UCD Greatest Ever XI

This article was orginally published as a series in Blue Review in 2004 (we think!).

After much debate, we’ve decided to include players who played before we joined the league - this does open up the prospect of a player from our 1895 team being overlooked; however, with the club being semi-pro since the early eighties, most of our contenders will probably be from the league era anyway. Nomination is by virtue of performances while at UCD, and so being a big-name Student (like Peter Lorimer!) doesn’t automatically qualify a player for a nomination. The other restriction we’ve invoked is that only players who have been at UCD for two seasons will be considered. If you’re unsure what this means, ask your nearest Shelbourne official.

Goalkeeper

We’re going to start at the start, with the goalkeeper. UCD’s successes always seem to be built on a solid defence, and so this position has some high-calibre nominations! Our finest hour, of course, was our 1984 FAI Cup win and subsequent 1-0 aggregate defeat to FA Cup holders Everton in the Cup Winners’ Cup. Over those two seasons, we came sixth and fourth in the league with the third- and second-best defensive records respectively. One of the key men in that record was Alan O’Neill, whose time at Belfield included a senior Irish call-up. He was Man-of-the-Match in both FAI Cup Finals and in 56 league games for UCD, he conceded a miserly 48 goals and kept 24 clean sheets!

In the 2002/03 season, we were anchored to the bottom of the league for much of the year, but recovered to finish sixth thanks in no small part to the best defensive record in the league as Barry Ryan kept 13 clean sheets in 26 games. These stats came as no surprise to the Belfield faithful, who had seen many games in which Ryan earned us a point or three by virtue of outstanding one-man-shows, including in Europe again during our 0-0 away draw to Velbazhd Kyustendil in 2000. He spent seven years at Belfield, becoming a cult hero due to his confidence on crosses, exceptional shot-stopping, high penalty-saving rate and ability to wave to the fans during games! In 159 games, he kept 54 clean sheets.

A third ’keeping legend for the College is Shay Kelly, who preceded Ryan. His five-year spell at UCD ended with a transfer to English Second Division side Cardiff City, where he made 10 league appearances in two years before returning to Pat’s and now Bohs. His clean sheet record is also impressive, at 55 clean sheets in 150 games.

There are a couple of other worthy keepers - Pat Jennings, who showed glimpses of his ability in the second half of last season when keeping nine clean sheets in the last fifteen games, Jim McCabe, our first keeper, and Paul Fitzgerald, O’Neill’s successor, deserve mentions. In Fitzgerald’s first season at UCD, he saved 7 penalties of 15 faced!

In the end, though, it’s a three-horse race, and we’ve gone for Alan O’Neill, whose impact on UCD’s history belies the fact that he only spent two seasons at Belfield!

[top]

Right Back

As we saw with the goalkeeper, in any debate about UCD’s greatest defence, the 1984 Cup winning team has to be seriously considered. That was Robbie Lawlor, who signed from Dundalk at the start of the 1983/84 season. A full-back who can contribute goals is always welcome - in the previous season, Robbie was our second top scorer. In a match against Shamrock Rovers in Belfield, during which he had already been booked and in which the linesman was giving very few offsides, he was flagged offside with ten minutes to go. He promptly turned around to the linesman and said "At least you’ve figured out what the f***ing flag’s for!" and was sent off for a second bookable offence.

One full-back who doesn’t contribute too many goals is current No 2 Alan Mahon. Alan joined UCD from St Francis, where his dad Pete was manager, and played five games for them before joining the College. 134 league games later and he’s still looking for his first goal! What he lacks in the goalscoring department, though, he makes up for in terms of solid dependability, versatility (he has played across the back four) and influence.

You always want a bit of toughness about your defence, and in that regard, Paul Fitzgerald has to be nominated. In one of his first games for UCD - a B Division game against Shels in 1985 - he took an elbow in the mouth and had several teeth broken. But he came back and by 1988 was a pivotal member of our promotion-winning team as we conceded 16 goals in 27 games.

