‘Saints Rising’ book shines a light on St Patrick’s Athletic

Dermot Looney is a historian, teacher and author of Saints Rising, the first-ever published history of St Patrick’s Athletic. The book is available to buy here and Dermot has kindly allowed extratime.com to publish the specially-adapted extract below.

Early November, early evening in Dublin 8.

A light breeze blows down Emmet Road as the sun sinks behind the timeworn redbrick houses curving downhill towards the crossroads at Inchicore village. A setting that had seen armies march and political revolutions start, and end, stands peaceful in the Sunday twilight. 

The calm is scarcely disrupted by the sound of the occasional passing car, distant cheers at television screens, and the gentle wind flickering lines of red and white plastic bunting.

At 5.30pm, a sole figure emerges from the metal gates of the archway adjacent to Number 125 Emmet Road. 

Setting up his ladder, he has the difficult task of erecting a long, white PVC banner over the window and bright red door of the house. None of the colleagues he works alongside are there to help.

But they are on their way - albeit too late to help him in his endeavours – along with a few thousand others, about to disturb the peace of the Inchicore evening. 

Their trip from Dublin 4 to Dublin 8 is a short one, barely four miles in distance, but the sign now covering the red bricks at 125 declares a journey which in another sense had taken decades.

The main text on the hastily-designed banner is plain and clear. “We’ve made our own History.”

Above it, the joyous context: “St Patrick’s Athletic – FAI Cup Winners 2014.”

***

This wasn’t the first time the club had won the famous old trophy. In fact, it was their third. But it had been 53 years since the Cup was last brought back to Inchicore. 

It wasn’t quite the curse of Mayo GAA, or the century-plus Cup drought of Hibernians in Scotland, but it was St Pat’s very own historic hoodoo.

Ever since Tommy Dunne had lifted the FAI Cup in Dalymount Park in 1961, two years after doing so for the first time, St Patrick’s Athletic had had a remarkably poor relationship with the blue riband competition.

Long before 2014, the FAI Cup had become something of an obsession among Saints fans. The previous season had seen the club secure the league title, playing some of the best football ever seen on the famous pitch at Richmond Park. 

For supporters of most clubs, the league title would be prized much more highly than a Cup. But, not for the first time, Pat’s were different.

About two-thirds of the modest 17,038 attendance at the Aviva Stadium on November 2nd, 2014 were cheering on the Saints against Derry City. A small but not immaterial number of them had seen Pat’s lose seven finals in a row after their 1961 triumph.

In the run up to this 2014 Final, Saints fans spoke of dread, fear and the weight of expectation. But manager Liam Buckley was having none of it. 

Following a facile semi-final win against Finn Harps, Buckley told the assembled media; “I can guarantee you that every one of our players will see themselves winning. History is not a burden - we can make our own bit of history.”

The club’s volunteer media team saw the potential of Buckley’s quote and turned it into the theme of the run-up to the Cup final. 

“We make our own history” adorned posters, Youtube videos and soundbite after soundbite in media previews. 

The online hashtag #WeMakeOurOwnHistory was popularised by an unconventional series of tweets from American actor Wendell Pierce, most famous for playing Bunk in hit drama The Wire. A New Orleans Saints fan, he had become enamoured with Ireland’s own Saints a year earlier, frequently showing online support.

Regardless of how a manager plays it, football players are often insulated from historical hang-ups of supporters. 

Killian Brennan, one of the star midfielders of the side, didn’t know about the 53-year hex until the run-up to the final. But others on the team knew it all too well.

Club captain Ger O’Brien had stood in the Shed End of Richmond Park as a kid, his father a huge Saints fan. 

Left-full Ian Bermingham was from nearby Ballyfermot, a hotbed of Saints support - he would go on to succeed O’Brien as captain and become the player with the most appearances in Pat’s history.

Goalkeeper Brendan Clarke was steeped in the St Pat’s story. His grandfather Des Byrne had been on the losing side for the Saints in the 1954 Cup final, and his uncle Seán Byrne had been part of the Pat’s team who lost in 1974. 

Gifted midfielder Keith Fahey, playing his last game for the club, was a bona fide Pat’s legend who had won 16 senior caps for the Republic of Ireland in between spells at the Saints.

The hero of the hour and a half did not have the Pat’s heritage of some of his teammates. But unfair as it might be to his teammates, his name goes down in history as the man who won the Cup for Pat’s. 

