Racing Santander.

Photo: @CadizCF_SAD

That said it was pretty poor fare, with lots of inaccurate passing, lumping of the ball forward, while a young referee had his hand full with some fairly hefty tackling.

The hosts for their part, with a few exceptions, were on average considerably older than the Racing boys, who, more youthful and less ponderous in the buildup, looked all the time to strike quickly on the break. Both starting line-ups were exclusively Spanish though Cadiz did bring on an impressive young Ghanaian, Nana Gasare, late in the game, while two of the visitor’s three substitutes were French.

Particular favourites with the home crowd seemed to be the goalkeeper Alberto who I later checked is 37 years of age, midfielder David Sanchez who is 33 and ex Spanish International centre forward Daniel ‘Dani’ Guiza who is 35 and made 26 senior appearances for Spain between 2007 and 2010 when lining out with Mallorca and Fenerbache in Turkey. Not to be too unkind, all too often on this occasion, Guiza looked

every one of his 35 years! As the half wore on things began to settle down and the standard improved with Cadiz enjoying the bulk of the possession. Half time arrived with the game still scoreless, while the halftime entertainment proved fairly ordinary fare too, in fact there wasn’t any!

In the event, the game turned on a 68th minute penalty decision, which happened directly below us with Cadiz on the attack.

Personally, I felt it was a harsh decision, as it appeared the defender hadn’t seen Guiza coming as he tried to clear the ball while facing his own goal. Without veering off onto much of a rant, to me there didn’t appear to be intent, but increasingly now in the game, the question of intent in the context of a foul or a hand ball has been diluted as TV commentators and substandard pundits clamber for even more controversy to serve up and dissect for the viewer’s delectation. The question of handball seems to have gotten completely out of hand in recent seasons where raising your arms to protect your face has

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rapidly become akin to a real life felony in the eyes of Sky TV and their ilk. In any case, the referee pointed to the spot and the aforementioned David Sanchez fairly thumped it home. This had the dual effect of raising the decibel levels even higher, and opening up the game, as Racing abandoned their heretofore cautious approach.

Try as they might however, the visitors failed to create a really clear-cut chance thereafter, the game ending 1-0 to the home side. And though we might not have understood the words, the chanting from a happy home support reverberating around

many other aspects, stadium facilities and atmosphere in particular, are not comparable in any real sense given where we’re coming from here in the League of Ireland. Then again, the fact that our own league has overcome all that it has had to cope with in more than 90 years, to still proudly hold its own and retain our affections, is to my mind a far greater testament to genuine survival than many another example in other jurisdictions where football is the real religion.

Exactly a week on from the game at the Ramon De Carranza and the return leg

Former Spanish international ‘Dani’ Guiza in the yellow of Cadiz

the stairwell walls as we made our way down to the street, certainly raised the hairs on the back of the neck! As fans made their way to nearby bars or awaited public transport into Cadiz city, we made for the nearby underground car park and turned south for the 60km journey home to our temporary base in beautiful Conil de la Frontera on the Andalucian Coast.

All in all, this whole experience was both interesting and enjoyable. If pressed for an opinion, I’d rate the standard of play as roughly equal to, or perhaps just a tad above a good competitive top of the Premier LOI clash here at home. Obviously,

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at the Estadio El Sardinero in Santander produced the exact same score line with a single Alvaro Garcia strike enough to see Cadiz CF through to a decider against Hercules de Alicante CF, themselves a La Liga outfit as recently as 2010. Unbelievably, Cadiz also won both legs of this final tie by just a single goal, four 1-0 wins on the trot, so that as I finish up this piece with 44 of the 51 games at Euro 2016 completed, and holder’s Spain having just exited to those canny Italians, Cadiz CF have finally made it to the promised land of La Segunda.

Hopefully after such a concerted effort, they will prosper in the 2016/17 campaign, and who knows, even challenge for a La Liga berth in the not too distant future.