Robert Keogh took an interesting route to the UCD first team - in 1990, he came to UCD and was playing in the Superleague, but a year later was making his first-team debut and established himself as a regular the next season, a slot he was to hold for three seasons before joining Kilkenny.

So, who are we going to go for? Well, in the end, we’ve gone for dependability and experience rather than flair at the back, and Alan Mahon has gotten the nod. And perhaps there’s an element of being sorry for his for the slagging he must get over his daddy being the manager! All he needs now is that elusive first goal...

[top]

Central Defence

Well, where to start here?! We’ve been blessed with many quality centre-backs down through the years - so many, in fact, that we’re going to have to look back at them in two parts! We’ve had quality centre-backs from our current handy pairing of Robert McAuley (joint top scorer last season) and Alan McNally to a 1976 Collingwood Cup winner in Kevin Moran, later to win the Premiership, go to three major international tournaments and win other not-so-important honours! Moran signed for Manchester United from Pegasus, the UCD graduate team in the Leinster Senior League.

And Moran isn’t even the earliest of our nominations. Back in the late 1950s, Willie Browne won B international honours while at UCD, and went on to win four Ireland caps while with Bohs. It’s obviously very difficult to compare players across such a gap, especially considering we were then an amateur non-league side, but Willie certainly deserves a mention by all accounts.

In our Cup-winning team, we had Ken O’Doherty, who wrote his name into UCD’s history books by notching the winning goal in that final six minutes into injury time. Ken was also our leading scorer two years in a row, in 1981/82 and 82/83. He played in England for almost a decade - five years with Crystal Palace, whom he left shortly before they reached the 1991 FA Cup Final against Manchester United, followed by four years with Huddersfield Town - before returning to play with Shels. Injuries scuppered his dream of finishing his career with UCD as he retired with a back injury after just one season at Tolka Park.

Ken’s defensive partner in that Cup-winning season was Paddy Dunning, a former Ireland international who was coming towards the end of his career, but was still an exceptional talent. That defence conceded 49 goals in 56 games over the 1983/84 and 84/85 seasons (and five goals in six games on the way to winning the Cup in 1984) - not bad for a side which had conceded 63 in 26 games in 1982/83!

Our two previous promotion seasons saw a couple of young stars still around today - Tony McCarthy (now with Shels) in 1988/89 and Terry Palmer (now with Shamrock Rovers) in 1994/95. Tony only spent two seasons at Belfield but even them glimpses of his future qualities could be seen. He also had spells in England with Millwall and Colchester United before, just like O’Doherty, returning to Tolka Park with Shels. Terry Palmer had a somewhat longer spell with UCD, clocking up 157 games and scoring nine goals.

And there are still plenty of newer names to go through as well! We’ll nominate a few more in the Harps programme before making easily the most difficult decision of our selection...

So, on to our second centre-back. We’ve already nominated Robert McAuley, Alan McNally, Kevin Moran, Willie Browne, Ken O’Doherty, Paddy Dunning, Tony McCarthy and Terry Palmer - there can’t be too many more, can there?!

We start today with Conor Timmons, who joined the club in 1988 and broke into the team the following season after Tony McCarthy’s departure. His role in the First Division Championship winning squad cannot be overstated. He was club captain for a few seasons and had several nasty injuries. Work commitments meant that he was transferred to Scotland by his employer in 1996. He was fiercely loyal to the club and despite several offers being made to acquire him by so called bigger clubs, he insisted he was UCD totally and would never consider playing for anyone else.

Our 1994/95 promotion team was captained by Packie Lynch, who retired due to injury a couple of seasons ago while at Pat’s, and who was another solid defender. Another Lynch to have lined out at the back for College was Aidan Lynch, part of Ireland’s U-20s World Cup team which came third in Malaysia in 1997. Aidan was another club captain at Belfield, but unfortunately for us was hit by injuries and moved on to Drogheda.

The 1994/95 team also saw a couple of games for another young starlet - one Tony McDonnell. Since his debut in 1993/94 - his only game that season - Tony has played in centre-mid, centre-back and at full-back and is now club captain.