Striker Christy Fagan, off the back of 20 League goals in 2014 (the most by a Pat’s player since the great Shay Gibbons in the 1950s), had had a frustrating first half but opened the scoring six minutes after the interval with a shot that trickled into the Derry net. 

Then, with Pat’s still just a goal up in injury time, their fans’ fingernails bitten to quicks, Fagan took advantage of a slip-up in the Derry defence to round the keeper and score the winner.

For many who attended, it took place in slow motion. For those watching at home, the commentary of RTÉ’s George Hamilton gave the soundtrack to a moment in history.

“Oh, and a miskick here…and maybe…a chance for a second…and it is! It’s all over! Pat’s have won the Cup!”

Hamilton, the voice of Italia ‘90 and so many other key moments in Irish footballing folklore, continued with a high-octane description of the goal before turning his attention to his co-commentator.

“Christy Fagan does it again! It’s Irish football’s most prolific scorer in 2014 who claims it - and Brian Kerr is in tears.”

***

With the possible exception of Paul McGrath, Brian Kerr is arguably the figure most associated among the general public with St Patrick’s Athletic, in modern times at least. 

The manager who brought success back to the Saints in the 1980s and 1990s attended his first Pat’s game less than nine months after Pat’s had lifted the 1961 FAI Cup and became a lifelong fan.

Kerr really was in tears on commentary in 2014. Few would have thought him a neutral pundit anyway, but the emotion was clear in his voice and his words as replays of Christy Fagan’s second played out. 

“He rolls in into the empty net – there’s been a few rolled into the Pat’s empty net, remember the Longford one, 2003, Barrett. But what a day for Liam Buckley. Great joy. 

“Great joy for the Pat’s people. I don’t think even the Derry City fans will deny the Pat’s crowd today. There’s a happy Christy – I have to say I’m a bit happy meself, George.”

Barely 30 seconds elapsed before the final whistle blew. George Hamilton declared that “the bonfires will go on up in Inchicore tonight as St Patrick’s Athletic celebrate victory.” 

Kerr noted: “A lot of good managers in the past hadn’t been able to get them over the line: Peter Farrell in ‘67, Charlie Walker 1980, Eamonn Collins, Johnny McDonnell, Liam himself last time out. Even me, ‘96.” 

With shots of players embracing on the pitch playing out, Kerr summed up with: “A happy band of players, I’d say a very happy band of supporters – the Holy Grail at last it is, George.”

Few bonfires were lit in Inchicore that night, although there were certainly enough flares and smoke bombs left over from the Aviva to light up Emmet Road when the jubilant fans arrived back. 

And there was to be no drinking from the Holy Grail, the cap of the old trophy long since affixed to the body. The overwhelming emotion wasn’t the pure elation felt a year before when the team lifted the similarly-sealed League of Ireland trophy. It was more one of relief, a weight lifted off the shoulders.

Seven years later, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which had kept fans away from League of Ireland grounds for almost a season and a half, the Saints would lift the Cup once more. 

Pat’s returned to the Aviva Stadium for the first time since 2014 to play Bohemians before an extraordinary crowd of 37,126, more than twice the attendance seven years before. 

A 1-1 draw with Bohemians came with an extra time “goal for the ages” from the mercurial Chris Forrester. 

Pat’s won the match in a dramatic penalty shoot out to lift the FAI Cup for the fourth time. The ‘hoodoo voodoo’ was now very much consigned to the past.

But football people are often fixated on history, and Pat’s supporters are no different.

***

The long-suffering fans trope would be an easy one to fall into. But, while the fortunes of St Pat’s have shifted up and down, and there have been times of crisis and barren spells, the club has been remarkably successful as a force in Irish football.

Since their foundation, St Patrick’s Athletic had been a club defined by success. Long before League of Ireland and FAI Cup wins had come a meteoric rise through the non-league ranks, starting at the very lowest level of football, in the 1930/31 Intermediate League, playing on municipal pitches in the Phoenix Park.

The years to come saw league win after league win, promotion after promotion. ‘The Athletic’ advanced through the three divisions of the Athletic Union League (AUL) and both divisions of the Leinster League to become the dominant force outside the country’s top-flight by the end of the 1940s.

