The 'embarrassing' cup final and the day we all became Luton Town
March 7th, 2025by Dave Donnelly
Luton Town captain Steve McNulty
I was all set to write a column this week congratulating St Patrick's Athletic on finally putting to rest Irish football's longest-standing and most bizarre hex – one of the country's most successful side's 53-year quest to add a third FAI Cup to their impressive list of honours.
It would have been through gritted teeth however, as ownership of that ignominious hex has now passed to my own club, Shamrock Rovers, whose near 30-year failure to add to a record 24 titles belies the club's proudly-worn badge of 'cup specialists.'
There is some degree of a silver lining in Pats' 2-0 victory over Derry at Lansdowne Road in that it provided the Hoops with a barely-deserved spot in the qualifying round for next season's Europa League, but all in all it's not something the club will boast about too loudly.
So it would appear a Hoops fan would welcome a distraction – any distraction – to take the spotlight away from an overdue demonkeying of Inchicore backs – but, as I've discussed previously, any sustained publicity enjoyed by the League of Ireland generally comes at the cost of our collective dignity, and it gives me no pleasure to devote my time and effort to another fire-fighting exercise.
I agonised for far too long over whether to give oxygen to the attention-seeking comments of a former League of Ireland manager on the 'embarrassing' standard of the game and the 'delusions' of those who follow the league.
I won't name the individual by name for fear of perpetuating a strange and, frankly, embarrassing debate. For the purposes of this piece, I'll simply refer to him by the cryptic and in no way revealing moniker 'Never Been Relegated' – or NBR for short.
To cut a long story short, on his downtime between management jobs, NBR has kept himself in business with a mixture of punditry engagements and the odd bit of scouting for managers across the sea.
He brought one such manager, John Still of Luton Town, to Sunday's cup final with the recommendation of three players he thought might pique Still's attention – and presumably earn himself a finder's fee were they to sign.
Alas, the final, as finals at all levels often are, was a less than stellar affair, much of which owed to the spoiling tactics of a depleted and confidence-shorn Derry City side, who sought – successfully for the first 50 minutes or so – to shut down Liam Buckley's more creative side in order to prey on their aforementioned monkey-based vulnerability.
It was a disappointing game for the purists – a group that surprisingly now contains both NBR and his English cohort – and Still went home decidedly unimpressed
