This is Derry City now. Yes, taken at the brassiest of tacks, they are FAI Cup champions after a record 4-0 win over Shelbourne here. But as the flares lit up the November air and The Undertones kicked in, you got that thrilling sense that they can maybe be more than that too. A movement. A club going places.
It’s there in the way that the crowd of 32,412 that came to the Aviva Stadium tilted significantly in their favour. It’s there in the obvious connection between them and their team, who had far too much guile, heft and skill to be troubled by a callow Shels side. It’s there in the way their young, home-grown coach Ruaidhrí Higgins talks about what it means to be from Derry and what it could mean for the city, given a fair wind.
Higgins left the Ireland set-up 18 months ago to manage his home club and in this, his first full season, he has guided them to second place in the final table and now a first FAI Cup since 2012. On the bus to Dublin on Saturday he showed his team the Derry City documentary Different League. The theme, always, is potential. Look where they’ve come from. Look what they could be.
“We always try to educate them on the history of the club. It gives them an opportunity to see it for themselves. We tried to play on it a bit this week. The potential is vast but, again, next year there will be more expectation to deal with that. The players will have to deal with it and so be it, it’s great.
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“Hopefully this can be a springboard for us. We can’t take anything for granted. We’ve got to chip away in the background and make everything better and improve. Improve standards around the place on and off the pitch and see what we can turn the place into.”
Here, they had more than enough to get what they came for. Derry squeezed Damien Duff’s young team like a breakfast chef juicing a grapefruit. It took them only 26 seconds to sniff that Shels hadn’t met the moment and although Jamie McGonigle’s toe-poke was well blocked by goalkeeper Brendan Clarke, Derry were soon able to find their rhythm.
Nobody more so than Patrick McEleney. Playing in his eighth FAI Cup final, the Derry midfielder was in his element. He always found time on the ball, frequently dropping into space just in front of the Derry defence to do so. His long diagonal pass to Ryan Graydon just short of the 20-minute mark brought the breakthrough, with Shels wing-back Shane Carroll left for dead and McGonigle applying a slick finish.
“People have spoken about his injury record and stuff like that,” said Higgins of McEleney afterwards. “But he’s played the guts of 30 games for us this year and from the summer on I think he’s been one of the outstanding players in the league. He’s a lad from Shantallow who was a season ticket holder. He followed the team everywhere, up and down the country. To see him lift the trophy, it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.”
For Shelbourne this was chastening stuff. In a century of cup finals nobody had ever lost by four goals before. Derry keeper Brian Maher barely got to use his hands all afternoon, and none of the young players who brought Duff’s side on such an enjoyable run to the final were able to get their legs under them at any stage.
“The goals you could argue were all things we talked about and touched on on the training pitch during the week but I guess it’s about doing it under the lights at the stadium. Like I said to the guys after the game there, sometimes you grow more as a person and learn more about yourself on the difficult days. In a strange way I enjoyed difficult times as a player because I knew I would come back better and stronger. That’s what we can take out of it,” said Duff.
“When I was crap individually or had a disappointment in my career, I enjoyed it. Because I knew I’d come better, and I guess I have to put that mentality into the team.
“Looking back at our preparation we left no stone unturned. I would still go to the Aviva all over again and it will have helped in some ways. I did a penalty shoot-out on the Saturday hoping to replicate it on a Sunday. But the minute you’re out there with the stadium full, the lights are on, you’re dealing with a different animal.
“If we strip it back we could say Derry dealt with the occasion better than us. There was an air of maybe just flatness and the occasion getting to our young squad. But I can’t fault them.”
