Irish Daily Mail

Cork look to double up in Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup

- By PHILIP QUINN INPHO

THAT the last Cork team to win the League and FAI Cup double folded because they were broke was richly ironic. For Cork Athletic had a reputation for flashing the cash during their nineyear membership of the League which yielded two League titles and two FAI Cups between 1950 and 1953. Consider their appointmen­t of former English internatio­nal Raich Carter, aged 39, as player-manager in ‘53, two years after their double. His arrival was the talk of the Mardyke dressing room, and beyond, as former Athletic centrehalf John Coughlan recalled to Sportsmail. ‘Carter was paid 50 pounds per game, which was a fortune. I was on three pounds, plus one pound for a win bonus. ‘He was a gent but he wasn’t one of us. We didn’t see him from one game to another,’ said Coughlan. Carter had won English FA Cup medals with Sunderland and Derby County either side of the Second World War and his enduring flair and eye for goal — he scored in every round, bar the semi-final — paid off. Coughlan, the last survivor of that Athletic team owes Carter a debt for picking him in the replay against Evergreen at Dalymount. It was the first all Corkfinal and included 20 Cork-born players, as well as two of the subs. ‘I was brought in for the replay, for Paddy O’Callaghan. We won 2-1. It was a terrible night in Dublin and the crowd was poor,’ said Coughlan. ‘They should have played in the Mardyke. With two Cork teams, it would have been packed out. ‘I was 19 and it’s hard to recall details.’ Coughlan was a rock of the Athletic team which reached the Cup final again in 1956 before its dramatic collapse in 1957. ‘We ran out of money. That was it. Cork Hibs started up and most of us were supposed to go there but Evergreen offered us more money so I went there.’ Coughlan was an old-style centre-half, who loved the physical intensity of the battle, much as Alan Bennett of today’s Cork City team thrives when the muck and bullets are flying. ‘In Dublin I was known as “Dirty Coughlan.” I didn’t think I was dirty, but I played to win. If the ball was there, I went for it,’ said the Ballincoll­ig native.

‘When the game was over, that was it, you shook hands and moved on. I was told if I changed my ways I’d make the League of Ireland team but I didn’t understand why I had to change anything.’ One of Coughlan’s toughest opponents was Mick ‘Dobber’ Lipper of Transport and Limerick. ‘Whenever we’d meet, Mick would say “well big fellah are you up for it today?’ And I’d say, “Aye Mick, any way you want it, I’ll play it.” ‘We played one day in Market’s Field in two inches of mud and both went in hard for the ball. The referee gave me a free out. “Keep going ref, you’re having a great game says I.” He looks at me. “You think I wanted to give that free? You’re not living here (Limerick). I am.” They were great days.’ Coughlan rarely lost a physical battle but he was out-foxed once by Jimmy Hasty, the onearmed Dundalk winger. ‘He scored two against me one day and I was let know all about it at work the next day,’ said Coughlan. John Murphy, the former Dundalk captain, recalls Coughlan’s frustratio­n at marking Hastie. ‘John went easy on Jimmy, possibly because of his arm. It was a mistake as Jimmy made hay. I met John afterwards and he said, “You tell Hasty, I’ll pull his other arm off when I see him again.” Coughlan’s FAI Cup final farewell came in 1964 when Cork Celtic, then at their peak, were out-gunned by arguably the finest Shamrock Rovers team of all time after a replay. Still hale and hearty in Ballincoll­ig, Coughlan pines for the way football was played in his time. ‘Back then, teams played with five forwards, two of them wingers, but now it’s all changed.’

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Glory days: John Coughlan

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