MICHAEL DUFFY OPENS his front door and almost steps on a pair of goalkeeper gloves lying on the floor.
He has quick thinking and quicker feet to get around them.
The gloves are signed by Derry City’s Brian Maher and were dropped in as a gift for Loverin, one of the boys across the road who is friends with Duffy’s seven-year-old son, Eli, and has dreams of becoming a goalkeeper with the hometown club he adores.
It’s a love shared by Duffy, his ambition to represent his people realised. The club captain is no longer this mythical presence on a serene cul-de-sac they’ve called their home for the last four years.
“I’d look out the back during the summer and there would be 12 weans out playing football, I wouldn’t know some of them.
“They’d be looking at me shocked the first few times, sometimes I’d join in a couple of their wee games but they’re that used to me now they don’t care.”
And they wouldn’t be shy on opinions.
“Yis were shite last night.”
“What’s going on, hi?”
“Good goal.”
“Yis were still shite, but unlucky.”
“You know kids, they could come out with anything,” Duffy says.
Michael Duffy makes a coffee at home.
Loverin and his twin brother Layton live directly across the road from Duffy, his fiancée Emily and their two boys, Eli and three-year-old Georgie.
The peace here is delicate and precious, but the wildness is what Duffy still cherishes when he sees Eli, the twins, and their friends Caoimhín Óg and Rossa commander the road out front or one of the back gardens together.
These winter nights squeeze the enjoyment of youth as the cold and the wet and the dark takes hold.
This week – FAI Cup final week – provides a shining light for Derry.
Maher came good on a promise to Loverin about the gloves after the club’s final home game of the League of Ireland season against Duffy’s former club Dundalk. Had caretaker boss Mark Connolly not managed to inspire a turnaround in fortunes since Tiernan Lynch left on 5 August then that pitch invasion would not have been so friendly.
Loverin made a beeline for the goalkeeper and pleaded with him for a memento.
“Brian is great with stuff like that, he knows the boy is Eli’s wee mate so made sure to bring them down. He’ll be delighted.”
Maher is a Dubliner who had been No.1 and a constant presence between the posts for the Candystripes since 2022. Injury earlier this year meant he lost his place. He knows what this week means to the club and the city.
Duffy was on a primary school visit with him and some teammates in the days before inviting The 42 into his home. He’s still laughing at one interaction.
“You scored one against UCD in the third round.”
“Yeah.”
“You scored twice in the quarter final against Dundalk.”
“Yeah.”
“And you scored twice in the semi-final against Galway.”
“Yeah.”
“So that means you have to go and score a hat-trick in the final against Waterford.”
Duffy could only laugh then and he’s still laughing now.
“Because that wasn’t one of the weans, it was the teacher saying it to me in front of them all!”
Michael Duffy in his shed.
He’s 32 now and this is a burden of expectation that he has shouldered for what must feel like a lifetime, although up until a few days ago it wasn’t even the most important cup final in the Duffy house.
Eli plays for Foyle Harps – the same schoolboy club as his daddy – and had been counting down to his team’s Winter Cup final at the Waterside Shared Village.
“He was telling me every day, ‘I can’t wait for my final, daddy, it’s only 14 sleeps, it’s only 13 sleeps, it’s only 12 sleeps… I’ll win my final and then you will win yours, daddy’. But he was getting nervous, I could tell,” Duffy says.
“He wouldn’t stop talking about it and then the questions were like ‘what if we lose, daddy? I don’t want to lose’. Then one of the days before our semi-final with Galway, I was bringing him to school in the car. ‘What if you lose, daddy? I’ll cry if you lose because I want to go to the Aviva’.I was driving. I could see his wee face, he was getting sad even thinking about it.
“I had to say to him, ‘aye, we might lose, and you might lose, because that can happen, there has to be a team that loses in football. I told him I was going to go out and play my game and enjoy it as much as I could by working as hard as I could.
“I told him to do the same because he’s quick and nippy. It’s best when he’s on the move. He’s left footed. So I just told him, ‘keep running, don’t stop running, have as much fun as you can with your friends and enjoy playing the game because that’s what I will do’.”
Michael Duffy in action for Derry against Rijeka this summer. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
That’s a mantra Duffy lives by. Ask anyone about him and they will say the same thing. “Great player. Better person.”
Case in point: The 42 was almost three hours late for this interview. Car trouble on the way up to Derry from Dublin wreaked havoc. The plan was to meet by midday before Duffy and Emily had to go to Eli’s parent-teacher meeting in school.
Panicked messages and explanations were met with a calm, disarming reaction. So we met just after 3pm instead. It was already beginning to get dark. The platter of buns and turnovers and cream fingers that Duffy had picked up from Doherty’s Bakery were not quite as fresh.
“Well, you were supposed to be here earlier.”