The once-tiny club founded by a few teenagers in the Inchicore railway works were by then humiliating established Irish football giants such as Shamrock Rovers, Shelbourne, Bohemians and Drumcondra on a regular basis. The League of Ireland refused admission to St Pat’s on three occasions but had to relent by 1951. The Saints were coming.

Pat’s entered the League of Ireland in 1951/52 and shocked Irish football by winning the League title on their first attempt. Two further League Championships followed in 1954/55 and 1955/56. FAI Cup wins came in 1959 and 1961, with other successes in the League of Ireland Shield and minor competitions.

***

It would be easy to describe the football environment of the period covered by this book as being like a different country to modern soccer. There were certainly major differences.

The heavy brown football was used during most of this era, often rolling unevenly over even heavier boots on pitches where grass was a rare visitor during the winter months.

This was the era of two points for a win, goalkeepers being charged by burly centre-forwards and the W-M formation. There were no sponsors on kits, or anywhere else for that matter; football clubs lived and died on gate receipts, substitutes were rarely permitted and even managers in the modern sense were rare for most of these years.

But in other ways, football wasn’t all that dissimilar. It was a game beloved by ordinary people, then as now. Fans were enthralled by good skills, committed players and high-scoring games.

There were plenty of rows, on and off the pitch. Pat’s fans made their fortnightly pilgrimage to Richmond Park or another home ground or headed off in trains and buses to away fixtures. There was cheering on the terraces, plenty of wit, and no little pride in a Saints win.

***

Ever since the Athletic of Inchicore climbed the ladder to the country’s top-flight, they have won nine League of Ireland championships (eight of which are undisputed), four FAI Cups, four League Cups, a League of Ireland Shield and a host of other minor cup wins.

Extraordinary nights in European competition have seen famous performances against Celtic, Elfsborg, Krylia Sovetov and many others.

The club has provided a platform for Irish internationals such as Shay Gibbons, Tommy Dunne, Dinny Lowry, Ronnie Whelan Senior, Noel Campbell, Curtis Fleming, Kevin Doyle, Keith Fahey and, most famous of all, Paul McGrath.

Pat’s have given the League of Ireland some of its greatest players, from Fergie Crawford and Ginger O’Rourke in the teams of the 1950s, to Jackie Jameson in the 1980s, Paul Osam and Eddie Gormley in the 1990s and Killian Brennan, Christy Fagan and Chris Forrester in the 2010s.

Most importantly of all, the club has survived. Hundreds of football clubs have risen and fallen in the almost 100 years since the foundation of St Patrick’s Athletic, from local rivals like Nugget United and Bellville, to League of Ireland champions like Drumcondra and Cork teams Athletic, United, Celtic and Hibernians.

Of the many clubs founded in Dublin during the 1920s and 1930s, few have survived, and only one made it from the bottom to the top and has stayed there since.

None of this could have happened without the foundation of the club and the early years of hard graft at lower levels. The successes of 2014 and 2021 were built on the back of almost a century of history.

Pat’s exist now because of the dedicated men and women who organised the matches, raised the funds, lined the pitches, built the ground, washed the kit, and travelled the length and breadth of the country to support their team.

Without Des Dempsey there might not have been a Paul McGrath. Without Jim ‘Growler’ Cummins or his namesake and cousin Jimmy ‘Timber’ Cummins, there might not have been a Chris Forrester or a Christy Fagan.

Without Mrs Hynes from Richmond Cottages who sewed the numbers on the back of the jerseys, there might not have been a club at all.

Most football clubs come from humble beginnings. St Patrick’s Athletic’s are even more modest than most; a group of teenage workers at a railway works, rejected in their hopes to play for a bigger club, who founded their own. A club built on the back of a football tradition in Inchicore, and a name with deep roots in it.

A working-class team which represented its working-class community with pride and no little panache. A rise through the junior ranks which barely paused for breath; from the lowest levels of football in the Phoenix Park to Champions of Ireland in just 21 years.

The history of St Patrick’s Athletic from its foundation to the end of that golden era of League football in 1961 has never been told before, in book format at least.

But the rise of the Saints is a tale as extraordinary as any in Irish sporting lore.

It is a story of perseverance, team spirit and strength in unity.

It is a story of a football club which has made its own history.

Irish Deadline Day deals as Matt Doherty and Shane Duffy complete moves https://t.co/wz34TU489apic.twitter.com/coeKiJFtYU

— Extratime.com (@ExtratimeNews) February 1, 2023