Damien Duff is on the brink. Three seasons into his frontline managerial career — at Shelbourne in the League of Ireland — Duff’s players are one victory away from guaranteeing ‘Shels’ a first league title since 2006.
A league that runs from February to November has one last fixture left and, this Friday night, Shelbourne will probably need to win at Derry City to secure the trophy. Rivals Shamrock Rovers — champions for the last four seasons — are at home to Waterford the same night. Rovers are expected to win. They are two points behind Shelbourne but have a superior goal difference and if Rovers win, then Shels must do the same at Derry. A draw will not suffice.
It’s mighty tense.
It is a tribute to Duff’s impact since taking the job at a fallen, distinguished club who had just been promoted back into the top division that the League of Ireland is experiencing this bout of enjoyable angst. There’s more to it than Duff, the 45-year-old who won two Premier League titles for Chelsea under Jose Mourinho, as well as 100 caps for the Republic of Ireland, but his presence has brought a level of attention to a neglected league in a country where weekend flights are still full of fans travelling to England.
Shelbourne are one of four Dublin clubs in the Irish Premier Division. They are based at Tolka Park, two miles north of the River Liffey. The stadium marked its centenary at the weekend — the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, turned up for a celebratory match on Saturday afternoon — but Tolka shows its age and has a reduced capacity of around 4,000.
Shelbourne’s players celebrate the opening goal against Drogheda United last Friday (Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
Duff, an international and Premier League player of distinction, might have felt the league and its infamously run-down facilities were beneath him — Shelbourne do not own a training ground. But after coaching with Celtic in Glasgow, briefly with Ireland and then with under-age teams at Rovers, he made the move to Shels.
They finished seventh in his first season, then fourth. And now they might win the league. Budget-wise, Shelbourne are third, fourth or fifth, but not top two — that’s Rovers and Derry.
After coming through their latest match last Friday night — 2-1 against Drogheda United — Duff was out on the grass where there had just been a joyous pitch invasion involving a notably young fanbase, doing interview upon interview. When The Athletic asks where winning a League of Ireland title would rank in a career that began with Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League in 1996-97 and included scoring at a World Cup, he replies without hesitation: “It’d be the pinnacle.”
Really?
“Yeah. I’ve some nice memories along the way, winning trophies, playing some good stuff, 100 caps for Ireland blah, blah, blah. But it’d be the absolute pinnacle, blow everything else out of the water.”
On the brink. Around three hours earlier, Duff and his players were in the home dressing room preparing for a last, must-win home game. Shels had started the season like a gunshot, winning six and drawing three of their first nine matches. They were top, two months unbeaten.
Then they misfired. Only one of the next nine was won, though six of them were draws. A run of victories followed, but then came another downturn and rivals were improving. Shels were being called “bottlers” and, though they won again in the third-to-last match, so did others. Suddenly, as the season reached its penultimate set of fixtures last weekend, four clubs — Shels, Rovers, Derry and St Patrick’s Athletic — could still win the title.
Stimulated, crowds are up, interest is up — Friday night at Tolka Park was live on Irish television. The game was sold out. Duff has not generated all of this on his own, but it would not be happening without him.
So a stage was set. Shels had to deliver.
Duff instructs his players from the dugout at Tolka Park (Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
Without back-to-back wins since June, in the home dressing room, Duff’s assistant, Joey O’Brien, the former West Ham defender, gathered the players together for one last motivational speech. Striker Sean Boyd tells The Athletic what happened next.
“Everyone was in from the warm-up and Joey was about to talk,” Boyd says. “We’re all in a huddle and everyone’s tense and stressed and breathing, trying to calm down.”
Then the word “pressure” was mentioned.
On hearing this, Boyd says Duff, who had been observing, intervened.
“‘Pressure!’ he (Duff) says: ‘You think this is pressure? I’ll tell you about pressure. My little girl is going to her first teenage disco tonight. That’s pressure’.
“We were all nearly on the floor laughing. He does stuff like that, it’s just brilliant. Everyone goes from talking about a huge game to talking about a teenage disco.”
Eleven minutes into the game, Boyd put Shelbourne 1-0 ahead.
Duff is an absorbing character.
