Derry City’s absurd season comes to a giddy end with FAI Cup triumph

When it was all over, Patrick McClean fell and starfished on the ground, thumping the turf with his fists before sitting back on his heels to soak in the world around him. Behind him, goalkeeper Brian Maher burst into tears. Match-winner Darragh Burns stood before the Derry City crowd at the other end of the pitch, watching flares ignite as the grin cracked across his face.

This was Derry’s giddy end to an absurd season. It began with a splurge by billionaire owner Philip O’Doherty and forthright talk of winning the league for the next two seasons and went immediately off the rails, careening toward brief anxieties about relegation until Mark Connolly temporarily wrestled the steering wheel from Tiernan Lynch to point the club to mid-table mediocrity and this delirious coda at the Aviva Stadium.