My girls loved their first League of Ireland game — they nearly got a high-five from Zac Elbouzedi

Colm O'Regan: 'I should say upfront, I am not a proper League of Ireland fan. I watch the highlights of the Greatest League in the World on YouTube. Man ‘Discovers’ A Thing Everyone Else Already Knew About columns are too common. But it reinforced something I’ve been ageing into.'

A quick scan of the ticket, a beep and we’re in! Me and the two small girls wandering around the ground trying to find a place to lean where they can see at least some of the pitch. They’re at their first League of Ireland match. Yes, it should have been Cork City, but going to a St Patrick’s Athletic game five minutes walk away from home is a compromise.

It’s also a vaccine against them accidentally turning into Dublin GAA supporters and before you know it singing BOOM BOOM BOOM lemmehearyasay JAYO. The signs are positive. 

They’ve asked me: “Is this an important match Daddy?” about the Cork-Waterford match, so now they know about round robin, the importance of the provincial championship. Where does the Christy Ring Cup fit in? I’d rather they heard it from me than in the schoolyard.

Anyway, they loved their first LOI game. Obviously because their team, St Pat’s, won but also because three of the goals were down their end and they nearly got a high-five from Zac Elbouzedi and he roared F**KING CMON after getting the lead goal. There were funny young boys nearby taking their early steps into the world of ‘banter’ and they giggled at that.

We walked there. They didn’t have to witness Daddy worrying about parking and they could witness Daddy experience the joy of watching others worry about parking. They were positioned very close to the hut selling Twixes and crepes. CREPES!

The skill is high, the surface is good, there was drama because St Pat’s went down a goal to Waterford at the start.

I should say upfront, I am not a proper League of Ireland fan. I watch the highlights of the Greatest League in the World on YouTube. Man ‘Discovers’ A Thing Everyone Else Already Knew About columns are too common. But it reinforced something I’ve been ageing into.

Watching non-Premier League football, non-Champions League, sometimes non-league, sometimes Sunday League, sometimes under-age games is getting more and more enjoyable. I love those Clips Of Amazing Goals Scored In Unlikely Places on social media. 

The pitch is bounded by leylandii; lots (okay, not lots) of people are watching from their cars. You can hear individual reactions. There’s a particular kind of disbelieving laugh that escapes someone who’s just watched his friend score a bicycle kick from 30 yards.

Everyone involved knows this may never happen again. It will live in the scorer’s mind in a highlight reel that will be among their last thoughts. I know this because I still think about my only bicycle kick scored in 1995 in the PE Hall in Deerpark. 

If you want to know what a lot of men think about every six seconds, it’s not sex, it’s bicycle kicks.

Occasionally in the 11th tier, you come across a local legend, some ex-pro still banging them in 20 years after retirement. And the cheer is more a rolling-back-the-years one. Further up the leagues, watching promotion play-offs, the emotion seems more intense than at the oligarch/petro-state end of things.

As I diverge on a light-year scale away from what an elite footballer looks like now, I appreciate the imperfect more. Players now are so honed. There’s no one left who looks a bit tubby, no scamperers, no Big Arse Players holding up the play. 

Vanishingly few slightly high-body-fat-percentaged players with a wand of a left foot who charm their way onto teams like a rake charming his way out of a Garda station. The players on the television increasingly resemble AI representations of themselves. All jaw and GPS data.

On the way home from the match, the girls are buzzing. They watch a brief glimpse of themselves jumping up and down for that lead goal in the highlights on YouTube.

We’ll be back.