Doherty’s is where Duffy went to pick up a selection of 28 treats for teammate Christy Grogan’s 21st birthday a few days earlier. “Only came to £23.”
He’s still laughing as he begins to fiddle with his most recent Father’s Day present, a Ninja coffee machine.
He throws out options as quick as his stepovers.
Latte?
Flat white?
Cappuccino?
There’s a lot to be said for being waited on hand and foot by one of the League of Ireland’s best players of his generation, the reigning PFA Ireland player of the year who is on the three-man shortlist to make it back-to-back honours for 2026.
The 42 is not the only visitor expected today. A fourth electrician in the space of a month is due out to the house at some point to examine a temperamental fridge that has been sporadically blowing out the power in the house when the door on the left side is opened.
“Well, he’s supposed to be coming, I’ve still not heard back from him.”
In the meantime, he leads the way from the kitchen into the garden, with a patch of astro that has enough space for Eli’s small football goals, some mannequins to practice shooting and World Cup bunting that remains dangling from the summer.
Michael Duffy with his 2022 FAI Cup final jersey and (left) medals from his career.
Out back is Duffy’s cabin. Framed on the wall by the right as you walk in is a collage of photographs from Derry’s 4-0 FAI Cup final win over Damien Duff’s Shelbourne from 2022.
Duffy’s career could have been ended that season.
His match worn jersey is pinned below, and to the left is a custom-made black bracket with the silhouette of a footballer hitting a volley and the names of his two League of Ireland clubs carved on either side. Winners’ medals dangle from it.
League of Ireland Premier Division champion with Dundalk in 2018 and 2019. FAI Cup winner in 2018 and 2020 and with Derry in 2012 and 2022.
There is also a Foyle Cup winners’ medal when he was 15 and part of the Derry Under-19s.
There is bar in the right corner and in the opposite one is a framed photograph looking down on the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium under the floodlights at night.
“Beautiful,” he says.
There are two shelves beside it on the golden walls that encase this wooden sanctuary. On the top is his PFA Ireland player of the year award from 2018 (the one from last season is much bigger and is in the sitting room in the house).
On the top shelf is also a signed match ball from Duffy’s first hat-trick in League of Ireland football for Derry on 27 July 2014, the day before his 20th birthday. The letters UCD are still visible in blue marker on the ball and give away the opponents.
His only other hat-trick came earlier this year against… Waterford. “That ball is under Eli’s bed,” Duffy says.
On the second shelf, beside an empty bottle of Corona that is half full of Pistachio shells – “I have no idea why” – is a ball from Dundalk’s Europa League campaign in 2020.
Michael Duffy (third right) with Dundalk against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. Tommy Dickson / INPHO
Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO
There are two Arsenal jerseys beside that, one belonging to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and the other to his former Celtic teammate Kieran Tierney, who he spent a couple of years with when the Glasgow club signed him in 2015 after his breakthrough with Derry.
“Honestly, sometimes I forget I played against Arsenal. Covid just ruined so much of football. I wish there was a crowd to make it more special. Football during that period is like a blank to me, the goals and stuff.”
In one of the other corners is a dart board and oche, but the centrepiece is the pool table with blue cloth. Full disclosure, Duffy hockeyed The 42 3-0 in a best-of-five. He cleared up from the break in the final frame after allowing his visitor the mirage of competitiveness by letting it go to a black ball game in the second having already cruised to a four-ball win in the first.
“You played well,” he says with warm condescension. “But I am in here a lot.” Thankfully there was some comfort food to turn to with a jam doughnut.
This is a slice of home that Duffy has made his own. We’re in Galliagh, and five minutes up the Buncrana Road you are in Donegal. The Brandywell is about 15 minutes away.
The Derry fans’ song about their hero is to the tune of Celtic’s Jota on the Wing. Duffy tentatively begins to mumble it but doesn’t have the ego to belt it all out.
When you score, you make the City sing Duffy on the wing, Duffy, Duffy on the wing Every time he’s on the ball we know There’s gonna be a goal Our superstar from Shantallow
“I’m not actually from Shantallow but that’s where Foyle Harps are from and I did knock about there a lot so it’s OK. And it does sound better for the song.”
Stephen Hamilton / INPHO
Stephen Hamilton / INPHO / INPHO
But while we’re on the topic of corrections.
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Michael Duffy is actually Michael Duffy III.
His grandad Michael was born in Donegal, that’s where he worked and played football. “Gaelic football. And he was obsessed with Derry GAA.”
His father Michael is from St Johnston in Donegal and would be a Donegal GAA fan, as is his mother, Josephine, a Lifford woman who “would point out Shay Given’s big house on the country road” and is so “wild nervous” when her son plays that she can’t bring herself to watch games.
