SHELBOURNE BOSS Damien Duff expressed pride in his side’s achievement in reaching the FAI Cup final, despite a disappointing 4-0 loss to Derry City today.
The former Ireland international admitted Shels were outperformed by the Candystripes, but could not fault his men for effort.
“On paper, you could say it’s a humiliating result, but I walked into this stadium immensely proud today, and I’ll leave immensely proud,” he told reporters after the game.
“The lads have been fantastic all year. At the end of the day, sometimes it comes down to that bit of quality. We know they’ve proper League of Ireland superstars, in their team.
“The one regret, I guess, today is that maybe quite a few of us will go home, look ourselves in the mirror and ask ‘have we given the best version of ourselves?’ and the answer is ‘no’. We knew we had to, to win the cup, and I don’t think we did.
“I mean as in producing their best footballing performance. Attitude, hunger, desire, I could never fault them.
“We haven’t given a top, top performance. I could just feel a flatness, maybe the emotion of the game got to us and they capitalised on that, as simple as that.”
Duff had some difficult calls to make as regards his starting XI, but had no regrets in that regard, saying: “Speaking in hindsight, I still would have picked the same team.”
He continued: “We gave away poor goals, that’s a collective, it’s not the staff and them. The goals you could argue were all things we talked about and touched on on the training pitch during the week but I guess it’s about doing it under the lights at the stadium. Like I said to the guys after the game there sometimes you grow more as a person and learn more about yourself on the difficult days.
“When I was crap individually or had a disappointment in my career, I enjoyed it, because I knew I’d come better, and I guess I have to put that mentality into the team.
“It’s a young, young team, and that’s the mentality they have to have. At the end of the day, I’ve told them to go out, have a beer and celebrate tonight because they’ve been involved in the showpiece of Irish football and they should be immensely proud of themselves.
“I said to the guys pre-match just before we went out, it’s the proudest day of my life, but it’s not the hardest day today. 4-0 on paper is a horrendous result. I’ve had more difficult days, a lot more difficult days. Like I said live to Tony [O'Donoghue] on RTÉ, I walked in 10 feet tall into Lansdowne today and I’ll walk out 10 feet tall.”
Derry boss Ruaidhrí Higgins, meanwhile, was in a jubilant mood after seeing his side life the FAI Cup for the sixth time.
“The early goal definitely helped,” he said. “I think the big open spaces for the pace of our front three caused them problems. I was delighted to see that first one hit the back of the net and we grew in confidence from that. To win the cup is special but to win it in the manner that we won is extra special.
“You make decisions and sometimes it goes for you and sometimes it doesn’t. But having the big grass pitch here the size of it, the athletes that we have in the team ate the ground up and our top, top players came to the party today. We had more experience in our team I would say. And the ones who haven’t played on this stage would get extreme confidence from that and it will be huge for them in their futures.
“This club is a big club in Ireland and we haven’t won the FAI Cup in 10 years, which is too long. God knows we might not win another one for 10 years but hopefully not. You see the potential of the club today. The numbers that we travelled with. I don’t know what the numbers were that travelled but it’s ridiculous. And it’s for them. Can we use it as a springboard? Time will tell but that’s the ambition.”
