Damien Duff: 'The trophy isn't ours anymore. We need to go and win it again'

Irish Examiner

01-05-2025

Scottish league supremo Neil Doncaster was an interested spectator at Tolka Park recently and must have envied observing a proper title race.
He was a guest of Mickey O'Rourke, the Shelbourne co-owner he'd done deals with for Premier Sports broadcast rights packages.
The UK wing of the station is contracted to show 20 live matches but the sense of jeopardy was long removed with Celtic cantering to the crown in April.
It's been a similar story throughout this generation - the Celts winning all bar one of the last 14 campaigns.
They've averaged three goals per game this term and are currently 17 points ahead of Rangers. A 14-point gap then stretches to third place Hibernian.
Across the Irish sea their Celtic cousins are shaping up for another gripping battle at the top.
In fact, the tension spreads into the middle too as, at the one third juncture of the season, just three points divide seven teams.
Although all have six points to play for over this second long weekend in three, nobody expects a breakaway at the front.
The outcome of the league risked descending into a procession when Shamrock Rovers racked up the first four-in-a-row for almost 40 years yet, with some assistance through the investment of O'Rourke and other multimillionaires, Damien Duff broke the stranglehold against the odds in 2024.
They completed that upset by scoring a late winner on the final night at Derry City and Shels return to the Ryan McBride Brandywell for the first time in one of Friday's five fixtures.
Last Friday's 2-2 draw at Rovers was their seventh of the season but Shels have lost none of their defensive rigidity, for their one loss is the least any of the 10 teams have suffered.
'That night is impossible to forget but I haven't mentioned it all week,' said Duff about revisiting the scene of his greatest glory.
'I could've used a visual, a quote or shown footage, but no, I didn't, it's about making new memories.
'If you dwell on the past, it holds you back from your future. The trophy isn't ours anymore. We need to go and win it again.'
Early leaders Drogheda United have been joined at the summit by Galway United but it would have been St Patrick's Athletic sitting top had they not squandered a lead in the dying moments at Bohemians last week.
'It had never happened in my league career that my team lost a game when ahead in the 89th minute,' lamented Saints boss Stephen Kenny who only suffered that fate as Ireland boss through Cristiano Ronaldo's late brace in Faro.
'We would have gone top by two points, so losing 2-1 is a tough one to take. To concede the same type of goal, off a second phase from a set-piece, two goals in a row is disappointing.'
Conversely, it was a welcome repeat for Bohemians. They'd also fought back to beat Shamrock Rovers five days earlier and the heat around Alan Reynolds has eased. Their erratic form of six wins and six defeats across their 12 games is reflected by their mid-table position.
'Our players' persistence paid off by winning the last three games now but we know that the challenge for us now is to keep that going,' said Reynolds ahead of hosting his former club, Waterford. 'We can't take the foot off the pedal.'
The Blues bounced back from seventh defeats, a streak which cost Keith Long his job, to beat Derry City.
That leapfrogged them above Munster rivals Cork City, who welcome Shamrock Rovers to Turner's Cross.
'It will be a strange feeling playing back in Cork,' admits Rovers' former City midfielder Matt Healy, who missed the recent 4-1 win.
'We look for three points in every game and a run of wins can allow us to massively rise up the table and break away from the group.' As the campaign illustrates, that's easier said than done.