Today I'm going back 29 years to 1992 and another League of Ireland Christmas fixture in the west of the Republic of Ireland. This time it's Limerick against Bohemians at Rathbane.
The Blue, Limerick. Surely the title of the Football Club's programme pays homage to those five line poems made famous by Edward Lear in the late 19th century? According to one scholar, a proper Limerick is always obscene and is therefore a thing of joy for all schoolboys everywhere as well as those who have never quite grown up. To those people I offer the following:
The lass I brought home was a prize
With an alluring pair of blue eyes
Her breasts were well kept
And were what I'd expect
But her penis was quite a surprise
Boom boom as Basil Brush once said. The term Limerick for this sort of verse is generally understood to be a reference to the city of Limerick in Ireland but nobody seems to know quite why.
My visit to Rathbane, home of Limerick FC came during another of my Christmas trips to Ireland to celebrate Yuletide with my ex-wife's family. I was fortunate to be able to sneak away for some fresh air and the match at Limerick wasn't too far from where we were staying. Football in Limerick is clearly a difficult business venture and it's football clubs have a chequered financial history. At various times Limerick's most senior club has been known as Limerick FC, Limerick United, Limerick City, Limerick FC (again), Limerick 37, Limerick FC (yet again) and, most recently, Treaty United. These changes have all taken place within the past fifty years with a couple of insolvencies along the way so the situation has rarely been stable. Sam Allardyce cut his managerial teeth at Limerick in 1991/2 and took the club to promotion at the first attempt before returning to England and being rebranded as "Big Sam" or "Fireman Sam" if you prefer your heroes to be more famous for saving things rather than for their sheer size. Anyway, I found Rathbane to be relatively ramshackle as Limerick looked to live up to their reputation for being short of a bob or two.
Limerick's opponents Bohemians are a far more well established name in Irish football. Based in North Belfast at Dalymount Park, the club was a founding member of the League of Ireland in 1921 having withdrawn from the Irish League (now Northern Ireland's competition) and have been continuous members ever since. Bohemians have never been relegated from the top flight of Irish football, have won the title eleven times and came to Limerick as firm favourites to beat their down on their luck country cousins. It ended goalless of course as these things sometimes do.
Season 1992/3 was a desperately exciting one in Ireland. At the time the Championship was not decided by the regular season matches alone with the top three sides going into Championship Play-Offs (a mini-league of matches between the top three). In the regular season, Bohemians, Shelbourne and Cork City (in that order) all finished the season on 40 points from their 32 matches and went into the Play-Off series where, incredibly, all three finished level again on 4 points from their 4 matches. Whilst Shelbourne came out on top on goals scored, this wasn't deemed to be sufficient for them to be crowned as Champions and necessitated a further Play-Off series, this time with each side playing just two matches at a neutral venue. With Bohs having won the Regular season and Shelbourne the first Play-Off series, who should come out on top in the decisive second Play-Off series? Why Cork City of course!
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