Duff's Shels era went as nobody would have believed and ended as anyone would have predicted

The 42

26-06-2025

WHICH IS YOUR stand-out, Duffer-you're-not-in-Kansas-anymore moment?
This column's is from Shels' league game at the UCD Bowl during his first season, when a sprinkler went rogue and stalled proceedings for eight minutes until it was quelled by an upturned wheelbarrow.
This was one episode in the general fascination with his time in the League of Ireland. How would Duff adapt from performing on Broadway to directing on local arts venue stages?
Ultimately it went as nobody would have believed and ended as anyone would have predicted.
Duff proved to be loveable and maddening; tactical and impulsive; angry and empathetic; hilarious and austere and just generally magnificent.
He has been likened to his old boss Jose Mourinho but there are vital differences. Mourinho always cuts an air of cynicism and calculation; with Jose, he always felt slightly separate to that in which he was involved, and so his stunts and rows were always refracted through cool self-interest. Duff was nowhere near as haughty or calculating: he was all-in, standing not above his players but among them.
He did not give the impression of a Machiavellian schemer, whose heart and head are kept in strict segregation. No, Duff's were integrated to the point of appearing irretrievably tangled. Hence you never knew whether any of his actions were driven by chilled rationality or raw emotion.
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Around Duff, no ironies or cynicisms could survive, and this is what made the whole show so compelling. Here was a manager who was liable to say anything without ever giving you the impression he didn't firmly believe in that which he had just said. This is a very rare quality: Roy Keane and Eamon Dunphy have been as unpredictable on camera, but they often wore a slight wry smile to allow the audience know it's all just showbiz at the end of the day. Not Duff.
This column sometimes wonders if the intensity of Duff's involvement in it all was a slight over-compensation, as he arrived into the job aware that he was a Football Man, but not a League of Ireland man.
That there is such a distinction is of course the original sin of Irish football, but it is a reality. The most encouraging fact of the last few years is the chipping away at these divides, with the country and then the FAI waking up to the fact that the health of the national team is symbiotic with the health of the national professional league.
The Brexit impact on player development along with the national team's low ebb have played a big part in dissolving these idiotic past boundaries, but Duff played his own role. That a man this successful and famous would be so absorbed within the League of Ireland conferred the league with a certain legitimacy in the eyes of the Floating Voter. It's a hell of a legacy to leave. While Duff is not solely responsible for the league's recent boom, no single person has done more to launch that boom.
The trajectory of his Shels team, meanwhile, was irresistible: Cup final in his first year, European qualification in his second, and league title in his third.
That league triumph will live in the memory as one of the most improbable Irish sporting triumphs of the century. There is no sporting competition more difficult to win as an outsider than a professional football league, and there is no competition in Irish sport more attritional than the 36-game League of Ireland Premier Division.
It was an absurd achievement, really, with a group of players who even in their manager's abrasive final days could acknowledge had their lives changed. A good manager fulfils his players' potential, where a great manager awakens his players to their potential before then fulfilling it. Shels' league triumph will be remembered forever because Duff did the latter.
But maintaining that trajectory's peak was beyond him. Duff began grumbling about his players' standards and motivations as early as pre-season, which culminated in those extraordinary comments last Friday night, in which he said he was on his knees trying to provide spark and motivation where his players steadfastly refused.
This was the predictable ending, as Duff appears to be another great footballer worn out by his intolerance for the lower standards around him.
For all his inconsistencies, Duff's entire Shelbourne career was a war on low standards, both among his squad and around the league. Pitches, referees, facilities, academies, Friday-Monday turnarounds, Abbotstown, mid-season breaks, even the picture him on Dalymount's grassy knoll: all have been attacked at some point for being unbecoming of Irish football.
He has appeared to have walked from Shelbourne because he felt his players were incapable of meeting his standards once again. You might argue that Duff is a man of unreasonable demands, but he is a man of unreasonable accomplishments.
A 100-cap senior international, a World Cup goalscorer and a key part of one of the best Premier Leagues sides of all time: nobody achieves any of this without a wild and unstinting commitment. (Some footballers write an autobiography to reveal the truth of their playing days – Duff instead became manager of Shelbourne.)
The ending, though, is only a small part of the story.
Duff is a man of multitudes, and he dedicated them all to Shelbourne and the League of Ireland. He should be forgiven for feeling exhausted.
Our golden days have suddenly dimmed.