Derry City emerge through the fog as FAI Cup final gets a smoky start

That’s a sturdy old pitch in the Aviva Stadium. On Friday night, it played host to a combined 30 rampaging Irish and Argentinian men, some of them with the physique of a double-decker bus, and come Sunday, it had 44 Derry and Waterford feet skipping all over it. Yet it still looked like a snooker table, when most lawns resemble The Everglades this weather, even after just pitter-pattering over them to get to the washing line.

Met Éireann had been handing out status yellow fog alerts all weekend, and after flares were let loose as the teams emerged from the tunnel for the FAI Cup final, our commentator Des Curran must have thought the warnings had been upgraded to red for the Ballsbridge area.

In fairness, if the haze had hung in the air for the entirety of the scoreless first half, Des and ourselves wouldn’t have missed much. Derry old boy Gareth McGlynn had predicted “lots of goals” in the game, so felt a bit contrite at the break, but the decisive breakthrough finally came on 69 minutes, when Darragh Burns did his nifty thing.

“I can only apologise for how it was on the eye,” Derry’s interim gaffer Mark Connolly told the RTÉ panel at full-time. But the sizeable Derry contingent in the stands didn’t seem to be complaining.

Connolly also paid a gracious tribute to Waterford captain Pádraig Amond, who also elicited no end of praise from Gareth prematch when we were shown a clip of him scoring with a highly acrobatic overhead kick earlier in the season. “He’s 38! 38! Me, Stuey and Alan couldn’t tie our laces at 38,” he said. Stuey Byrne and Alan Cawley looked mildly offended, but didn’t demur.

Derry hadn’t found their rhythm at all in the first half, a little like Crossmaglen Rangers in the Ulster senior club football quarter-final. At one stage, they trailed Gowna by 11 points and looked well and truly buried, but then won it at the death with a Rian O’Neill two-pointer.

“How did you do it?” RTÉ’s Damian Lawlor asked Cian McConville. “It wasn’t very scientific,” the Cross forward replied, “we just got stuck in.”

And d’you know, much the same could probably be said of Manchester United after they maintained their non-winning streak in the Premier League on Sunday. Even those with no grá for the club are now enjoying their outings immensely, concluding they’re akin to a blend of Only Fools and Horses and Apocalypse Now.

Two down to Aston Villa after four minutes, level after 44. Two down again after 53 minutes, level again after 96. Say what you like about them, and the mean among you probably will, but come on now, never a dull moment. And put it this way, Arsenal have only scored one more league goal than United this season. True, they’ve conceded 14 fewer, but who is the more entertaining – the scientific Arsenal, or the kamikaze United? Exactly.

“Oh my,” said our Sky co-commentator Alan Smith when the stadium bellowed its thoughts on the club’s ownership after Nicolas Jackson made it 2-0 with just under four minutes gone. All the while, the pitchside boards were urging attendees to report any unpleasant abuse in their earshot. The hotline must have been crammed with complaints about the Glazers being called something that rhymes with anchors.

Roy Keane’s beard had a salt and pepper-ish look prematch. It was silver by half-time, and white by the end of it all. “They’re nowhere good enough to get towards the middle of the table,” he said of the relegation contenders. In his day, middle of the table would have been a capital offence.

“We need to play like Manchester United,” said man of the match (hello?) Matheus Cunha after the game. To be honest, that’s the last thing they need to do.

Roy wiggled his white eyebrows, as he did when Michael Carrick shared his thoughts on the contest. “He talks a lot but doesn’t say much,” said Keane. “He’s like a politician. He keeps saying we need to tighten up and there are things we need to work on – he better get moving on that.”

The only upside, really, is that United have saved a fortune on win bonuses this season, so the coffers will be jammed come January, allowing them to make more cataclysmic transfer choices. Always look on the bright side of life.