Total Football

Things did not look good for the Staff Team in the moments leading up to kick-off.  Yes, we had retained the legendary ‘Goblet of Fire’ for seventeen years.  Yes, we always play a stylish sort of football, which leaves the students and the various Irish national teams which frequent the Irishtown facility gnashing their teeth in jealousy on the sidelines.  And yes, the current Sixth Year soccer-heads did not look remotely capable of organising the proverbial beverage imbibery in a brewery (or even at Wetherspoon’s in Dun Laoghaire).  And yet, doubts had sneaked in and multiplied as the team news leaked onto Twitter:  Mr. ODulaing, our Paul McGrath, Mr. Kilcommons, our Tony Adams, and Gavin Coleman, our Steve Staunton, were unavailable.  Even Gav, our talisman, was pre-occupied with domestic, couch-acquiring duties and our Vinny Jones, Mr. Trenier, was busy intimidating someone else, somewhere else. And our usual goalkeeper (and part-time Accounting teacher) Gavin Sheridan was on the shelf. But, hey, it has been seventeen years since a student last imbibed from the goblet!

Now, since that almost mythic afternoon in 2008, when Stephen ‘A Different Class’ Canavan and Shane ‘Roberto’ Robertson majestically orchestrated the last student victory, there have been moments of magic on their side: John Martin’s otherworldly forty-yard, top-corner strike still resonates in the collective Conlethian sporting memory. But usually all that youthful art and endeavour ends with a bone-crunching T-Dawg tackle… and we come good in the end. Alas, this year at least, we were wrong. The Goblet rightly changed hands. Yes, we were undermanned, but the Sixth Years did indeed play ‘total football’ with Enda Crowley calmly but confidently bossing the midfield; Cillian Cooke succinctly sweeping our occasional offensive threats aside; Joe Kelleher and Scott Herbots scoring a banger and a dubious bloop; Cormac Hayden confidently running the sidelines, and ‘Silky’ Stefi Saroli and ‘Polished’ Pavan Vellackal artfully dodging Mr. Lonergan and Co.s heathen hacking. Full credit to Mr. Lonergan and ‘Flash’ Gordon for somehow inspiring the Staff team to keep a clean sheet for over forty minutes, ably assisted by some lunging saves by Mr. ‘El Gato’ Perez. But, in the end, the students hung on, and they did it manfully. Congratulations to them but a warning to the current Fifth Years: the new Principal has been seen recruiting staff amongst the Brazilian community. Mr. Cavallero is a solid centre-back but he has some even more skilful friends!

by Charles Latvis