The Time is Now

The dream is so close to becoming reality. Blues fans have waited so long for a day like next Sunday at the Aviva Stadium. To be in the cup final is massive, but to win it would be monumental.

Not long after the final whistle of the semi-final, I chatted with some fans who were in reflective mood – “My Dad would’ve been so proud”, “My cousin would’ve loved to be in the thick of all this”. Sadly, we lost two more great Blues in recent days in Anthony Flynn and Joe Barrett, who were both looking forward to the final. The club is about a whole lot more than a football team – it’s about friendships and family and sharing all those good and bad moments together. We’ll make sure that we remember Anthony, Joe and many others and bring them with us on cup final day.

For fans, the love for the Blues runs through all of our lives. I was excited watching the 1986 final on television, but it was over in ten minutes. I was distraught leaving Lansdowne Road in 2004 – I still am. Things took such a downturn as ten seasons in the First Division dragged on from 2008 with the club coming so close to shutting down on numerous occasions. The takeover and switch away from the ‘United’ name happened ten years ago this week and lifted the Blues to their highest point in decades, but we were denied European qualification and were back down in yet another miserable playoff in 2021 with the club in as bad a state as ever before.

 

 

We’ve had a series of English ‘owners’ over the past ten years, but the current ones, to be fair, have respected the fans and know their place as ‘custodians’ of a great club that has a glorious history and pride of place in its local community. We finally consigned the playoff hoodoo to the bin in 2023 and have had three thrilling seasons back in the Premier Division with a fourth now confirmed for next year.

But this season started catastrophically. Sixteen games without a win. By early April, I felt relieved when the match against Drogheda at the RSC was rained off late in the day because I was really struggling to get myself out the door to go support my team. In came the miracle worker Graham Coughlan and the Blues got down to real business having given the rest of the division a three-month headstart.

League survival was by far and away the priority, but Waterford got past Cobh Ramblers and Athlone Town with unglamorous wins in the early rounds of the cup. A third successive home draw against was very welcome in the last eight and Sligo Rovers were swept aside. Bohemians away was a daunting prospect in the semi-final, but we have a great record in Dalymount and everyone believes in this team. Bohs battered us in the first half, but the Blues held firm. Graham never flinches and neither do his players. The first goal was a shock, but the second was the end of the arm wrestle. Now, there was just belief coursing through our veins – this is really going to happen, we’re going to the cup final.

 

 

It’s been thrilling to feel the buzz building over the last three weeks. Thousands of tickets were sold in the first hour alone. Plans were made with fans getting to Dublin by bus, by train, by car and with many flying in for the weekend. I’m struck, while writing this, by the thought that if we win, some fan will be reading these words in forty or fifty years’ time – just as I have pored over the newspaper reports and reactions from 1980 so many times. All the surviving members of that cup-winning team are coming to the Aviva Stadium on Sunday and all of them are keen to pass the torch to new heroes.

It’s going to be an incredible occasion and we have every chance of bringing the cup back to Waterford for only the third time ever. It would mean so much to players like team captain Pádraig Amond, or John Mahon who almost quit football last year, or Dean McMenamy who joined a First Division club and helped it rise; to coaches like David Breen and Brian Murphy; but, most importantly, to the fans. It would mean the world to older fans who want another taste of the glory days of their youth. For many like me, it would be the first real success in decades following the Blues. But it would start a tsunami of support in the young fans who are already so proud of their club, their city and their county.

That reward is within reach. We have all waited for our time to come. The time is now.

(Photos courtesy of Noel Browne)