Utd rank outsiders for Cup showdown with the Hoops

IT’S cup quarter-final weekend, and a last eight meeting with Shamrock Rovers on Friday in Eamonn Deacy Park (7.45pm) will evoke memories of 28 years ago and a song that still gets the odd airing on the Dyke Road; “Lansdowne in the sun, Rovers nil United 1 . . .”

Well, we say cup weekend, but this season’s quarter-finals will actually be played on Friday, Saturday, Monday, and er, Monday week.

Anyhow, back to this Friday night and a fourth meeting in the FAI Cup between Galway United and Shamrock Rovers, including that special day of May 12, 1991, when Johnny Glynn sent the old West Stand into raptures with his cup final-winning goal.

That was the second time the sides had met in the cup final – six years earlier, there was also just a goal between the sides, but this time it was the Hoops who ran out 1-0 winners in a game played at Dalymount Park. The other Cup meeting between the sides ended in a 6-0 hammering for United in Tallaght in the 2010 quarter-finals.

That 1985 win for Rovers was the first of a run of three successive cup final wins for the Dublin side – but for the most decorated club in the competition, it almost beggars belief to think they haven’t lifted the FAI Cup since the end of that mini run of success in 1987.

They’ll fancy their chances at ending that run this year, especially given what they – and many others – will perceive as a favourable draw, having been paired with the second-lowest ranked side left in the competition.

However, if they have an ounce of sense, they’ll give United every bit of respect that Alan Murphy’s side deserve – and in recent weeks, they have deserved quite a bit.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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