'It was just magic': Recalling Finn Harps' FAI Cup win, 50 years on

The green Ford Cortina pulled up at the Post Office in Roosky, on the Leitrim-Roscommon border.

Two men, armed with revolvers, snatched £800.

Two others sat in the Cortina, which bore false plates, to keep a look out.

A daughter of Mary Mulligan, the post mistress, and an assistant were held at gunpoint at 10.55am on that April Friday in 1974.

Just three kilometres away in Dromod, Jim Sheridan was on duty in the garda station.

The Rathmullan man was hoping for a quiet shift, his last before captaining Finn Harps in the FAI Cup final at Dalymount Park two days later.

The Garda alerts swiftly went. Additional officers, Sheridan included, were drafted from nearby locations.

“I was now wondering if I would ever get to the final,” Sheridan tells Donegal Live, fifty years after leading Harps to the first – and, so far, only – FAI Cup success on April 21, 1974.

“I was lucky enough to be living out of Donegal and away from all the razzmatazz of the Cup final. There was huge hype about the game in Donegal so I was happy to be down in Leitrim.

“I was there in the garda station in Dromod on my own when the call came in. It was pension day and the post office was raided. The robbers were long gone by the time we got there. We started the investigation and I was wondering if I would ever see Dalymount.”

Rather than travel with the Harps team, Sheridan drove to Dublin with his wife, Patricia, and her father, Paddy Dempsey.

Sheridan rose to the rank of Chief Superintendent in the Sligo-Leitrim Garda Division before retiring in 2002.

The imposing centre-back was recruited by Harps manager Patsy McGowan in the summer of 1970 from St Patrick's Athletic.

As fate would have it, Pat's were the opponents as Harps – only just accepted, almost begrudgingly, into the League of Ireland five years earlier – appeared in the League of Ireland's biggest day in front of 14,000 supporters.

Harps won the first FAI Cup final to be broadcast in colour on RTÉ 3-1 and Sheridan became the first member of An Garda Síochána to captain a winning team. The image of Sheridan holding aloft the FAI Cup remains Harps' greatest moment.

“I still get emotional when I think about it,” Sheridan says. “It was a great honour to be there. I was a bit overawed among all the dignitaries and realising I was the captain and we had just won what was the premier competition in the country. The FAI Cup was the big thing at the time.”

Harps got a dream start when Charlie Ferry, who scored in every round of the cup that season, fired a free kick past Tom Lally, the Pat's 'keeper. Sean Byrne levelled for Pat's, but two goals from Brendan Bradley, who still remains the top scorer in League of Ireland history (235 goals), knotted the blue and white ribbons.

“Ah, the biggest day of my career, no question,” says Gerry Murray, the Harps goalkeeper that afternoon.

“We had a great support that day, all up from Donegal and the North West. The final whistle, when it went, was an amazing feeling. Just magic.”

Murray played a big part during the run to the final.

After a 4-1 win over Home Farm, Harps drew 1-1 with Bohemians at Dalymount Park with Murray saving superbly late in the game from Terry Flanagan. In a replay at Finn Park, Murray saved a penalty from Jimmy Jackson and also denied Turlough O'Connor with another fine stop.

“Gerry Murray kept us in the FAI Cup in 1974,” says Sheridan.

Over 14 seasons at the club, Sheridan played 397 times for Harps.

“That quarter-final replay in Ballybofey was the best performance ever I was involved in,” he says. “Charlie Ferry scored twice, one of them straight from a corner (something he had also done earlier in the season against Waterford) and the other a free. Bohs had serious players, but we did so well. We scored our goals and we defended superbly.”

Harps were struck by tragedy just three months before the final in January '74.

Jim McDermott, a central figure ever since Harps entered the League of Ireland in 1969, scored in a 7-1 win over Home Farm on January 27 at Finn Park. In the early hours of the following morning, McDermott was driving the Finn Harps team minibus in his native Derry, leaving babysitter Margaret Duddy home, when he and Sean Gallagher were killed. Amid a fierce storm, a tree struck the vehicle on the Racecourse Road.

At 2.30am, a McGowan was awoken by a knock to his front door. There stood Fran Fields, the Harps Chairman, and a local garda.

“I could feel every nerve in my body tearing me apart,” McGowan wrote in ‘The Strings of my Harps’. “I sat there for a minute in the candlelight trying to let it sink in. The more the two lads talked about it the more it became real.”

Deep in the bowels of Dalymount Park three months later, Harps could feel the very presence of 'Slim' Jim as the clock ticked towards their date with destiny.

“Let’s go and win this for Jim McDermott,” were among McGowan's final instructions.

In that same 7-1 win over Home Farm, Tony O'Doherty sustained what seemed a season-ending injury.

O'Doherty was the subject of a £25,000 bid only a few months previous from Aberdeen, who defeated Harps in the UEFA Cup. The offer was rebuffed, O'Doherty – who was in full-time employment in Derry – surmising that he was better off staying put.

On the week of the FAI Cup final, McGowan invited O'Doherty to Ballybofey, under the guise of 'helping' at training. Terry Harkin, a Northern Ireland senior international, was absent – and McGowan had a plan.

“Unbeknownst to me, Patsy told Peter Hutton to hit me and hit me hard, which Peter duly did,” O'Doherty recalled. “I lost my temper, lost it completely. I went for Peter. If I’d got him, I’d have killed him. Suddenly, though, I realised that I had just taken a tackle from Peter Hutton: I was ready to play.”

