FAI Cup final/ Drogheda United 2 Cork City 0: It took some time to come around, but when it did Drogheda United were ready. Twenty-nine years after their second unsuccessful crack at winning the FAI Cup decider, the club made no mistake with their third attempt.
At a cold, windswept Lansdowne Road, Paul Doolin's side lifted the club's first major trophy after beating a fancied Cork side well, thanks to second-half goals from Gavin Whelan and Declan O'Brien.
At a club where the cupboard has been bare for so long the silverware will be welcome, but so will the message this win sends out. United, the rest of country has been warned, may be about to become a force in the Irish game.
Neither the 24,521-strong crowd nor the television audience at home will remember their triumph as a thing of beauty, but no matter. Few could dispute that, in difficult conditions, they proved more than a match for the country's best side. Cork's dream, meanwhile, of the city's first league and cup double for 54 years lay in tatters, but it is hard to imagine many neutrals were overly put out.
The disappointment of Damien Richardson and his players, of course, was understandable. Having clinched the league title in such convincing fashion two weeks ago, they came into this game with much to live up to but confident they could do it.
Briefly, through the opening stages, they did threaten to justify the hype. But their superiority faded as quickly as the late afternoon light in south Dublin, and by the middle of the first half they had started to lose their way.
As the second half got under way the process looked complete. Drogheda looked more hungry for victory and City seemed stunned by the ferocity of the opposition's determination.
In the opening stages Cork had dominated, with Billy Woods supplying a string of good crosses from the right flank and John O'Flynn firing against the foot of the post with the game's first real shot.
What seemed unthinkable at that point was that it might turn out to have been City's best chance of the afternoon, but so it proved.
The Southerners did not manage a single attempt on target over the 90 minutes, and the bulk of United goalkeeper Dan Connor's workload consisted of sending the ball long upfield after a succession of wayward, long-range efforts, many of them from George O'Callaghan, had been retrieved from behind his goal.
Through the opening half Connor's team-mates found it difficult to settle on the ball or do much of consequence with it when it came their way, but steadily Drogheda improved, and with the wind at their backs in the second half they quickly gained the upper hand.
On the 52 minutes they provided the goal the game had long needed when Gavin Whelan found the net from four yards after City defended a thrown-in five metres short of their corner flag with little conviction.
Shane Robinson took the throw short to Sami Ristila, and, having got the return, floated a dangerous cross towards the box. Alan Bennett's attempt to head clear was then scuppered by the vehemence with which Declan O'Brien threw himself into the aerial challenge, and when the ball then fell kindly to Whelan almost under the bar he powered it high into the net.
For City the goal must have come as a crushing setback. Having sought to take the game to their opponents, they now had little option but to further commit themselves in the full knowledge that they risked conceding a second.
On another day the amount of possession enjoyed by Richardson's men would have yielded a goal. And they might have complained, though not one of them did, that they should have had a penalty 10 minutes from time when Simon Webb clearly dragged out of Denis Behan's shirt as the substitute striker tried to meet a floated free from the edge of the area.
Overall, though, they were second best, a fact underlined seven minutes from time when Connor's mammoth kick-out was inadvertently helped into O'Brien's path and the United skipper, having shown too much of the ball to Michael Devine only moments earlier as he tried to round the goalkeeper, produced a perfectly weighted chip to beat the goalkeeper this time.
With key players in every department failing to perform, the two-goal deficit was no more than City deserved. Early on there had been flashes of the brilliance they had shown two weeks ago against Derry.
One problem might have been the size of the pitch, which prevented their midfield from operating with quite the same box-to-box effectiveness they had shown over the bulk of the league campaign.
Late on, by contrast, United were moving the ball around well and breaking forward with considerable speed.
Most importantly, they were oozing confidence, the central defensive partnership of Graham Gartland and Stephen Gray, as well as Damien Lynch, Whelan and O'Brien, among the many heroes as the clock ran down and, finally, the last seconds of a long wait ran out.
CORK CITY: Devine; Horgan, Murray, Bennett, O'Halloran (O'Brien, 83 mins); Woods, Gamble, O'Callaghan, Kearney; O'Flynn, Fenn (Behan, 63 mins).
DROGHEDA UNITED: Connor; Lynch, Gray, Gartland, Webb; Robinson, Bradley (Keegan, 71 mins), Whelan, Sandvliet; Ristila (Rooney, 77 mins), O'Brien (Bernard, 91 mins).
Referee: I Stokes (Dublin).
