The second coming of Kearney

WHEN Liam Kearney returned to Cork City this season, it was to a club which had lost some of the players who had been most familiar to him during his time at Turner’s Cross.

Tonight, when Kearney returns to Shelbourne, it will be to a club almost wholly unrecognisable from the one he left at the end of last season.

The meeting of Cork and Shels in the FAI Ford Cup at Tolka Park (8pm) will crystallise a sequence of extraordinary events in domestic football, a seismic drama at which the East Cork 24-year-old had a ringside seat. Ostensibly, this is a clash of the last two title-holders in the eircom League Premier Division. Cork, with Kearney a vital presence on the wing, lifted the crown in 2005. One year later, Shelbourne — with Kearney this time a bit player in their success — wrested back the title.