‘Cork Park’ racecourse, on the site of the current Marina, 1869

THE LOST MUNSTER LEAGUE 1901-1904

Part 2: Things Fall Apart: The death of the Munster FA

Mícheál Ó hUanacháin

As the 1900s made way for the 1910s, the Munster League and its organisation, the Munster FA, were on the crest of a wave.

The Senior Cup had been won in its third season by Cork Celtic, a victory over the Leinster Regiment that prompted the President of the Munster FA, Lt R Prewer (a well-respected referee) to remark patronisingly that it was good to see a civilian team “get a turn” at winning it.

Haulbowline made the Final the following year, but thereafter there wasn’t a single non-military team in the nine remaining Cup Finals of that era.

And the military tightened their grip on the League, too. The First Battalion, the Royal Welch Fusiliers (very proud of their archaic

spelling, isn’t it) completed a double-double with League and Cup victories in 1908/9 and 1909/10. Having been pipped for the Cup in 1907/8 by the 31st Royal Field Artillery, they beat the South Lancashire Regiment and the Highland Light Infantry in successive Finals after that.

The Black Prince, once the pride of the new British iron-clad navy, had been retired and eventually sold for scrap, her place as a training ship briefly taken by the much less elegant HMS Skipjack, which duly fielded a team in the League, though we don’t know if they also took over the Prince’s lease on the field in Ringaskiddy!

By 1910/11, the Combination had been renamed the Intermediate League, and there 11 9

was now also a Limerick & District League, but with 23 military teams out of a total of 37, the fatal weakness was still present.

And from 1911/12, the Second Division was divided in two, its champions to be decided by a play-off between the winners of the two sections. The Senior League was atrophying, Cork Celtic dropping out after 1908/9 and Haulbowline the following year, to leave it all-military. It had only five teams in 1910/11, when the Third Rifle Brigade were the winners, and four in 1911/12.

Whether that is an explanation for the gradual loss of newspaper coverage or not, there is a very significant decline in match reports (which were unpredictable at best in any case) and more particularly in fixtures and results for the league as a whole, and especially for the Senior League from the beginning of the 1911/12 season on.

Just before what would turn out to be the last season of that Munster League got under way, in October 1913, the Cork Examiner flamboyantly announced that its sister paper, the Evening Echo, would be publishing a weekly column on the sport, every Friday during the season.

The Echo duly carried a couple of extensive columns signed by “Soccerite” in November. Its match reports on the 21st of that month included a reference to a “first period, a very exciting 35 minutes”, which may indicate either a cavalier attitude in Munster to the required duration of games, or a singular lack of background information on the part of the journalist.

Either way, it was hardly a ringing endorsement of the future for the game in the south – or in the Echo.

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The newspapers’ enthusiasm waned quickly, and before long neither was giving consistent information about the leagues, even failing to get the clubs’ names right at times, not to mention the military teams – 24th Battery, Royal Field Artillery is variously described as 24th Rifle Brigade, or 24th Brigade or 24th Battalion, while among the civilians the Bellevue club appears as Belview, Belleview or Bellvue, all in the same paper!

And while the 1914 Senior Cup Semi-Final between the Third Rifle Brigade and the Royal Navy got a detailed match report, with teams listed, in Easter Saturday’s Echo, the Final the following Monday (a 1-1 draw between the Rifles and 24 Battery RFA) was simply listed as a result, and the replay on 22 April – which the Rifles won 4-1 – got a measly three sentences.

What is striking is that the Senior League was by that stage practically invisible, to the extent that one must ask whether a senior division was being contested at all that season. If it was, it got none of the oxygen of publicity, a single stray mention of a match on 9 March in which the aforementioned “24th Rifle Brigade” beat “Rifle Brigade” 3-1 at the Camp Field, Cork, being all that has surfaced so far.

The Junior League (we would now class it as Intermediate), also known as the Second Division, was played in two sections, Cork and Queenstown, and despite the fact that fully half of the teams were military, two civilian clubs headed the sections by the middle of May, and played off for the Tyler Cup, which was now awarded to the Second Division Champions. Barrackton United beat Haulbowline by the single goal scored in that match at Victoria Cross on 16 May 1914, what may have been the last

HMS Skipjack, who, in 1909 replaced its sister ship the Black Prince and a replacement team in Munster duly followed

Association-approved League match in Munster until the 1920s.