Playing alongside Tony in the 2002/03 team which ended the season with the best defensive record in the league - 25 goals conceded in 27 games after eight consecutive clean sheets at the end of the year - was 6’6” Clive Delaney, who left UCD after that season to try his luck at West Ham, where he spent four months partnering Gary Breen in the reserves. Released after West Ham’s relegation despite contract negotiations having started, Delaney was recommended by Breen to Breen’s new manager at Sunderland, Mick McCarthy. Clive scored in a trial game and only Sunderland’s financial situation stopped him from signing. Clive has also played for Ireland at U-21 level.

And there are others who deserve a mention too - Richard Earle, Colm Begley and Paul Hughes to name but three.

And we have to pick just two from those for our team! A rather thankless task, I’m sure you’ll agree! So after polling around anyone who may have an opinion (which takes the blame for any perceived wrong decision away from us!), we got votes for almost everyone, but we’ve ended up with a centre-back pairing blending old and (relatively) new in Ken O’Doherty and Clive Delaney.

[top]

Left Back

So our trip through the team takes us to left-back. In 1974, a young goalkeeper called Martin Moran joined UCD to study law. Shortly afterwards, Jim McCabe supplanted him as keeper, so he moved up front and was our top scorer in our first season in the league, with 9 goals. But then we got hold of some decent forwards, so Moran changed position again - to centre-back this time. And at the end of our second season, he was top scorer again with ten, helped by taking over penalty duties. By 1983, he had moved out to left-back, where he spent the rest of his career. He won an FAI Cup medal with UCD, finished fourth in the league and was in the team which lost 1-0 to Everton. He subsequently played in Europe for Galway and played for Shels and Pat’s (under Brian Kerr) as well before returning to UCD in 1989; however, after only three games, he retired. But that wasn’t the last we were to see of Martin as he came back to manage the team after the death of the Doc in 1999. By the end of the season, we were in Europe again after a joint-best league finish of fourth. Though he resigned due to work pressures early into the 2001/02 season, it’s fair to say that Martin left something of an impact even 27 years after first joining the club!

Joining the club the year Martin left the playing staff was Jonathan Treacy, who joined from Home Farm and made his debut in March 1990 in a 1-0 win against Galway. He established himself the following season and was a regular for the next seven seasons. A model of consistency, he was asked to take on a wing-back role in 1994. He was outstanding that season as UCD romped to the First Division title, Leinster Senior Cup and First Division Shield treble in the club's centenary season. He was eventually replaced by Declan Fitzgerald, who joined UCD in 1992, but didn’t establish himself as a regular until 1995, once Treacy departed. He was a regular until 1998, when he sustained a nasty broken leg in the bad-tempered play-off win against Limerick, a match since dubbed the “Battle of Belfield”, from which he never fully recovered, and the game marked his last in a UCD shirt.

The present incumbent has made a promising start since joining from Blackburn Rovers - Hugh Davey has been one of our most consistent players this season, and has a Northern Ireland U-23 cap at the age of 20 to boot. He was selected for the EL U-21 side for the semi-pro competition last week, where he opened the scoring against Wales with a 30-yarder. Alas, goals at the right end have been harder to come by in the blue of UCD as, although he’s scored for NI’s U-21s, UCD in a friendly, the EL U-21 side and for Waterford against UCD (an own goal), he’s not gotten his first senior goal yet.

There’s a clear winner for this spot though - for versatility, reliability, goalscoring prowess and even no little management ability to boot, we’re nominating Martin Moran as our greatest-ever left-back.

[top]

Right Wing

Onto the other wing, and as with our left-wing spot, we haven’t got too many nominations. As we noted last week, our current wingers - Mick O’Donnell and Pat McWalter - are often more comfortable and effective in centre-mid and up front respectively. However, as we will see also, we’ve also had fairly few of them as well! Anyway, we’ll just have to go with what we have!

Right-wing for the Cup-winning team was Aidan Reynolds, who departed in the summer and consequently didn’t play in the games against Everton. He joined the College in 1980 and played just under 100 games - hardly a huge number of games, but still enough for a nomination!