He is serious about his football and his 24-hour dedication to the job at Shelbourne has impressed all at Tolka Park. But he can be moody, acerbic and not everyone in the League of Ireland is taken with his presence or the focus he attracts — Duff can barely walk a yard in his native Dublin without a selfie or autograph request; he lives in the Wicklow mountains south of the city.
Given some in the league let him know forcefully his popularity is not universal, Duff is aware. It has encouraged a siege mentality.
Yet there has been a groundswell of external affection. As he says on the pitch on Friday: “I’m out running 5k up around the mountains of Delgany and I met a woman on crutches. She stopped me for a chat. She’s from Yorkshire and she’s desperate for us to win.
“Yeah, it’s us against the world, but outside the league, there is an amazing will and energy for us to get it over the line.”
Duff with Mourinho during his trophy-laden stint at Chelsea (Mike Egerton – PA Images via Getty Images)
Like ‘teenage disco’, ‘Yorkshire jogger’ will enter the season’s mythology, just as Only Fools and Horses did. After a dramatic late 3-2 home defeat to St Patrick’s, Duff offered Paddy Barrett, who had made an error for one of St Pat’s’ goals, a Monday morning option: video analysis of the game or clips of Only Fools and Horses.
Barrett chose the latter. The British comedy’s most famous sketch is of a man falling through a bar room flap he thought was closed. Duff’s backroom team had super-imposed Barrett’s face on the falling character. It broke the tension.
“He’s so funny, he really is,” Boyd says of Duff, “that human side of him. He’s the person I’ve seen read a room best, know what to say, what different individuals need.
“At times he’s bollocked me, said I was going soft, ‘you’re this and that’. Other times he’d just leave me alone. Last week when we played Waterford, he said to me that Padraig Amond has the best movement of a striker in the league. ‘You might score goals, but he’s got better movement’. He’d prod you like that.”
Before kick-off on Friday, Duff was chatting to his opposite number from Drogheda, Kevin Doherty. Doherty, like Duff, was once a fine teenage footballer. He was signed by Liverpool, had his career there affected by injury, returned to the League of Ireland and played for Shelbourne, where he later coached.
“He’s brought a lot,” Doherty says of Duff. “I see nothing but positives from his presence, genuinely. Whatever they say about rising tides, it’s right.”
Duff and Doherty speak on the pitch post-match (Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
The two men did not overlap in north-west England as players and Doherty says a first contact was when he was studying for his Pro Licence: “He (Duff) came in and presented to us. It was all virtual, during Covid. You could see he was very passionate about it.
“He could get jobs on the basis of what he did as a player, but he’s gone into Shelbourne and worked his arse off. I know because I’ve been at Shels.
“He’s a clever man, he’s not stupid. Every one of us League of Ireland managers is 24-7 and he hasn’t relied on anything other than hard work. He’s one of us now. That’s my feeling. He gives his heart and soul to it, he doesn’t look down on us.”
“God,” Doherty laughs, “this is like a love letter.”
On Saturday back at Tolka for the ground’s centenary match, the theme continues. Brian McGovern, one of the directors who brought Duff to the club, describes him as a “deep thinker” and “a winner”. And echoing Doherty and others, McGovern mentions “hard work”.
“Damien’s been hugely beneficial in terms of knitting people together — the players, the staff, volunteers, fans, the women’s team, the academy, the girls’ academy, the media, he’s had a real deep interest in it all. Our women won the FAI Cup last week and he was here. A number of our players have come through the academy.
“Just hard work. He’s just always ‘on’. There a level of intensity, a level above, maximising what we’re getting from every player. Quite a few had been written off at other clubs and they’ve come here and had a new lease of life. I think some of that is down to man-management, not just the football. Damien and his staff treat the players with huge respect and that’s reciprocated. They have us top of the league.
“We had a vision to get back to the top and a lot of people thought we were crazy. But when we talked to Damien, he didn’t think it was crazy at all. In fact, I think Damien thought it was inevitable.”
Damien Duff in his Newcastle United days (AMA/Corbis via Getty Images)
McGovern does add that “it hasn’t always been plain sailing, it’s been challenging, like it is for every club. But Damien embraces that, he likes to put himself outside the comfort zone”.
McGovern describes the brief 60 per cent acquisition by Hull City’s Turkish owner Acun Ilicali in 2023 as “interesting”, says the club today is “nice and stable” and that, contractually, “we have Damien locked down, thankfully”.