When war between the Great Powers was declared in early August 1914, the amateur game in England practically disappeared overnight as hundreds, and then thousands, of men queued to join the armed services.

The Football Association dithered for weeks before deciding its (considerably depleted) professional game should continue, though “(i)t was resolved that clubs should give every facility for the temporary release of players who desired to join the colours.”

The Irish Football Association hedged its bets, keeping the Belfast & District League going, thus satisfying the bulk of its clubs, but suspending the Irish League and effectively leaving the southern game to the Leinster FA, which duly emerged after the war in rude good healh.

The Munster Association, whose competitions wouldn’t have begun until late October in any case, wrote to Belfast

in November to inform the parent body that they “had decided to abandon football for the present owing to the war.”

There is some evidence of charity matches, principally involving military teams and in aid of POWs or injured soldiers, in 1915 and a few in 1916, and then nothing until 1918/19, though a “Southern District League”, seemingly a purely military competition, is covered from late 1916. In late 1921, what seems like an embryo league is being played by teams representing various RIC Divisions and military units. But there is no indication of any organisation behind them, or any civilian involvement.

The quondam President of the MFA, William Henry Russell Prewer, was a man who had risen through the ranks – he had been listed in the late 1890s as a Quartermaster in the Royal Artillery. He officiated as a referee in the Munster game, when he was a lieutenant, and it seems he may have been the “Mr Russell” appointed 13

The Munster Association, whose competitions wouldn’t have begun until late October in any case, wrote to Belfast in November to inform the parent body that they “had decided to abandon football for the present owing to the war.”

Chairman of Committees in the Association in 1902.

His service as a Gunner continued through the war, and by 1917 he had risen to the rank of Captain. He was awarded the MBE in November of that year and gazetted (listed officially) a brevet Major. He would survive the war and go on to election as a city councillor in Portsmouth in 1932, serving on the Council there until his death in early 1939 just two days short of his 72nd birthday.

There is little information on the membership of the Munster Asociation Council or committees in those final seasons before the Great War, and little reason to suppose its records and papers have survived.

In November 1920, a plaintive small ad in the Cork Examiner asked “Will any member or official of the late Munster Football Association, or any Club Secretary who had been in connection therewith, 14

kindly communicate with the Secretary of the Irish Football Association, Ltd, Mr Chas Watson,18 Wellington Place, Belfast.”

Mr Watson’s appeal was likely to fall on deaf ears by then. The Munster soccer fraternity had the example of their Leinster brothers before them, and it wasn’t long before the attempt to build a structure in the province began once more. From the ground. Just as it had done twenty years earlier.

“Sir,” says a correspondent in the Examiner in August 1921, “I should like to see someone come forward and re-open the Association Football Leagues again.” He goes on, much as his predecessor Dribbling Code did, “I am of opinion that sufficient clubs could be found to comprise a League, and would suggest that those interested come together ...”

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Candystripe fans in the Parc de Princes

Photo: wikipedia.org

A European Odyssey: The Candystrpes in Paris JP Fahy remembers a time when his beloved Derry City stood toe-to-toe with the French giants At the time of writing St Patrick’s Athletic have already embarked on their European run with a 1-0 victory over Jeunesse Esch of Luxembourg whilst Dundalk, Shamrock Rovers and Cork City await their European odyssey for 2016 to begin. A time of year that four teams are of envy of all League of Ireland teams, which takes me back 10 years since my beloved Derry City were the envy of the whole league when they embarked on an unforgettable run which became known in these parts as “A European Odyssey”.

