FAI Cup final: It may be traditional for fairytales to finish with a line about everyone living happily ever after but as St Patrick's Athletic and Longford Town arrive at Lansdowne Road for tomorrow's final of the Carlsberg-sponsored FAI Cup both hoping to make club history they won't need to be reminded that only one side can get their dream ending.
For the Dublin club a first cup success in more than four decades would delight supporters who, having grown used to seeing their team win leagues thanks to managers with a knack for boxing that little bit more cleverly than their rivals from north of the Liffey, must reckon they're a little overdue a third cup win.
More significantly, though, the victory, as well as the opportunity it would bring to play UEFA Cup football next season, would be a significant boost to Eamonn Collins as he seeks to rebuild and reorganise a squad whose identity was almost inseparable at the start of this year from the now departed Pat Dolan.
These days, Collins insists, St Patrick's are dedicated to producing a much more attractive brand of football than they became known for under his predecessor.
There remain elements of the earlier approach, however, in the way they hustle for possession, breaking up the opposing team's movement, and they still tend to strike on the break, often with a through or high ball for the front men to chase.
And if the Dubliners can again add to the mix tomorrow some good passing play, as they have done impressively when at their best this season, as well as pose their usual threat from set pieces, then they will be hard to beat.
Collins maintains his team is a work in progress and it would say a good deal about the potential of the finished article if a squad that has undergone substantial upheaval since he took over in February could add an FAI Cup to the League one it secured with a win over Longford back in August.
This time next year the cup final will again be bringing the curtain down on the season here, but for now Collins must contend with a long list of the sort of problems that come with still being embroiled in the hectic tail end of a league campaign.
Charles Mbabazi Livingstone's enforced retirement may have come as a complete shock but the fact the club has been unable to rest the various other players carrying knocks of one type or another for even the full week before the final was foreseeable from a long way back.
The upshot is that Collins's line-up at 3.0 p.m. tomorrow may be influenced as much by pre-match fitness tests as by any views the manager might hold on how best to get the better of a Longford side who still feel a little hard done by about the League Cup encounter.
While Kharim El Khebir is suspended, Paul Donnelly, Keith Fahey and Davy Byrne were all rated as no more than 50-50 by Collins yesterday, but all three look to have a good chance of starting, while another couple of important figures, most notably Barry Prenderville and Paul Osam, are certain to start the game without being fully fit.
"It's certainly been a different sort of build-up," said the manager yesterday. "The news about Charles rocked everybody but there's still a great spirit about the place and a great determination that we go on and win this."
Alan Matthews's men will not, of course, be short of determination when it comes to their latest crack at winning the club's first ever piece of silverware in senior football.
Composure and consistency have, however, sometimes been harder to come by for a team whose two sides were well illustrated in the semi-final defeat of Galway. In the first half Longford's defence struggled to cope with the running and inventiveness of Alan Murphy, while in the second, helped by a radical reorganisation that transformed the game in midfield, they completely subdued their visitors.
Whether they can achieve the same tomorrow on a pitch that will provide both sides with a lot of space in which to play remains to be seen, but their ability to contain Tony Bird, who has scored almost half of the Dublin club's league goals this season, will be a decisive factor.
So too will their fortunes in midfield, where Matthews, despite recent injury problems of his own to Alan Kirby, Darragh Sheridan and Brian Byrne, has some key decision to make. If his side can hold their own there then they are certainly in with every chance.
When they were beaten at this stage of the competition a couple of years ago by Bohemians the margin was just a single goal and their League Cup final defeat a few months back was similarly tight.
If it were played anywhere else, this would probably be no different, but the Lansdowne pitch should have the effect of opening things up a little.
If league form were any guide they'd both lose. But form, of course, matters little when it comes to fairytales.
Tickets for tomorrow's game priced €15 (€5 for children) will be available from caravans outside the ground.
PROBABLE LINE-UPS
LONGFORD TOWN: O'Brien; Alan Murphy, Ferguson, McGovern, Dillon; Kirby, Perth, Keogh, Prunty; Barrett, Francis.
ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Adamson; Prenderville, Foley, Maguire, Donnelly; Dunne, Byrne, Osam, Fahey; Freeman, Bird.
The FAI is expected to announce today who will provide the opposition to the Irish senior team in their next outing, which is due to take place on Wednesday, November 19th.
China and Canada have both expressed an interest in travelling to Dublin for a friendly on that date while the only invitation still available for the association has come from the Czech football association.
