In praise of local heroes

WITH Cork City on death row and desperately hoping for an 11th-hour reprieve before the lights go dim, and a small chunk of the Carlisle Grounds succumbing to gravity during a game between Bray and Shamrock Rovers – was this the first time in football that the wall actually “didn’t do its job”? – the League of Ireland badly needed a boost this week.

And, not for the first time in recent years, it got it on foreign fields.

Derry City’s draw in rain-lashed Riga was admirable enough, but it was Bohemians’ heroics in Salzburg which deservedly hogged the headlines – or, at least the few that were left over from the saturation coverage of multi-millionaire players with tans doing a spot of training in a stately pile in Kildare.