It is a campaign we will never forget, domestically and European, we came within a round of making complete Irish history in Europe whilst making history along the way, as well as missing out on a second domestic treble on goal difference. When the first round draw threw us former UEFA Cup Winners IFK Goteborg of Sweden even the most avid of Derry City fan could not really give us a chance. The tie even sparked a response from former Everton midfielder Niclas Alexandersson to state that he and his fellow team mates were coming to Derry for a holiday, I’m sure you can guess how that went down. Despite Sean Hargan giving

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us a 1-0 win away from home I don’t think we truly believed we could do it until Stephen O’Flynn gave us a 1-0 lead in the second leg, even then the tie still wasn’t beyond doubt, but we got there, but not before the referee awarded them a penalty only to be overruled by his linesman.

Next up was Scottish Cup runners-up Gretna and again more trash talk from our opponents trying to belittle us, their manager Rowan Alexander even took a personal swipe at Stephen Kenny, for the life of us we couldn’t understand why a team from the Scottish First Division were doing this. Then we realised, they were trying to unsettle us and after 12 minutes at Motherwell’s Fir Park their tactics seemed to be working as they took the lead, however 10 minutes later Darren Kelly restored parity and we seemed to settle after that. This particular second half is the best half of football I have ever seen Derry City play, whatever Stephen Kenny said to those players at halftime no-one knows but what we do know is it worked as we came out like men possessed and thrashed Gretna with two stunning goals from Kevin Deery added to by another two from Ciaran Martyn. After the first leg we put

the game beyond reasonable doubt and again answered the mind games and in return equalling a club record 5-1 win which was previously done in the mid 60’s against FK Lyn of Norway. The second leg was a dampened but far from dull affair, again Gretna took the lead but like the first leg parity was restored quickly through the late great Mark Farren, Ken Oman gave us the lead but Gretna came away with a draw when Ryan Baldacchino equalised.

Thursday 14th September 2006 is undoubtedly the biggest competitive game to ever take place at the Brandywell, forget any league deciders, FAI Cup Semi-Finals, League Cup Finals or Setanta Cup games. UEFA Cup first round proper Derry City vs Paris Saint Germain, the Parisians possessed a squad that was full of household names in European if not world football, players like French international goalkeeper Mickael Landreau, Portuguese international Gabriel Pauleta who, three months previous led the line as Portugal made it to the last four of the FIFA world cup.

Three of the squad would later go on and compete in the Premier League with Newcastle United, David Rozenhal and Fabrice Pancrate, The fondly rememberd Mark Farren was instrumental to Derry’s run that year

whilst Bernard Mendy played for Hull City; unused substitutes included Urguayan interna-

tional Cristian Rodriguez and Colombian Mario Yepes. Yeah we were frightened. The away trip was already booked regardless of the first leg result, we were going to Paris to have fun anything else was a bonus; we rode our luck in the first leg, I remember Darren Kelly clearing one off the line as well as David Forde pulling off a few saves. In contrast we lacked luck also, I remember Killian Brennan smashing one off the bar with Landreau stranded and Kevin McHugh being denied a stone-wall penalty, heading to Paris was a dream, heading there having not conceded was unbelievable and allowed us to dream that wee bit more.

Thursday 28th September 2006, is now a distant memory but it is one I will never forget, having saw my beloved Derry City scrape relegation three years previous I was now watching them play football in the Parc De Princes, hoping that we could just have one more big performance to see us through to the group stages of the UEFA Cup. Having started the game brightly the dream started to become distant when former West Ham midfielder Edouard Cisse headed PSG in front and four minutes before half-time that man Pauleta killed the dream when he made 2-0. The second half was about keeping the score line respectable which we did; had we left there with a four or five nil defeat it would’ve been harsh on those players who had played their hearts out over an unforgettable European adventure.

I remember leaving the Parc de Princes seeing other League of Ireland jerseys, Cork, Galway and Dundalk are three that stand out with one of them saying to me “Your fans and your team did our league proud, not just tonight but over the European run , never ever forget this experience”. I won’t, and the reception those players got when they walked on that plane was one they deserved as they were the ones who made us dream whilst dreaming themselves.

At this point I finish by saying thank you Stephen Kenny and your team of 2006 for giving us a European Odyssey that we’ll never forget.

