The qualifying rounds of this season’s UEFA Champions’ League are underway and have already delivered a pleasant surprise.
Namely that Dundalk FC, the fourth most titled League of Ireland club and historically its most successful performer on the continent, have chalked up the best result in Europe by an Irish side for over a generation. This campaign, they have seen off Icelandic outfit FH and Belarusian powerhouse BATE Borisov (a fairly regular qualifier for the group stage in recent times) to reach the play-off round where they will face Legia Warsaw – thus sitting potentially just two games away from the group stage. Meanwhile, Celtic FC under the management of Brendan Rodgers suffered a humiliating first leg loss to Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar – easily the most embarrassing scoreline for any club anywhere – and laboured past Kazakh club FC Astana to also make the play-off round.
After the formation of the League of Ireland in 1921, club football in the Irish Free State, later the Republic of Ireland, followed much the same pattern as it did in Northern Ireland (where the nation’s original Football Association and Irish League were and are based). It was largely a part-time affair while the country’s elite football talent, with few notable exceptions, plied its tried in the English and Scottish leagues, and therefore deeply-rooted support for English clubs was to become the norm. This did not prevent the emergence of a competition whose top sides, at times, were able to hold their own in Europe – again not dissimilar from the Irish League to its north, where leading clubs Linfield and Glentoran also recorded memorable results over the years. In the 1960s, Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne managed some respectable displays in continental competition, but in the late 70s and early 80s it would be Dundalk that flew the flag for Ireland – and were indeed unbeaten at home in Europe for about five years.
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In 1979, the Lilywhites achieved what remains the best result of any Irish club in history. They made their way to the last 16 of the European Cup, where they faced Celtic. In the first leg, against the odds, Dundalk came away with a 3-2 loss at Parkhead, an outcome that was beyond anyone’s expectations and gave the underdogs a fighting chance. The return fixture was played at Oriel Park, a game in which Jim McLaughlin’s team came agonisingly close to winning in the dying stages. Had they scored one goal, they would have reached the quarter-finals where clubs like Hamburg, Real Madrid and Nottingham Forest were among those waiting.
Two years later, Dundalk were edged out in the last 16 of the Cup-Winners’ Cup by Tottenham, again demonstrating they could hold their own despite the considerable gulf. There is no doubt that these were the finest results achieved by any Irish club side.
The Lilywhites would experience difficulties after their last trophy success in the mid 1990s, yet have since bounced back and have not only won the League of Ireland in 2014 and 2015, but are on course for a third consecutive title. Just as their European feats in a bygone era were a highlight for Irish football, in a much changed game, Dundalk’s European run of 2016 will be seen as a considerable achievement.
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