Duffy played a couple of years of Gaelic football in secondary school, but soccer was always the draw for him and his younger brother. Their father was the reason for that. As much as he enjoyed watching Donegal’s Gaelic footballers, he spent as much of his adult life as possible playing soccer for Kildrum Tigers.
“My Da was the wee hardy left back, he was a screamer, he loved a tackle. A bit different to me. See if anyone was wearing wee shiny boots? Da was lifting them straight away.”
Duffy wore black Umbro Specials and Puma Kings until he was old enough “and brave enough” to make the trip to legendary Jobby Crossan’s sports shop to pick out his own.
Duffy’s father was also one of his coaches at Foyle Harps, where he saw a more nurturing side to allow his son and his teammates express themselves.
From leff: Michael, Georgie, Eli and Emily in their sitting room.
Father and son were Arsenal-mad, and Duffy was “mesmerised and obsessed” by Thierry Henry. “We’d watch their matches together and it was like there was no other player on the pitch.”
The house we’re in now used to back onto acres and acres of fields where Duffy and his friends could hop the fences to explore. “It was wild then, and when I think back to my childhood it was just football all the time and it was so happy.”
Michael Kelly was his closest pal from the age of eight with Foyle Harps and he will be best man at Duffy’s wedding next year. “I don’t care where we go and what they dress me in so long as I get a round of golf. They can put me in anything they want.”
His parents still live one street over. Emily’s are also just another couple of rows on from that. Her grandmother’s house is the glue for all the family. “Crazy, just full of grandweans,” Duffy says.
When he was Eli’s age he would be on sidelines of those pitches around Derry watching his father. As he progressed in the game and was in a no-man’s land between 16 and 18 when so many can be lost to the game, he remembers his dad taking him out of bed one Sunday morning.
“I was still a kid but he wanted to give me a test. He told me I was playing a men’s match for Celtic Swifts. I remember the pitch in Lisnagelvin. Some lads still probably hungover from the night before.
“It was a little test to see how I’d cope. I did alright.”
Duffy and Derry will always be synonymous. He was still learning about himself and the game when he joined Celtic, a move that didn’t work but an experience that allowed him jump at the opportunity to forge a career when he joined Stephen Kenny’s Dundalk in 2017.
Michael Duffy (right) with Barry McNamee (centre) and close friend Patrick McEleney during their early days at Derry. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
When Kenny became Republic of Ireland manager Duffy was still thriving. His international switch from Northern Ireland was approved (he played for the U21s but turned down a senior call) but a cap with the Boys in Green never materialised.
Of greater concern to come would be fears over his career, full stop.
Duffy couldn’t wait to come back to Derry in 2022.
The club’s billionaire owner, Philip O’Doherty, began to flex his financial muscle. Ruaidhrí Higgins was enticed from Kenny’s coaching staff with Ireland to become the manager.
“I fed into all the hype, doing interviews about how I was proud to have achieved what I did with Dundalk but wanted to do more with Derry. I was putting that pressure on because it does mean more to do it with Derry, it also hurts more too. I wanted my best days to be with Derry.
A slight hamstring strain delayed his second debut but when he stood on the side ready to be introduced a substitute for the last 20 minutes against Drogheda United he felt a surge of pride and excitement.
Then he felt something different.
He tried to chip the ball over Keith Cowan’s head and his foot plat in the astro. “It wasn’t the worst pain straight away, it felt numb, like a really bad dead leg.”
He got up and tried to walk in a straight line. “It buckled under me straight away, you could hear gasps from some people in the crowd.”
Duffy (centre) is helped off after breaking his leg. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
He spent the night in Altnagelvin Hospital. One doctor thought he had done something to his hip and was testing that area, convinced the issue was higher up. “I was thinking ‘what is he talking about? My knee is massive here’.”
The x-ray confirmed a broken leg.
He was there for two days and the knee was still badly swollen. Keyhole surgery was the plan of action.
“In and out job, 30 minutes, happy days,” Duffy says.
Club physio Michael Hegarty had been staying with him and when he went home was getting updates. “He didn’t like the look of it, his instinct was something else was wrong.”
The surgeon was contacted about another scan before the scheduled surgery that morning was requested.
“It was just as well because that’s when they saw that the meniscus had fallen in. It has collapsed. If they’d done the keyhole surgery it would have been a disaster. I could have been done, it’s scary to think about. Micky Heggs saved it.”
The operation was two and a half hours instead. Afterwards, the surgeon asked Duffy if he could do a case study on what happened and write a paper to publish everything that happened because they’d come so close to doing one surgery instead.
The surgeon and doctors had told Duffy that he would not play again in the 2022 season. “And to be honest there are all sorts going through your head about whether you will ever make it back.”
He would return before the end of the campaign, and lifted the FAI Cup, but this was also the start of a period he felt his body was beginning to fail him.