What an experience!

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WORDS: KIERAN BURKE

Why the ‘Greatest Fans in the World’ Might Be Right ‘The greatest fans in the world’.... the uttering of this phrase has caused great debate for many years now on social media. Those who traveled in force to France over the past number of weeks will claim the title is only just given the way followers of the Boys in Green represent the nation while abroad. However, on the flip side those who invest so much time and passion into the domestic league here ponder how this title can be awarded to a group of fans who for the majority do not go to live football in Ireland from one end of the year to the other.

Personally, I would have been in the later camp over recent years but given the current state of domestic football in this country I can now see why many would not want to join the circus that is League of Ireland football.

In the space of just a couple of months we have seen the leagues oldest club fail to play out a fixture as their amateur players had not received expenses over an extended period and refused to travel. We have seen another proud club in Waterford United bounce from crisis to crisis with little or no help from the FAI who fined their manager Roddy Collins for simply speaking his mind on the current state of the league, while elsewhere attendances at clubs like Longford Town and Bray Wanderers have alarm bells

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ringing.

More often that not it is the FAI rather than the clubs that seem to take the brunt of supporters criticism for the state of Irish football and while the governing body are far from perfect it is time clubs here started to get their own houses in order and make a bigger effort to market themselves to the Irish public.

Following the game against Sweden in Paris a couple of weeks ago, the FAI released a brilliant image of the eight former LOI players in the national squad wearing jerseys of their former clubs from back home. This image not only went viral but it helped spread awareness about upcoming fixtures in the league, even if the attendances from that gameweek failed to reflect it. We all saw Ireland assistant manager and former Cobh Ramblers man Roy Keane coming out and praising the league so it’s fair to say during the European Championships the FAI did their bit for the LOI. However, as always the league clubs here failed to capitalise and sat back waiting for something to happen. Bar Shamrock Rovers, who offered a discount on the gate for anyone with a Euro 2016 match ticket, no LOI club came up with anything other than the usual

While some attempt was indeed made by the FAI to try and use the Euros to promote the League of Ireland - as seen in this picture - clubs themselves haven’t been doing enough to encorage those to step inside their grounds and experience live weekly football Photo: FAI.ie tag lines and posters to try and attract new faces into their respective grounds.

Is there a bandwagon contingent that follow the national team to major international tournaments? Of course there is, but this is the same bandwagon a number of our clubs will benefit from over the coming weeks as the glamour of Europa and Champions League action attracts unfamiliar faces through the turnstiles at Oriel, Richmond, Tallaght and Turners. The question is what will these clubs do in order to hold on to as many of these new supporters as possible? I don’t want this article to seem like a damning condemnation of every club in the league as clubs like Cork City and Dundalk to name just two deserve credit for the brands they have built within their respective communities over recent years. However, when you have clubs who fail to engage with the community in which they operate yet constantly moan about the lack of support they are receiving, what else can they expect other than ridicule?

We all do it, we all bash those who would rather wear a Man United or Chelsea jersey over a team from our own league, however, when you see what is thankfully a small minority of clubs within the league who barely

have a drop of merchandise to offer their supporters why would you expect anyone to go out of their way to buy a teams jersey they feel no real connection with? How can you feel a connection to a team hundreds of miles away would be the instant response to that but again if clubs are not making an effort to build bridges with the local community why would anyone who hasn’t perhaps got a family tradition of attending LOI games go out of their way to support that team?

If anything can be learned from the on going European Championships it’s that there’s so much more to match days than just the game itself. What the League of Ireland needs to do is make its product more attractive for families and younger supporters with better match day entertainment andof course better facilities.

You can not expect a family of four to pay forty quid just to enter a LOI ground and have no guarantee of shelter, decent toilet facilities or hot food. That isn’t going to be an enjoyable experience on a cold Irish night and again it’s easy to see why people would opt for more comfortable options. While such facilities can not be built without support from the FAI, clubs need to show they are fit to run their own show first and at the moment that is far from evident.

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