“Santa Claus would come at Christmas and Rovers would win the Cup.”

Richie Towell was last night named the SSE Airtricity/ Soccer Writers of Ireland ‘Personality Of The Year’.

A minute's applause has been held at the start of the Republic of Ireland game against Scotland at the Aviva.

THERE were plenty of household names, old friends, familiar faces and League of Ireland veterans in the Aviva Stadium the other night for the launch of a new book about the FAI Cup.

THEY are the boys of the 60s who have become men in their 60s but, when they get together in a room even 40 years on, there is still the warming afterglow of what must have seemed, at one time, like the endless summer of their youth.