Duffy and Emily had not long moved into their new house. Eli was only three and in creche. Emily, a classroom assistant in school, was out to work every day. At the start of the recovery, Duffy could only lay on their recliner sofa and drink tea from the big flask that Emily would fill for him.
His close friends, brothers Patrick and Shane McEleney, were regular visitors to bring lunch and badly needed company.
Duffy lifts the Cup in 2022 with manager Ruaidhrí Higgins (left). Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
“The things that you think about during that time and let go through your head,” Duffy says.
He pulls up the trouser of his right leg to point out a “this wee lump sticking out” in the middle of his right leg. There are seven screws in the leg and – by pure chance – the scar that remains is in the shape of the number seven.
He was back playing after four months but the metal was not settling correctly. “I could feel the metal when I moved. Adrenaline was getting me through training and games.
But so were injections. “There was a lot of pain, but anytime I felt I could walk I’d say I could play.”
In the pre-season ahead of the 2023 campaign he thought it was beginning to ease but an injury in the warm up before their very first game ruled him out for eight games. It was the start of other issues creeping in all over his lower body.
His calves. His thighs. His hamstrings.
“The physios would tell me my body was mad.”
Then opposite knee became a serious problem. There were seven injections in a five-month period. “It was a numbness down the side of the leg. The scans weren’t showing anything.”
Duffy with Eli and Emily after the 2022 FAI Cup win. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
The physio knew what to look out for. “The leg would go wobbly, it wasn’t a bad pain, it was worse, I’d tried to move and have no feeling in the leg.”
Those who know what to look out for would see him give it a shake. “Trying to wake it up.”
It went from happening after 60 minutes to half-time to 30 minutes. “Until eventually we played [Shamrock] Rovers and I was gone in less than 15.”
A visit to the specialist Fortius Clinic in London provided a quick, albeit surprising prognosis. “They said I needed Botox injections high up in the leg. It basically switched off the muscle that linked further down in the leg. So, aye, Botox fixed me and help save my career.”
The relief was immediate. The thoughts that dominated his waking moments were no more.
“Is this me forever?”
“Am I on the way down.”
“Am I finished?”
“I try to be a positive person as much as I can. My confidence has definitely come back the last couple of years. I feel better in myself. I will try and play football until my legs cannot work anymore. I know what it’s like to feel like they won’t work on the pitch.
Those thoughts of life after playing have made him consider coaching, management is not something he thinks will be for him. Duffy loved business and computers in school and had meetings with the local university recently about doing something in business and IT.
“But for now I want to focus on football and the family. Whatever is left I want to give it to Derry. Those worries about what is coming next after football are there. They worry me, they do. Football has been my whole life, and I feel lucky that I feel so good now. I want to play for the next five, six years if I can.”
Yes, even after a year like this one.
“Right then, let’s check on the madness,” Duffy says, leading the way back into the house.
A Derry fan kisses Duffy on the head. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Spaghetti bolognese is on the go; the mince is seasoned and the pasta boiling.
Emily is back from her parents’ house. She took the boys there when Eli’s meeting in school was finished.
“See if we need help with the school runs, it’s great. Daddy just around the corner. It takes a village, and we have it,” Emily says.
Eli slides into the kitchen wearing his Derry City kit with ‘Daddy 7’ on the back.
“That’s what he’ll be wearing walking out with his daddy at the Aviva,” Emily beams.
“Is Georgie going?” Eli asks.
“Aye, of course,” his mammy says.
“Why is he going?” Eli asks.
“To see daddy. We all are.”
Emily is explaining how she’s organising for more than 30 of the family to travel down. Michael Snr usually prefers to relax at home and watch his son on telly after work in the Western Health and Social Care Trust.
Josephine will fight through the nerves to come down to the Aviva. “She is an earth angel,” Emily beams. Do anything for you. She won’t watch the match. She’ll just say she’s taking Georgie for a walk around the place.”
Brian Maher (left) and Michael Duffy speak to Derry City kit manager George Harkin. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
And you’ll have to keep an eye on him. Georgie climbs onto the kitchen island and begins to play with some fruit. His daddy has shown good anticipation; he lifts him down and thinks he’s cleared the danger.
He turns his back for only a split second. Duffy has switched off. A disappointing lack of concentration for any father of two.
He’s lost his man. Georgie makes a beeline for the fridge and shows a turn of pace to reach it first. He starts to hang off the handle and pull himself up.
“Mummy, mummy,” he says with a smile.
“No, Georgie, don’t open the….”
She’s too late.
The door swings open with Georgie clinging on for the ride.
“Mummyyyyyy!”
“Georgieeeee!”
The lights go off in the hall and the sitting room. Duffy flicks the switch on the mains to bring it back on.
“That fridge,” Emily sighs. “I swear.”
Duffy with James McClean earlier this year. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
The boys go back inside. The sound of relative peace is precious.
