Waterford's last cup hero: Brian Gardiner's goal belongs in Dalymount annals

It's 46 years since Waterford last won the FAI Cup

The 1980 Waterford FAI Cup winning team, parade at half-time of the 2005 final. Pic: David Maher / SPORTSFILE

FAI Cup adulation for Waterford following anguish is a phenomenon Brian Gardiner can relate to.

He’s part of local lore for earning the last Blue Riband for the Blues, stretching all the way back 46 years to 1980.

There have been two final appearances since for the Déise, along with a spate of semi-final defeats in recent years, spiking the emphasis on snapping the drought in this Sunday’s decider against Derry City.

Between the hurling team’s pursuit of a first All-Ireland triumph since 1959 and the football side’s last Premier title a distant memory from 1973, success on Suirside has been elusive.

Images of Gardiner and his teammates bringing the FAI Cup over the bridge on their homecoming have been circulating this week, whetting the appetite of the 15,000 supporters expected to travel from the south-east to Lansdowne Road.

It was the left-back's bullet header at Dalymount Park which downed St Patrick’s Athletic, ensuring he’s never had to buy a drink on his frequent returns from his native Preston for reunions.

Reflecting on that historic feat, ending a 63-wait since their one and only previous Cup joy, the man who turned 67 last week admits the feeling of relief was overriding when the trophy was held aloft to the adoring and awaiting Waterford populace.

Gardiner had been part of a rebuild when joining from Nobby Stiles’s Preston in 1978, replenishing the spine of the side that had won six titles from 1968-1973.

Brian Gardiner of Waterford with his 1980 FAI Cup winning medal.

“Winning that trophy was a natural progression of our team evolving over three years,” explained Gardiner about the side managed by the great Tommy Jackson. “That was our peak.

“We had reached the Cup semi-final in 1978 against the great Johnny Giles-managed Shamrock Rovers team.

“After going one stage further the following year, but losing the 1979 final against Dundalk, we eventually managed to get our hands on the biggest prize of them all.

“To reach the cup semi-final in my first year was fantastic; giving me a great insight into the passion that the club and the people of Waterford had for the cup.

“By the time the second cup final came around in 1980 we had played in the previous three semi-finals and the previous final, so I was fully aware that when the cup matches came around, there was a different type of atmosphere around the city.

“There’s no point saying otherwise, but the final in 1979 was a huge and bitter disappointment for us all.

“We had beaten Shamrock Rovers in an epic semi-final at Dalymount Park, a massive improvement on anything that we had shown up to then.

“I knew from the previous year against Dundalk how important the first goal was in a final because we never recovered from conceding.

“It was a similar story in 1980. We never looked back.” 

In the annals of Dalymount Park history, magnified in the past week by the wrecking ball beginning demolition work for a new version of the venue, Gardiner’s goal into the Tramway End holds a special place.

Maybe it was the two teams wearing unusual colours – the Blues in all white and Saints in green – but the pictures and footage of the 22nd-minute goal endures.

It was the trickery of Larry Murphy, part of the Rovers squad that dumped Waterford out of the competition two years earlier, that delivered the spadework for the breakthrough by winning a free-kick near the endline on the right.

Once Murphy picked himself up off the turf to float the cross in, Gardiner was the last of the targets at the back post, flexing his neck muscles to send his header across goal past Jim Grace and in off the post. Some on-duty gardaí stationed in Dublin, sat behind the goal, couldn’t restrain their celebrations, a scene multiplied on the terraces and along the main stand of a packed 18,000 stadium.

“From that free, we just clicked into autopilot and picked up our normal positions,” Gardiner explains.

“I remember what happened next as if it was yesterday. Larry’s pace on the ball allowed me to attack it.

"I could see the curving ball as it bent towards the goal and then heard the noise as the ball nestled in the net. What a noise that was.

“When Pat’s restarted, all I could think of was getting a second goal to secure the Cup. The longer it didn’t come, the more nervous we became but we saw it out.

“I still have family in Waterford and will be cheering the players on this Sunday. That memory is the focus of most conversations I have with people from Waterford.

“While I have a few other career highlights, like playing for my boyhood club Preston and reaching three cup finals including Galway’s in 1985, nothing beats 1980.”