The next season saw the arrival of Mick Kavanagh, who was at Belfield from 1985 until 1990. And he was succeeded by another Kavanagh, Ciarán Kavanagh. Ciarán came to College in 1990 and stuck around until 2002, when he left to join his home-town club, Dundalk. He was used more often as a centre-mid, especially in the later seasons, but enjoyed many a successful season on the right-wing, and even played up front for a while, scoring six goals in the half-season he was there. This feat is all the more impressive for the fact that a full season was only 27 games! Ciarán played a remarkable 321 league games for UCD, which was a testament to his consistency - Tony McDonnell, who has been with UCD for ten years, is still 100 games short of Ciarán’s UCD appearances record!

One of the reasons for moving Ciarán infield was the arrival, in 1997, of John Martin, brother of current striker Robbie. John undid many a defence with his blistering pace, scoring ten goals and setting up a good many more. His best season was probably the 2001/2 season, when he revelled in Paul Doolin’s counterattacking style which played to the pace of him and his brother Robbie.

So, who gets the nod? In the end, it came down to a straight battle between John Martin and Ciarán Kavanagh, and we’re giving the nod to Kavanagh. Though newer fans may remember him as a centre-mid, he played plenty of games on the right-wing and is deserving of his nomination there. As we will see next week, the competition for places in the centre of midfield is fierce, so we’re also more than happy to take Kavanagh out of that maelstrom and give the person who has donned the UCD jersey more times than any other his place in our team.

[top]

Central Midfield

In our team, we’re going to include one defensive midfielder and one attacking midfielder for balance. So to the holding role first. The current incumbent is a rather handy one - Tony McDonnell. Having played right-back and centre-back since arriving at Belfield in 1993, he’s settled in midfield in recent years. Club captain since Aidan Lynch’s departure, Tony has been a rock in midfield, and has taken to getting forward too, with three goals in consecutive games this season (all of which turned out to be winners in the end) to add to his seven in 2000/1, which saw him end up as joint-top scorer. In fact, with 23 goals for the club in total, he’s now our eighth most prolific goal scorer of all time.

Another player to have also played at centre back and right back was Packie Lynch. It was as a centre midfielder though that he was to have most inpact. In this position, he was part of the team that won the First Division in 1994/5. He had the notable success of winning the both the Leinster Senior Cup and First Division Shield twice with UCD in the nineties before leaving for Pats where he won the league for two consecutive seasons

In the Cup-winning team, we had Robbie Gaffney. He signed from Rovers for the 1983/4 season having won the cup with Rovers in 1978 and finished second in the league in 1982. He was instrumental in both the cup win and the subsequent European matches against Everton that year. He only spent two seasons at Belfield before going on to Shels and Pat’s. After leaving UCD, he won the league title with Pats in 1990 which proved to be his final season in League of Ireland football.

Our next nominee left us for Rovers in 1992 on a big money transfer before eventually finding his way back to Belfield in 1996. Gary O'Sullivan joined UCD in 1986 on a scholarship and finally broke into the side in the 1988/9 season, helping the club to promotion. He played every game the next season in the premier division and won the First Divison Shield in 1982 before leaving for Rovers. In his second spell in Belfield, he helped keep us up in the play-off against Limerick in 1998.

In the end it comes down to a close call between Tony McDonnell and Robbie Gaffney for the position of defensive midfielder in our best ever team. We’ve decided to go with our current captain in the hope that he can add a few goals to his solid as a rock midfield play.

[top]

Left Wing

On now to the left-wing. Wingers have been a problem position through the years for UCD - even our current incumbents, Mick O’Donnell and Pat McWalter are more comfortable in centre-mid and up front respectively. Nevertheless, we’ve had a few good ones in 25 years. David Cassidy was there when we came into the league - originally a full-back, he was pushed up to the wing and could score a goal or two - or four, as Shels found out in November 1979.