Duffy is trying to piece some of the timelines around his leg break back together with the help of Emily.
“Oh hi! The flask of tea and flask of shite,” she laughs.
“Was I pregnant then?”
“Were you?” he replies. “Something happened because I remember Ruaidhrí [Higgins] saying it would be good for me head.
“I went three weeks early on Georgie,” Emily says.
“Maybe you told me you were pregnant? I think I’ve mentally blocked out so much from that time. I broke the leg in March 2022 and Georgie was born in 2023.”
“So I was pregnant shortly after [breaking the leg],” Emily says. “We’re getting right into it now, aren’t we!”
Her laugh is one that could probably turn on the lights if needs be.
But she remembers how bad it got for Duffy dealing with that injury.
“I remember thinking, ‘is there nothing we can do to fix this’. I really feared for his mental health. I was so glad he opened up to me and spoke to me about how he was feeling. He was very lonely.”
“And I was worried,” Duffy says. “Football moves on, someone else can come and replace you.”
The McEleney brothers were so important, so too the friendship he developed with Ciaron ‘Jackie’ Harkin who was recovering from an ACL injury.
They’d spend time together in the gym, on the bike, in the pool, and when neither had the head for it they would just go for a coffee instead.
“He needed his friends reaching out. I felt guilty but had to go to work, I had to leave the house,” Emily says.
Doubts remained for Duffy throughout the recovery process. “I wanted Derry to beat what we achieved at Dundalk. I wanted to have my best years here,” he says.
“And you have,” Emily insists. “I don’t try to talk about football with him. I want to leave him be but I know what he needs.”
Duffy take a corner during the 2024 FAI Cup final defeat to Drogheda United. Nick Elliott / INPHO
Nick Elliott / INPHO / INPHO
They got together as teenagers a year before Duffy was signed by Celtic. Emily was planning on doing what most of her friends were planning after school by going down the route of doing nursing. She applied and was ready to take up a course in university in Manchester.
But she just wanted a reason not to follow the crowd. She decided to take her life in a different direction and find out what she wanted. So she went with him to Scotland. They lived in Hamilton. She loved her job and independence working in the local Tesco Express.
But there were still people at home having their say.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re very young to be moving away.”
“They’re not together long.”
Among them was even the family friend who, as fate would have it, will be their wedding photographer next year.
“You get it from everybody. Derry is small. Things travel fast in Derry,” Emily says. “Everyone has something to say.”
She gets it in school from the kids in the class or in the halls.
“Sometimes I’ve to watch what I say and remember I’m Mickey’s missus. You’ve to be careful. I’d be in work and you hear it all.”
“What’s the craic with Mickey?
“What’s happening with Derry?”
“Aww, miss, he’s a baller, he’s a baller.”
“Are you Mickey Duffy’s wife?”
“Not yet, I say to that one. Almost! Almost!”
“Out of nowhere a wean will ask how much he gets paid a week.”
Duffy laughs. “Me and Brian [Maher] got that today too from a wee boy, ‘How much do you earn?!’ It can be funny. It’s good if you’re liked. Not if you’re not… Especially this year.”
The announcement that James McClean’s contract was terminated by mutual consent came a day after speaking with The 42.
The Republic of Ireland centurion arrived amid so much excitement but it was a move that ended in rancour. Former manager Tiernan Lynch was relieved of his duties on 5 August and director of football Mark Connolly placed in caretaker charge.
The title push that billionaire owner Philip O’Doherty wanted never materialised. The cup is more than a consolation, of course, but the ultimate prize is the league.
“Sometimes players, I don’t know if we were using it as an excuse, it definitely affects focus in some games. You can’t just be a certain way all week and then switch it on in a game. Not with that much going on. You’d nearly forget half of it, it’s been that mad. It got to a point where we came together as players and said ‘blank it all out and let’s come together, let’s only worry about us as a team,” Duffy says.
“We needed to turn it around. I get on great with James. James was brilliant with the players. He was brilliant with all of us. When James signed back here, I was so excited. It was James McClean coming back to Derry. For it to turn out the way it has is sad. Every player in there would wish that it turned out a different way.
“I just want to see everyone give everything every day for the club, for each other, that’s all I want to see. We are very lucky to have Philip [O'Doherty] too. He has done so much for the club. He loves the club like we all do and cares for it like we do. We feel now like we’re coming into this final with momentum.”
Michael and Eli with the picture he drew in support of his dad this weekend.
The 2024 final defeat to Drogheda United, when they were deservedly beaten after coming up short in the run in of the league season, has left some scars. There is also a sense of liberation coming up against a Waterford side that have been one of the form teams in the country.
The Blues avoided relegation with plenty to spare despite being bottom of the table after 14 games and without a win until Graham Coughlan took charge.
