Former Shelbourne boss says a Shamrock Rovers title will be sport's greatest comeback
Pat Byrne was a boyhood Shels fan and led them to the 1992 league title but he is backing Shamrock Rovers to win this year's League of Ireland.
Pat Byrne remembers a time when there appeared to be no light at the end of the tunnel at Shamrock Rovers.
But tonight in Tallaght, he hopes to look down the tunnel at Tallaght Stadium and see a place illuminated by floodlights and the most successful side the league has ever produced.
History could be made. And that matters to Byrne. As a child he may have been a Shelbourne fan, each Sunday afternoon in Tolka Park spent with his father, uncles, cousins and brother. But when he grew up and became a pro his team changed from Bohs to Leicester City to Hearts until one day, at a high point of The Troubles, he was advised to get ‘the f**k’ out of Edinburgh and to stay away.
Shamrock Rovers called. Byrne answered, becoming their talisman and captain as they won four in a row, a prize no one could match … until Stephen Bradley came along. They too have won four in a row and tonight four could become five.
“It won’t surprise me,” says Byrne.
Last weekend, at a charity match at Shelbourne, he said the same thing, winning no diplomatic prizes in the process. “You can imagine the heckling I got,” Byrne laughs.
Yet it was all good natured because at Tolka Park as well as Tallaght, Pat Byrne’s name is stitched into folklore. As a manager, he was the one who ended Shelbourne’s previous title drought, guiding them to the league in 1992. And as a player, he was the face of that 1980s Hoops side.
And even though he retired and moved on from the club, Rovers never left him.
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Every second week he’s brought into the Glenmalure Suite at Tallaght along with other icons from that team of the 80s: Mick Byrne, John Cody, Harry Kenny.
Often the current management team, Bradley, McPhail and Cronin, will join them, separated by generations, bonded together by mutual respect.
“What I love about the three lads, what I love about the League of Ireland in general, about the players in it, the coaches, is the honesty,” says Byrne. “No one is on big money so they’re not in the game for that reason. They’re there because it’s a passion.
“And there’s a purity to that because when you look across the water and you see players - really talented, skilful players - and you see them not trying, it turns you off. How can anyone connect to a team who has a player behaving that way?
“This League here is easy to connect to. My attachment to Rovers obviously has a lot to do with the success we had when I played. But it’s not just that. The club and the supporters continually show such affection to that old team.
“The three lads (Bradley, McPhail, Cronin) are very humble. It is all about the players, not about them. I had a great relationship with Jim McLaughlin and the lads seem to have a similar bond with their players. There is a tightness there. They are great pals and they support each other on good days and bad.”
This year, for the first time since 2018, they had bad ones, nine league games ending in defeat, Shelbourne and Derry racing ahead, Rovers tangled up in a European campaign that took their focus away.
And yet even when the gap extended to 14 points, Byrne always felt that events would turn and that we’d be in the position we are now, one game remaining, two teams challenging.
“About eight to ten weeks ago, I said to a friend of mine ‘I still think they will win it’. He looked at me like I was not the full shilling but I stuck to my belief. I felt if Rovers got their act together they would do it.
“That night I sent Stephen (Bradley) a text. ‘I still think you can do it,’ I said.
I had a feeling. No team was getting away from them and Rovers were playing really well without getting the results.
“Shelbourne have a great doggedness about them. They were my club when I was a kid. I had such a love for them.
“But Rovers have been very good to me for 40 years now. The people within the club have always looked out for me. When you have success, you bond with supporters. I still have great friends there. They have always been very respectful to their ex players. It’s lovely to be remembered.
“That’s why I want them to do this. If they do achieve this league title, I think it will be the best comeback in any sport. It will be huge to get to five in a row and even if that means our record disappears, well look, it will be broken some day so if it is going to happen, let it be by our own people.”
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