One of our former players still playing in the league is James Keddy, who after winning the First Division with UCD, went on to win awards everywhere he went - Derry, Shels, Shamrock Rovers, Dundalk and now Bohemians. And only last Monday, his was the goal which saw Bohs through to the League Cup semi-finals at our expense. Keddy was a highly rated winger while at Belfield, whose trickery set up many a goal. Another still doing the rounds is Robbie Griffin, our third-top scorer of all time. He played up front for a part of his College career, which covered 1990-1998 and 2003, but always reckoned the wing was his best position.

A couple of others deserve mention too - Dave Tilson, who went on to Bohs and Shels, spent five years at Belfield, while Hungarian Zoltan Istvan also played out on the left.

While picking our team and nominees, we spent ages trying to work out what position exactly Joe Hanrahan played while at UCD. We had him in as a forward, a winger and an attacking midfielder. Back in the 80s, the UCD team consisted of ten players trying to give the ball to Joe to go on one of his mazy runs, and the most memorable of those saw him run from the half-way line into the penalty area before finishing with a goal in the 1984 Cup Final against Shamrock Rovers. People came to Belfield with the sole purpose of watching him play, and they would urge the rest of the team to give him the ball at every opportunity. In 99 league games, he scored 11 goals and set up many more before signing for Manchester United for a £40,000 fee, where of course he was a teammate of another former Student in Kevin Moran (not to mention former St Pat’s player Paul McGrath).

It says something about a player when they’re talked about as being the first name on the teamsheet each week. So what does it say about him when he’s the first name on the Best XI?! Well, that’s what we’re saying about Joe, so he can take up his old position waiting for the rest of the rest of the team to pass to him!

[top]

Strikers

So, we come to the forwards. This won’t take too long as we haven’t been blessed with an abundance of strikers since joining the league! In fact, in our first four seasons in the league, our top scorers were all defenders! However, before we were in the league, we did have Hugo McNeill, who was later to play for Ireland in the 1987 Rugby World Cup as well as in the 1985 Triple Crown campaign. Hugo scored 46 goals in our last season as a non-league team before he left UCD to do a post-graduate course in Trinity and, as our rules at the time didn’t allow us play players from outside the College, he never played league football for us.

Only two players have scored more than 46 league goals for UCD - Mick O’Byrne and Darren O’Brien. Micko joined UCD in 1993; by which stage, Darren O’Brien had been our top scorer for the two previous seasons, the second time with a record-equalling eleven goals from a 27-game campaign. Darren broke that in 1993 with 13, but Micko went one better in 1994/5 and equalled the feat the next season in the Premier. That record stood up until two weeks ago when Willie Doyle moved it on to 15. Micko’s reward for his exploits came in the form of U-21 international honours.

One of our best-known players is current Dublin GAA star Jason Sherlock, who came to UCD in 1994 and played for four seasons before leaving for Shamrock Rovers. In the middle of his time there, he quit soccer to concentrate on Gaelic football, but not before he had scored 31 goals for us in 110 games. He formed a formidable partnership with Mick O’Byrne which saw us romp the 1994/5 First Division and consolidate our place in the Premier over the next couple of seasons.

There are two players in the league whose current form is a mystery to those who saw them play in Belfield - Glen Fitzpatrick and Andy Myler. Glen managed four goals in 38 games and is now the regular partner for Ireland international Jason Byrne at Shels, while Myler did better (13 from 48, including a half-way lob against Limerick the day after David Beckham’s goal against Wimbledon which formed part of a hat-trick for the half-time substitute), but still not spectacularly. Myler is now one of only four current eL players to have scored more than 100 league goals (along with Stephen Geoghegan, Barry O’Connor and Glen Crowe. Robbie and Willie Doyle have done well but haven’t been with the club long enough to be nominated. Others who deserve a mention include Peter Hanrahan, Paul Cullen and Robbie Martin.

So who gets in? Well, the best forward lines are the ones who work well as a pair, so we’ve gone for our most prolific pairing to date in Mick O’Byrne and Jason Sherlock, who scored over 70 league goals in four seasons together up front for UCD.

[top]