“I don’t feel nervous. It’s pure excitement, sheer excitement to play this game. Waterford will be the same. They have been brilliant. I can’t wait for it. Mark [Connolly] has given us a new lease of life and he has come in with a ‘fuck it’ attitude.”
Little ears were burning, and Eli returns to the kitchen clutching some of his artwork.
He says that ‘Brando’ Fleming is his favourite player. Other than his daddy, of course.
He only needs to think about who he loves more between Derry and Arsenal for a split second. “Derry, way more,” he beams.
Eli goes to every match at the Brandywell. Emily has no choice but to bring him. The circle of sporting life continues.
“I like watching my daddy. I love Derry.”
But Shamrock Rovers are the best team, they won the league. “No they’re not,” Eli says.
Bohs?
“No, Derry.”
Pat’s?
“No, Derry.”
Shels?
“No, Derry… “Derry are in the final.”
Eli won his own cup final, scoring one and setting up the other, and hopes it will be 1-1 in 90 minutes with his daddy scoring the winner in extra-time.
“And then you can shush the Waterford fans with your celebration.”
“He wants the drama,” Duffy says.
“Yeah, I love it,” Eli smiles.
“Do you want to show your picture?” Emily says.
Eli has drawn a picture of his daddy scoring the winning goal and reads the message he’s written on it.
To daddy, I hope my daddy plays good in his football match. Good luck.
Duffy kneels down to get to eye level, gives his son a big hug and then lifts him into the air.
Sunday – FAI Cup final: Derry City v Waterford, Live on RTÉ 2 from 2pm, kick-off 3pm.
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Derry's love: At home with Michael Duffy and family with FAI Cup glory in sight
MICHAEL DUFFY OPENS his front door and almost steps on a pair of goalkeeper gloves lying on the floor.
He has quick thinking and quicker feet to get around them.
The gloves are signed by Derry City’s Brian Maher and were dropped in as a gift for Loverin, one of the boys across the road who is friends with Duffy’s seven-year-old son, Eli, and has dreams of becoming a goalkeeper with the hometown club he adores.
It’s a love shared by Duffy, his ambition to represent his people realised. The club captain is no longer this mythical presence on a serene cul-de-sac they’ve called their home for the last four years.
“I’d look out the back during the summer and there would be 12 weans out playing football, I wouldn’t know some of them.
“They’d be looking at me shocked the first few times, sometimes I’d join in a couple of their wee games but they’re that used to me now they don’t care.”
And they wouldn’t be shy on opinions.
“Yis were shite last night.”
“What’s going on, hi?”
“Good goal.”
“Yis were still shite, but unlucky.”
“You know kids, they could come out with anything,” Duffy says.
Loverin and his twin brother Layton live directly across the road from Duffy, his fiancée Emily and their two boys, Eli and three-year-old Georgie.
The peace here is delicate and precious, but the wildness is what Duffy still cherishes when he sees Eli, the twins, and their friends Caoimhín Óg and Rossa commander the road out front or one of the back gardens together.
These winter nights squeeze the enjoyment of youth as the cold and the wet and the dark takes hold.
This week – FAI Cup final week – provides a shining light for Derry.
Maher came good on a promise to Loverin about the gloves after the club’s final home game of the League of Ireland season against Duffy’s former club Dundalk. Had caretaker boss Mark Connolly not managed to inspire a turnaround in fortunes since Tiernan Lynch left on 5 August then that pitch invasion would not have been so friendly.
Loverin made a beeline for the goalkeeper and pleaded with him for a memento.
“Brian is great with stuff like that, he knows the boy is Eli’s wee mate so made sure to bring them down. He’ll be delighted.”
Maher is a Dubliner who had been No.1 and a constant presence between the posts for the Candystripes since 2022. Injury earlier this year meant he lost his place. He knows what this week means to the club and the city.
Duffy was on a primary school visit with him and some teammates in the days before inviting The 42 into his home. He’s still laughing at one interaction.
“You scored one against UCD in the third round.”
“Yeah.”
“You scored twice in the quarter final against Dundalk.”
“Yeah.”
“And you scored twice in the semi-final against Galway.”
“Yeah.”
“So that means you have to go and score a hat-trick in the final against Waterford.”
Duffy could only laugh then and he’s still laughing now.
“Because that wasn’t one of the weans, it was the teacher saying it to me in front of them all!”
He’s 32 now and this is a burden of expectation that he has shouldered for what must feel like a lifetime, although up until a few days ago it wasn’t even the most important cup final in the Duffy house.
Eli plays for Foyle Harps – the same schoolboy club as his daddy – and had been counting down to his team’s Winter Cup final at the Waterside Shared Village.
“He was telling me every day, ‘I can’t wait for my final, daddy, it’s only 14 sleeps, it’s only 13 sleeps, it’s only 12 sleeps… I’ll win my final and then you will win yours, daddy’. But he was getting nervous, I could tell,” Duffy says.
