Last orders: the lights have flickered for too long, St James Gate FC is no more as one of the League of Ireland’s eight founding clubs have decided to “close the doors”.
Not just founders, the “Gate” won the inaugural league and FAI Cup double in the 1921/22 season. Make that a treble as they also captured the Leinster Senior Cup with a 1-0 defeat of fellow factory workers Jacobs.
There’s plenty to celebrate after 120 years. A second FAI Cup was won in 1938, beating Dundalk 2-1 in front 30,000 supporters at Dalymount Park, but major honours dried up after their second league title in 1940 and within four years the club had reverted to amateur status. At that time “Socaro”, reporting in The Irish Press, quoted a representative from Shamrock Rovers: “St James’s Gate has not full control over their own finances, as any profit made during the season goes to the Guinness Athletic Union and is therefore lost to football.”
Socaro also noted “it was a well known fact” that other clubs took issue with GAU members gaining free entry to matches in the Iveagh Grounds, proving the origin of ticket scandals in Irish football dates further back than “George the Greek”.
“Diageo cut ties with St James’s Gate when selling the Iveagh Grounds to Trinity [College in 2017 for €2 million] so that left us without an influx of money that comes from such a reputable sponsor,” explained club vice-chairman Alan Sexton. “Over time we tried to keep it going but we were putting out flames ever since Mick Mougan moved on.”
Mougan played for the Gate in its second iteration as a League of Ireland club, from 1990 to 1996, before managing them for 16 years.
“Mick was also committee member, secretary, treasurer, chairman, doing everything to keep the club going on his own until a few of us took over,” said Sexton. “We played in a catchment area that is rich with clubs. Dublin 12 had us competing for resources, players and sponsors, and we were never really considered a local club; we were a product of the brewery so we never really had that connection to the community in terms of a band of people who would service the club, unlike Inchicore or Crumlin United.”
Sexton also paid tribute to the club’s last two chairmen, Dave Moran and David ‘Jacko’ Doyle, but the Gate’s most famous son has to be Paddy Duncan, a name etched into the annals of Irish football as the first international goal-scorer in a 1-0 win over Bulgaria at the 1924 Olympics. Duncan was one of 21 St James Gate players capped by Ireland while one of their two female internationals, Katie Taylor, claimed gold at the London Games 88 years later.
The demise of St James Gate means only Bohemians and Shelbourne remain in existence from the league’s founding fathers.
