The FAI Cup down through the pages
Among them was the ageless Al Finucane and the eternally youthful Mick Leech, as well as Theo Dunne, Johnny Fullam, Damien Richardson, Pat Byrne and, celebrating his 89th birthday, that grand old man of the Irish game, Jack Kelly.
But, remarkably, even Jack was not the most senior football citizen on the premises, that honour going to Leo Ward, at age 92 the oldest living holder of an FAI Cup medal.
Leo won medals with Drumcondra in 1943 and again in 1946, and his son in law Andrew O’Riordan kindly furnished me with a photocopy of the Irish Press match report of the first of those two finals, a day in April when the world was still at war and Drums were doing battle with Cork United at Dalymount Park in front of a crowd of 30,549.
Under the stirring headline ‘Drums’ Flying Start and Grim Defence Takes Cup To Tolka’, the reporter – named only in his byline as ‘Socaro’ – described the 2-1 win for the Dublin side as “a titanic struggle, without being a classic”.
Leo featured prominently in dispatches, the readers being informed at one point that “Ward, on the opposite flank, was very dangerous, particularly in the second half.” And he could claim an assist in Drums’ second goal too, according to ‘Socaro’: “In a breakaway, the Cork defenders were badly positioned and Ward sent the ball to McNamara who, though tackled, cleverly sent the ball into the net for a grand goal.”
Our man with the pencil and notebook – and perhaps also a hat and a Woodbine – summed up Drumcondra’s superiority as follows: “Their alertness in going to meet the ball, their deadliness and sureness in tackling and their nippiness and liveliness in attack were factors which paved the way.”
And under the sub-head ‘Highlights of the Game’ was the tantalising revelation: “[Cork’s] O’Reilly caused a flutter in the pavilion before the match as he arrived somewhat late but was just in time to run on to the field before the game commenced.”
Players referred to only by their surnames, reporters with a nom de guerre and it all crowned with “a grand goal” — no, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore.
Happily, they do write books like Sean Ryan’s Official Book of the FAI Cup, or at least Sean himself does, the journalist whom Airtricity League director Fran Gavin rightly called “a custodian of the game” at the launch, having updated his 1985 original just in time for publication ahead of today’s final between Shels and Sligo Rovers.
And credit where it’s due to competition sponsors Ford who, having been approached by FAI boss John Delaney, agreed to back the new publication. But then as Ford’s Eddie Murphy observed the other night, it’s not often a sponsor of the cup can also say that they have won the trophy, this being a reference to company side Fordson’s 3-2 defeat of Shamrock Rovers in the 1926 final.
In the book’s entry for that game, Sean Ryan tells of a remarkable incident involving Rovers captain Bob Fullam, he of “Give it to Bob” fame. Renowned for the fierceness of his dead ball strikes, Fullam had a penalty parried by Cork’s Billy O’Hagan with the score level at 2-2. From the rebound, it was a 50-50 contest for the loose ball between Fullam and the goalkeeper — but the former decided to pull out.
“That decision was the best of my life,” he later told his brother, Monsignor Thomas Fullam.
“When the ball came out, I could have hit it but I would have killed O’Hagan so I held back.”
One shudders to think what the modern day gaffer would have had to say about such a selfless humanitarian gesture. As for Leo Ward’s 1943 final, Sean Ryan reports “a sad postscript” to that match. “In a sign of the times,” he writes, “[Drums full back] Tommy O’Rourke shortly after had to sell his cup medal in order to raise the balance necessary for a deposit on a house when he was getting married.”
And, at Lansdowne Road the other night, Leo told me of an even sadder postscript: a number of years ago all his medals were stolen from his house in Rathmines. A few weeks later, he received a call from the thieves offering to sell them back. Leo agreed but never heard from them again. Happily, at two years older than the FAI Cup itself, he can still afford to look on the bright side.
“As someone said, they can take your medals but they can’t take your memories.”
And if, just occasionally, the old memory lets any of us down, there’s always Sean Ryan’s excellent book to turn to. Packed full of stats, archive pics and entertaining yarns, The Official Book of the FAI Cup , published by Liberties Press, is in the shops now.