“I think he and his family love being here and think of Tolka Park as home,” he says. “We’d do everything we can to keep Damien here, that’s for sure.”
McGovern points to the Ballybough End (pronounced Bally-bock) and says it will be expanded to take the capacity to 6,000. He can remember bad days when a few hundred turned up — and it was not so long ago.
Wes Hoolahan also points to the terraces and tells The Athletic: “I grew up here, lived around the corner, so Shelbourne means a lot to me. My first club. Even before I signed for Shels, I used to sweep the staircases there. I was 16, 17, then I end up playing here. It’s a special place. My professional start.”
Hoolahan, 42, is back to join Duff on a Shelbourne Legends team. He won three League of Ireland titles here when the club was strong and vibrant; before the fall. Few players in the club’s 129-year history are as cherished as Hoolahan, who went onto the Premier League with Norwich City and won 43 Republic of Ireland caps.
“It’s been brilliant since Duffer’s come in,” Hoolahan says. “He’s done an amazing job. What they are doing this season, and the year before last — getting to the FAI Cup final — it’s all snowballing. It’s where Shels belong, back where they should be.
“Expectations rose because of who he is and what a player he’d been for Ireland and his clubs. Top, top level. To come here and be manager of Shelbourne, it’s great for the League of Ireland to have someone of his calibre here. He’s a top, top manager.
“I won three titles; never won the cup. We clinched one here, it was on the Friday night. We’d another game here on the Monday and I remember being in the bar until about three in the morning.”
Duff, wearing Blackburn Rovers colours, takes on Aston Villa’s Steve Staunton in 2002 (Gary M.Prior/Getty Images)
By the club shop, Conor Broderick is discussing the bus trip to Derry this Friday. Broderick, then 16, was here the last time Shels were champions. “You think it’s going to last forever,” he says.
“I remember getting relegated and going to the first game in the First Division. It was a good crowd, but then it began to fizzle out. We were just lucky to still have a club, it got that bad.
“Duff was a fresh face. It was known he was coaching with Celtic, Ireland, Shamrock Rovers under age, then what he’d done as a player. Some saw it as a gamble, but a lot were happy and the profile just went up and the trajectory the same.
“It’s kind of funny when you hear people saying the league needs a new approach, fresh ideas, a higher profile coach, then you get one and everyone wants him to fail. That’s the irony of the league. It’ll make it all the sweeter if we do it.
“I’m not sure of the bus time yet, but I have a half-day from work, so I’m good to go.”
Derry City are in the cup final, against Drogheda, on Sunday week and, last Friday, they lost at St Pat’s, meaning they could no longer win the title.
Shels’ win also ended St. Pat’s’ late claim. It is down to two: Shels and Shamrock Rovers. As Rovers have dominated over the past four seasons in a Manchester City kind of way, there is a broad appetite for change.
Duff wears a club jacket with ‘For Those I Love’ embroidered across from the Shelbourne crest and talks about how the club’s standards are “higher, bigger, hungrier”.
“How have we done what we’ve done?” he asks. “We’ve created what I think is an elite environment, a brilliant energy, surrounded ourselves with brilliant people, coaches who coach to a high standard — I’m not putting myself in that bracket.
“Hard work and simplicity, I don’t think you can ever go far wrong.”
Duff instructs from his technical area (Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
He says the growing external interest is not down to him or Shelbourne. “For the first time in a long while, there’s a title race.”
But he is a big piece of it, “doing something that’s very bloody uncomfortable”.
“Football was easy to me, what I’d been doing since I was a baby, go out and play. OK, a high level an’ all, but nobody would ever have expected me to become a manager and create an environment, create a club, an identity, getting everyone together and pulling in the right direction. I’ve maybe surprised myself.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my whole life. I guess that’s why it’s so pleasing, so enjoyable.
“It’s brilliant for the league, absolutely amazing. I love it, I love it. I know you all think I’m giving you ear candy — I love it. It’s been the greatest three years of my life. I spent 20 as a footballer, but I’ve enjoyed these three more. It’s tiring, but I’ve enjoyed it more.”
Friday night lights await. Damien Duff and Shelbourne. On the brink.
(Top photo: Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
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