While watching the Cup Final on television and having a love for football, my mind wandered back to that great team Shamrock Rovers.

We were in good company in Patrick’s Villas Ringsend when we mentioned Father Tom Fulham. Ringsend would be bedecked with flags when this local and learned gentleman visited Ringsend. Maybe it was his religious inspiration that brought ‘The Hoops’ to the heights they achieved.

The names of Bob Fulham, ‘Sack’ Glen, Marlow, Fagan, Flood, etc will go down in Ringsend history.

While Rovers and Shels’ supporters were working mates, on Cup Final day they were poles apart. Traditionally, to be a Shamrock Rovers supporter you would live the chapel side of the bridge in the village. Shelbourne dominated the other side of the bridge, their stronghold.

Visualise a large, open area in Ringsend village known to us as ‘the gap’. On Cup Final day it was an assembly point for ‘Hoops’ supporters en route to Dalymount Park. The Ringsend Library and recent environmental work has taken over this hallowed ground.

We were very posh in those days. We had a pipe band and a pipe major belting out instructions to the legion of Shamrock Rovers supporters. We also had a horse. Yes, a Hoops supporter horse!
Living in Patrick’s Villas was a Shelbourne supporter by the name of Slodger Maginn who owned the horse and had a hackney cab business. As the Chapel bell rang out 12 o’clock it was the signal for our pipe major to send us on our merry way to Dalymount Park.

But wait a minute! Is this a horse trotting up Patrick’s Villas painted with green and white hoops around its belly. A Shelbourne horse supporting Rovers!

The horse had been tethered at Ropewalk Place and the paint job done by ‘Hoops’ supporters. It was all in good fun and the horse took its place at the head of the procession, guarded and guided by Rovers supporters.

If you were to ask me what happened the horse during the Cup Final, I can honestly say I don’t know. I’m told it didn’t see the match.

But this I do know, Rovers won the Cup, Shelbourne reminding us that the Cup was only on loan to us for twelve months. Slodger Maginn and his wonder horse were reunited to continue their successful hackney cab business.

Above: Pictured in August 1964, Shamrock Rovers team and officials with the FAI Cup, League of Ireland Championship Cup, League of Ireland Shield, Leinster Senior Cup and Dublin City Cup, which they won in the highly successful 1963–64 season.