Up for the Cup
TAKE A pin and this weekend’s cup games. Close your eyes and pick. Even with the aim of a New York Giants’ place-kicker, you would be hard-pressed to miss a glamour tie.
There’s the teachers, tailors and candlestick-makers of Farnbourgh getting 90 minutes at Highbury, there’s Chelsea’s tentative journey to Gay Meadow where Everton’s dreams are buried, Crystal Palace’s efforts to sway Liverpool’s re-balancing act and, erm, Bournemouth trying to surprise Stoke City.
While this year has repaired most of the romance of the cup, there won’t be too many overly excited about Sunday’s match in the Victoria Ground. Stoke, despite being the second-oldest club in Britain and the spiritual home of English football’s spiritual master Stanley Matthews, have a slim enough cup history.
They did contest the longest cup tie ever though, a nine and a half hour marathon with Bury in the third round of 1957, before eventually going through on the odd goal. But, even with appearances in all 124 years of cup competition, they have never made it further than the semi-finals, and there only once.
These days, the Potters are recognised most for having Nick Hancock as a fan. Bleak days indeed in Staffordshire. Of course the heritage of their opponents is as slim. Their most famous day was a third round slaying of Big Ron’s Man Utd in the mid-’80s. However, they can almost smell the gravy train of the fifth round on the south coast this week. That’s what Garreth O’Connor will tell you.
Victory on Sunday will do so much for Bournemouth, bring the club untold riches and the possibility of Arsenal or Man Utd. He talks to you from the picture-perfect coastline of south England, “most beautiful place in England,” he suggests, but his accent is pure Dub. Away from the adulation of the 5,000 hard-core support of Bournemouth, O’Connor can still pine for home.
League of Ireland followers will remember O’Connor. A little over two years ago, he was a poster boy of Roddy Collins’ revolution in Phibsboro. A quick-thinking, creative player, his flair and craft attracted attention across the pond. Mel Machin enticed him to Bournemouth. And so, full of confidence and hope, he went to Deans Court. Although this season he has been a stalwart of their promotion push, things haven’t always been rosy for O’Connor on the Channel.
“It took me a while to get established here. When I came over first, I was flying and I expected just to walk into the first team. When that didn’t happen, it hit my confidence. I wasn’t playing as well as I had at home. And the team weren’t going well either, so when I was coming off the bench, it was into a team low in confidence and that didn’t help.”
A frustrating first season found O’Connor pining for the Dalyer faithful on more than one occasion. On reflection, had he been trapped in the windswept north-east with Hartlepool or stuck in Humberside, things might have been different.
“If I knew how things were going to turn out in my first season, I might have stayed in Ireland. I probably would have, I didn’t come to England to sit on the bench. If I had been at Hull City or somewhere bleak, I wouldn’t have stuck it out. The fact that I was living in Bournemouth definitely helped me stick with it.”
Another problem O’Connor faced was an insistence within the club to transform him into a central midfielder. At Bohs he was used primarily as a front player or a winger. Now, he had to tinker with his game.
“That didn’t help. It’s a concentration thing in central midfield, you have to be mentally focused for the entire 90 minutes, one slip in your concentration could break down your side’s play or even give away a goal. That took a little getting used to.”
As did the competitive edge of Division Three football. Admittedly, there are few shrinking violets in the Eircom league, but the pure, unadulterated intensity of commitment and tackling in the lower reaches boggled O’Connor’s mind.
“It does toughen you up, this division. It’s been said it doesn’t suit players who like the ball on the ground, and that’s probably true. At Bournemouth, we like to pass the ball around a bit and there are a few teams like Hartlepool and Macclesfield who we played at the weekend, aren’t bad. But, for the large part, most of the teams just like to lump the ball forward and hope to get it to their big centre-forward.”
O’Connor is just one of 21 Irish footballers who line out regularly for a third division outfit.
“It’s not easy, two games a week, travelling from one end of the country to the other, getting kicked all over the place. You aren’t able to go out drinking, well you are not supposed to and you get hammered if you do. Playing on muddy pitches.
“All the same, I love it. When an opportunity like Sunday arises and you realise what a great life it is. We really fancy our chances of causing an upset. I know Stoke have a couple of Irish lads, James O’Connor who is rated very highly up there. It’s hard to put a price on what the next round will mean for Bournemouth.
“Financially, it could set this club up. Getting into the fifth round would lift everyone. Obviously, we are realistic. We are not going to win the Cup. It’s a cliche but a match against Chelsea or United in the next round would be a cup final.
“Or if we beat Stoke, and maybe get another beatable team in the fifth round, suddenly Bournemouth are into the quarters. And people will start thinking anything can happen.”
This weekend offers the promise of something else. Apart from all the die-hard excitement of their third round replay with Crewe, the game was watched by a slew of scouts.
“Yeah, Sean O’Driscoll [Bournemouth manager] said there were about 50 scouts at the game. Most of us would like a move up whether it is through promotion with Bournemouth or getting spotted in a cup game.”
Ah, the cup. The bastion of the footballing dreamer, the place where you can re-discover the romance in sport. And a competition that offers players a chance. As both Garreth and James O’Connor know.
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