Finn Harps – 1974 FAI Cup run

February 17, Finn Harps 4 Home Farm 1 (Smith, Forbes, Bradley, Ferry)

Harps: Gerry Murray, Declan Forbes, Peter Hutton (Gerry McGranaghan), Declan McDowell, Jim Sheridan, Paddy McGrory, Paul McGee, Jim Smith, Brendan Bradley, Terry Harkin, Charlie Ferry.

March 10, Bohemians 1 Finn Harps 1 (Ferry)

Harps: Gerry Murray, Gerry McGranaghan, Peter Hutton, Declan McDowell, Jim Sheridan, McGrory, McGee, Jim Smith, Brendan Bradley, Terry Harkin, Charlie Ferry (Donal O'Doherty).

March 13, Finn Harps 2 Bohemians 0 (Ferry 2)

Harps: Gerry Murray, Gerry McGranaghan, Peter Hutton, Declan McDowell, Jim Sheridan, Paddy McGrory, Paul McGee, Jim Smith, Brendan Bradley, Terry Harkin, Charlie Ferry.

March 31, Finn Harps 5 Athlone Town 0 (Bradley 2, McGrory, Harkin, Ferry)

Harps: Gerry Murray, Gerry McGranaghan, Declan McDowell, Jim Sheridan, Peter Hutton, Jim Smith (Donal O'Doherty), Paddy McGrory, Charlie Ferry, Paul McGee, Brendan Bradley, Terry Harkin.

April 21, Finn Harps 3 St Patrick's Athletic 1 (Bradley 2, Ferry)

Harps: Gerry Murray, Gerry McGranaghan, Peter Hutton, Tony O'Doherty, Jim Sheridan, Declan McDowell, Paul McGee, Jim Smith (Donal O'Doherty), Brendan Bradley, Paddy McGrory, Charlie Ferry.

Harps' semi-final had descended into farce. The game, at Oriel Park, took two hours to play after the Athlone Town goalkeeper Mick O’Brien twice purposely broke his crossbar in a bid to have the game abandoned.

O'Brien was sent off and Harps won 5-0. They were on their way to the final, but it was O'Brien's antics, rather than a dominant Harps display that grabbed the headlines.

“It was a bit of a circus,” Sheridan says. “There was damn all about us winning the match, it all became about Mick breaking the crossbar. We all knew Mick and he was a nice fella; he just lost the run of himself.”

In the late 1960s, Gerry Murray was rather more renowned as a Gaelic footballer. He won three Donegal senior football championships with Sean MacCumhaills and played for Donegal at minor and under-21 levels.

Patsy McGowan came calling and Murray played for Harps in eight seasons.

“There wasn't much soccer for fellas my age, but I used to play in Summer Cups,” he recalls. “Patsy had the confidence in me to take me into the Harps the senior team. I always felt very lucky and I have a lot to thank Patsy for. Only for Patsy, I'd never have got that chance to play senior football.

“John Young was the number one for Harps' first season in the League of Ireland and he started to get a rough time from supporters. Near the end of the season, Patsy put me in and I stayed in after that.”

In '69, Harps' admission into the League of Ireland was met with dismay in many quarters; “I have seen everything now, they are taking a club out of the bog into senior football that has a set of goalposts and two players,” a reporter in the Irish Press wrote.

Few gave Harps a chance of winning the FAI Cup. Fewer still perhaps wanted them to have a chance.

In their own circle, the Harps players knew.

“People were laughing at Finn Harps,” Sheridan says. “It was almost as if we came out of the blue. We were the babies of the League alright and I don't know how people looked at us the way they did because those were very experienced players.

“That Harps team didn't come in as a non-starter. We were up for the game, big time. Some great men worked the oracle to get Finn Harps into the League of Ireland and, although the Pat's goal annoys me to this day as a defender, I never felt that we were in danger in that Cup final.”

Murray never countenanced losing either.

“I wouldn't have been a very confident person, but I was that day,” he says. “I was nervous at the same time, but we were pretty confident and we didn't fear St Pat's at all.”

In the aftermath of their moment of glory – still the club's finest hour - the Harps squad went to Leinster House for a brief reception before making their heroic return to Donegal.

The team coach was held up by half-an-hour by a British Army checkpoint at Belleek before crossing the border into Donegal.

Via Ballyshannon, Ballintra, Laghey and Donegal Town, the Cup winners snaked their way towards home.

“Ballybofey was gripped by something akin to delirium,” the Donegal Democrat reported.

Led by the St Crone's Band from Dungloe and the Raphoe Pipe Band, Harps, the FAI Senior Cup in tow, were greeted by thousands.

As he went passed the house where he was born and raised at Ard McCarron, on the town's outskirts, a lump stuck in Gerry Murray's throat.

“There was one person from Ballybofey playing on that Harps team . . . to have been that person is just something really special to me,” Murray says.

“It was crazy, just standing on the lorry outside of Alexander's shop and seeing so many people on the street in Ballybofey.

“I was a proud man to be from Ballyofey that night. It was just magic.

“It was unreal coming back into the town and walking down Navenny Street with the cup and thousands of people following. It was something you'd dream of.”

Sheridan made his own way to Donegal to link up with his team-mates before having to return for duty in Dromod.

They never did catch those responsible for the Roosky robbery.

“It's the one black mark.”