Like most of his Longford Town team-mates this week, Eric Smith is having a little difficulty adapting to the trappings of success. Most of the 25-year-old central defender's career has been spent in reserve team football, a lonely enough place where players are generally untroubled by the outside world. Over the past few days, though, the demand for tickets for Sunday's Harp Lager FAI Cup final has introduced previously low key players to the world of the ever-ringing mobile. "I keep getting calls from aunties I never knew I had," laughs the Dubliner as he ponders the sudden upsurge in incoming calls.
Tickets, or the lack of them, are the cause of the players' new-found popularity. Longford have been allocated 4,000 for this Sunday's game and while the players were initially given 10 apiece in order to look after friends and family, the demand from inside and outside the town has vastly outstripped supply.
The solution to the problem is novel. Over the past few days a steady stream of people within the Longford set-up have joined the queue of regular punters at Dalymount Park. Bohemians limited buyers to 10 tickets each but what with younger brothers and return visits, many did considerably better than that and it is reported that one club member managed to purchase 100 tickets over the course of a day. "Personally I'll be surprised if Bohemians have a single fan there," smiles Smith.
He knows, of course, that the pre-match preparations may be his big opportunity for a laugh because on Sunday the former Crystal Palace and St Patrick's Athletic defender will have his work cut out for him. To him will fall the task of marking Glen Crowe. As it happens, it's nothing new to him, he performed the same task back in October but the difficulty is that on that occasion the striker scored three of his team's six goals. Things, Smith obviously realises, have to be rather different this time.
"Before that game I really didn't know too much about him," he remarks. "And his performance surprised me because to look at him you wouldn't think that he's too fast yet he's got terrific pace and he's very strong. Overall I'd have to say he's the best striker in the league by a mile.
"All this season he's been scoring goals for fun and hopefully I'm going to put an end to that on Sunday. I know him a bit better now, I learned a good bit that night and I've watched him a few times since. He's very left-sided and that's something to work on but there's no avoiding the fact that it's going to be a tough afternoon."
For most of the time since he left Cherry Orchard for Crystal Palace at the age of 16, though, that's all Smith has asked for - a challenge, a chance to test himself against the best around.
When he couldn't get first team football at Selhurst Park he agreed to go on loan to a Chinese club - "It was a chance to play first-team football and see China, it would have been a great experience" - but a strike at the Chinese players' union scuppered the deal.
Instead, he came home and signed for St Patrick's but his break didn't come there and so after spells at Kilkenny, Limerick, Athlone and Glenavon, Stephen Kenny finally landed a player he had long admired. If he does what he's supposed to this Sunday, his manager's faith will have been well repaid.
