Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
BEEN THERE AND
Dubliner Alan knows what the big stage is like as Bromley go to Wembley
IT’S 20 years since Dubliner Alan Dunne was a wide-eyed young man sharing an FA Cup nal stage with Roy Keane and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Dunne was raised on stories of dad Paul playing on the same northside streets as future stars such as Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton and David O’leary. He dreamed of being a professional footballer like his heroes.
And there he was, May 22, 2004, the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Manchester United versus Millwall.
“I was going to ask Roy Keane for his shirt him being a fellow Irishman,” he recalls, “but I never had it in me in case he said no. So I didn’t ask him.
“But you got to see what the players were like, the likes of Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes.
“You got to experience the build-up. Everything was brilliant. The semi- nal (against Sunderland) was at Old Trafford, so you even got a taste of that.
“We quali ed for Europe, so we got a two-legged game in that, which we lost in Hungary (to Ferencvaros).
“That was crazy, a crazy experience. They had ares, cages, you were getting darts thrown at you. It was one of the most hostile places I’ve ever been. Crazy place.
“They were passionate about their football. It was very hostile, but a great atmosphere. I was only a young kid then.”
Playing
Dunne was just 21 at the time and had only made a handful of rst-team appearances for Millwall.
To nd himself on the bench for an FA Cup nal against Manchester United was a dizzying high for the kid from Coolock.
“We all grew up playing on the streets in Dublin,” he says. “My dad played with Liam Brady many years ago.
“My dad played for Home Farm. He loves his football. Frank Stapleton, Liam Brady, David O’leary; he played with a few of them. They used to muck about together.”
That Dunne has now spent more of his life in London than Dublin is evident when he speaks.
“The accent is gone, but I still call it home,” he says of the Fair City.
Twenty years later and he is preparing for another big nal tomorrow.
This time it’s a cross-london trip to Wembley, rather than the Millennium Stadium, which hosted FA Cup finals during Wembley’s redevelopment.
Bromley FC, a club from the east of London, not far from Millwall, are up against Solihull Moors in the National League Promotion Final.
A place in League Two is at stake.
Bromley nished two places and ve points ahead of Solihull over a gruelling 46-game season.
Dunne is assistant manager to Andy Woodman at Hayes Lane, having moved there from Leyton Orient as a player in 2017.
Anyone who has watched Welcome to Wrexham will know what an achievement it is to get out of the National League.
Budget
“It’s brutal. It is a brutal league,” he says.
“There are a lot of ex-league clubs in there, big clubs that have been in the Football League for years.
“It would be nice for a town like Bromley, never been in the League, to get there.
“We’re a small club in this league, small budget, haven’t got the resources of most clubs, but we have a chance of getting into the EFL. It would be remarkable for the town.
“Last year we got to the seminals and lost out to Chester eld in extra-time, so we wanted to go one better this year.
“Last Sunday we had Altrincham, the team that finished fourth, and we got the job done.
“Now we are one game from the English Football League and creating history for the club.”
In the 20 years between the 2004 FA Cup nal and this weekend, he has visited Wembley as a player and a coach.
“I played there for Millwall in the FA Cup semi-final against Wigan (in 2013),” he says.