Soccer in 2024: Can't get enough of that wonderful Duff

The Simpsons first aired 35 years ago on 17 December 1989 with a Christmas special when Shelbourne Football Club manager, Damien Anthony Duff, was ten years old and still asking Santa for a new pair of football boots.

Duff Beer was Homer Simpson's drink of choice.

"Can’t Get Enough of That Wonderful Duff" is its storied slogan and was also a regular Homer Simpson catchphrase.

Those words could also be so true for the League of Ireland.

Damien, the 100 times capped Republic of Ireland international, who won the Premier League twice with Chelsea and served Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle United and Fulham with distinction as well as undertaking coaching roles at Glasgow Celtic and Shamrock Rovers, says that his success with Shelbourne has been the greatest achievement of his career.

And he means it.

His passion for his club and for the League of Ireland in general is utterly authentic and has broken through a glass ceiling of perception and credibility that often hindered the image of the domestic game.

Along with his staff he celebrated Shelbourne’s unlikely league title success hard.

Let’s just say that there might have been a Duff beer or two taken.

On the way to collect his parents and drive them to the Soccer Writers’ Ireland awards banquet just before Christmas where he would collect the trophy for 'Personality of the Year’ his trousers split.

He phoned ahead and asked his mother to get a needle and thread and as she sat in the back seat of the car doing emergency needlework his father took his place in the passenger seat and looked across in shock to see his son dressed only in his underwear ready to ferry them all to the gala lunch.

This was a story Duff told from the stage of the Clontarf Castle dining hall to a room full of