Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
FA CUP FOURTH ROUND REPLAY CAHILL: LIONS CAN ROAR LIKE 2004
Returning hero believes that his new team-mates will discover intensity that took Millwall to FA Cup Final
TIM CAHILL will summon the spirit of 2004 to inspire Millwall to a possible FA Cup reunion with Tottenham tonight.
The Lions were thrashed 6-0 by Spurs in last season’s quarter-finals – and Cahill says bringing them back to The Den for a rematch in the last 16 this year is all the motivation they need to see off League One Rochdale in tonight’s fourth-round replay.
Returning messiah Cahill, 38, and his manager Neil Harris (below) were team-mates when Millwall reached the final 14 years ago and he roared: “Let’s recreate the same sort of history.”
But to make Cahill’s dreams become reality, the Lions will have to clear more fences than a Grand National horse.
Millwall needed a stoppage-time equaliser from
Ben Thompson to force a replay at Spotland, where Cahill – whose second coming in Bermondsey was a romantic distraction from Premier League gluttony in the transfer window – could make the bench.
Tottenham will also have to honour their part of the bargain by seeing off Newport at the second time of asking at Wembley tomorrow night.
And Scotland Yard are thought to be less enthusiastic about policing 3,000 Spurs fans along the Old Kent Road.
But Lion king Cahill, who scored the semi-final winner against Sunderland in 2004, fancies another FA Cup run after rejoining his first club on a shortterm contract until the end of the season. Cahill, who plans to top up his fitness with
Millwall ahead of his fourth
World Cup campaign with
Australia this summer, said:
“You walk round the inside of
The Den and look at the walls
– they are full of pictures of what we created back in 2004.
“The gaffer knows the value of the FA Cup. He took Millwall to the quarterfinals last year and now he has another chance of facing Tottenham in the fifth round this time.
“People say Millwall will never be able to repeat what we did in 2004, but the gaffer has built the same sort of team – only with a lot more cultured footballers than we had – and the same sort of intensity.
“It takes someone who knows Millwall to run the club and make them better than before.
“Hopefully we can recreate the same sort of history.
“I was in awe when Dennis Wise and Ray Wilkins came here, but they were brilliant with me and the other youngsters.
“Now I want to be that same player who inspires the youngsters here.
“I hadn’t actually signed when I came to watch the original Cup tie with Rochdale and when Thommo [Ben Thompson] scored that late equaliser I was doing cartwheels.
“When I came to sign next day and I was doing the medical, I was absolutely buzzing because a Cup run is everything to this club and our supporters.”