“He wouldn’t stop talking about it and then the questions were like ‘what if we lose, daddy? I don’t want to lose’. Then one of the days before our semi-final with Galway, I was bringing him to school in the car. ‘What if you lose, daddy? I’ll cry if you lose because I want to go to the Aviva’.I was driving. I could see his wee face, he was getting sad even thinking about it.
“I had to say to him, ‘aye, we might lose, and you might lose, because that can happen, there has to be a team that loses in football. I told him I was going to go out and play my game and enjoy it as much as I could by working as hard as I could.
“I told him to do the same because he’s quick and nippy. It’s best when he’s on the move. He’s left footed. So I just told him, ‘keep running, don’t stop running, have as much fun as you can with your friends and enjoy playing the game because that’s what I will do’.”
That’s a mantra Duffy lives by. Ask anyone about him and they will say the same thing. “Great player. Better person.”
Case in point: The 42 was almost three hours late for this interview. Car trouble on the way up to Derry from Dublin wreaked havoc. The plan was to meet by midday before Duffy and Emily had to go to Eli’s parent-teacher meeting in school.
Panicked messages and explanations were met with a calm, disarming reaction. So we met just after 3pm instead. It was already beginning to get dark. The platter of buns and turnovers and cream fingers that Duffy had picked up from Doherty’s Bakery were not quite as fresh.
“Well, you were supposed to be here earlier.”
Doherty’s is where Duffy went to pick up a selection of 28 treats for teammate Christy Grogan’s 21st birthday a few days earlier. “Only came to £23.”
He’s still laughing as he begins to fiddle with his most recent Father’s Day present, a Ninja coffee machine.
He throws out options as quick as his stepovers.
Latte?
Flat white?
Cappuccino?
There’s a lot to be said for being waited on hand and foot by one of the League of Ireland’s best players of his generation, the reigning PFA Ireland player of the year who is on the three-man shortlist to make it back-to-back honours for 2026.
The 42 is not the only visitor expected today. A fourth electrician in the space of a month is due out to the house at some point to examine a temperamental fridge that has been sporadically blowing out the power in the house when the door on the left side is opened.
“Well, he’s supposed to be coming, I’ve still not heard back from him.”
In the meantime, he leads the way from the kitchen into the garden, with a patch of astro that has enough space for Eli’s small football goals, some mannequins to practice shooting and World Cup bunting that remains dangling from the summer.
Out back is Duffy’s cabin. Framed on the wall by the right as you walk in is a collage of photographs from Derry’s 4-0 FAI Cup final win over Damien Duff’s Shelbourne from 2022.
Duffy’s career could have been ended that season.
His match worn jersey is pinned below, and to the left is a custom-made black bracket with the silhouette of a footballer hitting a volley and the names of his two League of Ireland clubs carved on either side. Winners’ medals dangle from it.
League of Ireland Premier Division champion with Dundalk in 2018 and 2019. FAI Cup winner in 2018 and 2020 and with Derry in 2012 and 2022.
There is also a Foyle Cup winners’ medal when he was 15 and part of the Derry Under-19s.
There is bar in the right corner and in the opposite one is a framed photograph looking down on the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium under the floodlights at night.
“Beautiful,” he says.
There are two shelves beside it on the golden walls that encase this wooden sanctuary. On the top is his PFA Ireland player of the year award from 2018 (the one from last season is much bigger and is in the sitting room in the house).
On the top shelf is also a signed match ball from Duffy’s first hat-trick in League of Ireland football for Derry on 27 July 2014, the day before his 20th birthday. The letters UCD are still visible in blue marker on the ball and give away the opponents.
His only other hat-trick came earlier this year against… Waterford. “That ball is under Eli’s bed,” Duffy says.
On the second shelf, beside an empty bottle of Corona that is half full of Pistachio shells – “I have no idea why” – is a ball from Dundalk’s Europa League campaign in 2020.
There are two Arsenal jerseys beside that, one belonging to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and the other to his former Celtic teammate Kieran Tierney, who he spent a couple of years with when the Glasgow club signed him in 2015 after his breakthrough with Derry.
“Honestly, sometimes I forget I played against Arsenal. Covid just ruined so much of football. I wish there was a crowd to make it more special. Football during that period is like a blank to me, the goals and stuff.”
In one of the other corners is a dart board and oche, but the centrepiece is the pool table with blue cloth. Full disclosure, Duffy hockeyed The 42 3-0 in a best-of-five. He cleared up from the break in the final frame after allowing his visitor the mirage of competitiveness by letting it go to a black ball game in the second having already cruised to a four-ball win in the first.
“You played well,” he says with warm condescension. “But I am in here a lot.” Thankfully there was some comfort food to turn to with a jam doughnut.
