"Everybody thinks we're going to lose this weekend, but I know my players and I'm 99 per cent sure that we're going to be in the draw for the second round."
Longford Town's Michael O'Connor, speaking on Thursday, was exuding confidence. Not unusual for the manager of a first division outfit about to take on a team from the Leinster Senior League you might think. Opponents Wayside Celtic, however, have acquired something of a reputation as giantkillers in the cup and with Town languishing at the bottom of Division One, if O'Connor's percentages were translated into odds, he'd have quite a few takers.
The fact is that better teams than Longford will have problems surviving encounters with minnows this week and few would fancy the trip he and his men must make to the Golden Ball. Waterford United and Finn Harps have both been toppled by the south Dublin outfit in recent years and now Wayside's manager, Peter Lennon, believes they're ready to add to the list.
"This is probably a better side than we had before. We've lost a couple of players, which is unusual for us, but we've brought a lot of youngsters through to the first team, fellas too good to keep there any longer, and the overall panel is probably stronger than ever now," he says.
Chief amongst his priorities tomorrow, he admits, will be to finish off the tie at the first attempt as most of his colleagues at National League level would learn a great deal about a team from playing against them for the first time and O'Connor, he knows, possesses a keener eye than most.
Nevertheless, Lennon is reluctant to get too wrapped up in the pressure of it all. He, and the majority of his side, have been here before and at this stage, he sees the FAI Cup as a welcome diversion for the club who are concentrating on winning their own league and the cup competitions at their own level. A couple of years ago when they lost in the quarter-finals to Saint Patrick's Athletic, the season ended successfully with two other cup wins - the intermediate and Charlie Cahill - as well as the Leinster Senior League championship. Last season, there were two semi-final exits and a runners-up spot. That, admits Lennon, was a major disappointment.
"We're anxious to win things and the league and cups at our own level would be the priorities because we know deep down that we have no real chance of winning this competition. Still, this is great for all our supporters. We're a very sociable club, we get at least a couple of hundred at every game in Kilternan and we're the only club in the league that brings a coachload of supporters to every away game.
"After the match, a lot of them will stay on for a couple of pints and everybody goes home after having had a good day out, that's what it's all about really." The cup runs, he says, are a bonus and, of course, if a few quid is made along the way, there is always something to be improved at their ground, where new dugouts are the latest addition.
If everything is relaxed off the pitch, though, on it it is the ferocity of Wayside's approach that repeatedly catches their more highly-rated opponents off guard. For a nonleague team, their collective movement of the ball and work rate is remarkable. Their pitch is small, allowing them to break at tremendous speed and in the likes of Willie Simpson, former Shamrock Rovers defender Seanan O'Duochon and Mark Byrne they have players with a considerable amount of individual ability.
A victory tomorrow afternoon, while perhaps a little rashly expected by the bookies, would not be one of the greater upsets of recent seasons and in this, the club's 50th year, a crack at one of the very best in the land would be the fixture that everybody at Celtic is dreaming of.
They, however, are not the only one of the minnows to be dreaming of glory. Cobh manager, Liam McMahon, probably summed the views of many of his colleagues up when asked about his team's trip north to Monaghan. "Anything", he said "is better than a non-league side because there are too many things that can go wrong in the space of one game against a team that you don't know anything about."
That may not be a factor in the clash between Saint Francis and Cherry Orchard, local rivals going back a long way in the Leinster Senior League, the former managed for the past 16 years by Pete Mahon, the latter for a year longer by John Wilkes. However, it's what the likes of Swilly Rovers and Rockmount will be banking on when they go to Dundalk and Derry respectively. This element of surprise is also what Athlone Town will be worried about as they welcome College Corinthians to St Mel's Park.
"Sitting at the draw and looking at the board," says Rockmount boss Noel Burke, "I turned to Billy (Cronin, his co-manager at the club) and said Derry, they're the ones we want." Moments later, he got his wish, the only problem being that for the ninth time in nine first-round draws, they were drawn away. That should be enough to end any hopes they had of upsetting a team of Derry's all-round strength.
Similarly, the fact that most of the College Corinthians side will be experiencing the first competitive outing of their careers under floodlights should weigh in the home side's favour. Still, a couple of first-round upsets are fairly certain and whatever happens, Fanad United or Whitehall Rangers will go into tomorrow night's draw. Either would make some of the better-known names nervous. The Donegalmen, like Wayside, have a fearsome reputation that would cause any manager faced with a journey north to reflect that, when all is said and done, it's how you do in the league that really matters.