This is a slice of home that Duffy has made his own. We’re in Galliagh, and five minutes up the Buncrana Road you are in Donegal. The Brandywell is about 15 minutes away.
The Derry fans’ song about their hero is to the tune of Celtic’s Jota on the Wing. Duffy tentatively begins to mumble it but doesn’t have the ego to belt it all out.
When you score, you make the City sing
Duffy on the wing, Duffy, Duffy on the wing
Every time he’s on the ball we know
There’s gonna be a goal
Our superstar from Shantallow
“I’m not actually from Shantallow but that’s where Foyle Harps are from and I did knock about there a lot so it’s OK. And it does sound better for the song.”
But while we’re on the topic of corrections.
Michael Duffy is actually Michael Duffy III.
His grandad Michael was born in Donegal, that’s where he worked and played football. “Gaelic football. And he was obsessed with Derry GAA.”
His father Michael is from St Johnston in Donegal and would be a Donegal GAA fan, as is his mother, Josephine, a Lifford woman who “would point out Shay Given’s big house on the country road” and is so “wild nervous” when her son plays that she can’t bring herself to watch games.
Duffy played a couple of years of Gaelic football in secondary school, but soccer was always the draw for him and his younger brother. Their father was the reason for that. As much as he enjoyed watching Donegal’s Gaelic footballers, he spent as much of his adult life as possible playing soccer for Kildrum Tigers.
“My Da was the wee hardy left back, he was a screamer, he loved a tackle. A bit different to me. See if anyone was wearing wee shiny boots? Da was lifting them straight away.”
Duffy wore black Umbro Specials and Puma Kings until he was old enough “and brave enough” to make the trip to legendary Jobby Crossan’s sports shop to pick out his own.
Duffy’s father was also one of his coaches at Foyle Harps, where he saw a more nurturing side to allow his son and his teammates express themselves.
Father and son were Arsenal-mad, and Duffy was “mesmerised and obsessed” by Thierry Henry. “We’d watch their matches together and it was like there was no other player on the pitch.”
The house we’re in now used to back onto acres and acres of fields where Duffy and his friends could hop the fences to explore. “It was wild then, and when I think back to my childhood it was just football all the time and it was so happy.”
Michael Kelly was his closest pal from the age of eight with Foyle Harps and he will be best man at Duffy’s wedding next year. “I don’t care where we go and what they dress me in so long as I get a round of golf. They can put me in anything they want.”
His parents still live one street over. Emily’s are also just another couple of rows on from that. Her grandmother’s house is the glue for all the family. “Crazy, just full of grandweans,” Duffy says.
When he was Eli’s age he would be on sidelines of those pitches around Derry watching his father. As he progressed in the game and was in a no-man’s land between 16 and 18 when so many can be lost to the game, he remembers his dad taking him out of bed one Sunday morning.
“I was still a kid but he wanted to give me a test. He told me I was playing a men’s match for Celtic Swifts. I remember the pitch in Lisnagelvin. Some lads still probably hungover from the night before.
“It was a little test to see how I’d cope. I did alright.”
Duffy and Derry will always be synonymous. He was still learning about himself and the game when he joined Celtic, a move that didn’t work but an experience that allowed him jump at the opportunity to forge a career when he joined Stephen Kenny’s Dundalk in 2017.
When Kenny became Republic of Ireland manager Duffy was still thriving. His international switch from Northern Ireland was approved (he played for the U21s but turned down a senior call) but a cap with the Boys in Green never materialised.
Of greater concern to come would be fears over his career, full stop.
Duffy couldn’t wait to come back to Derry in 2022.
The club’s billionaire owner, Philip O’Doherty, began to flex his financial muscle. Ruaidhrí Higgins was enticed from Kenny’s coaching staff with Ireland to become the manager.
“I fed into all the hype, doing interviews about how I was proud to have achieved what I did with Dundalk but wanted to do more with Derry. I was putting that pressure on because it does mean more to do it with Derry, it also hurts more too. I wanted my best days to be with Derry.
A slight hamstring strain delayed his second debut but when he stood on the side ready to be introduced a substitute for the last 20 minutes against Drogheda United he felt a surge of pride and excitement.
Then he felt something different.
He tried to chip the ball over Keith Cowan’s head and his foot plat in the astro. “It wasn’t the worst pain straight away, it felt numb, like a really bad dead leg.”
He got up and tried to walk in a straight line. “It buckled under me straight away, you could hear gasps from some people in the crowd.”
He spent the night in Altnagelvin Hospital. One doctor thought he had done something to his hip and was testing that area, convinced the issue was higher up. “I was thinking ‘what is he talking about? My knee is massive here’.”
The x-ray confirmed a broken leg.
He was there for two days and the knee was still badly swollen. Keyhole surgery was the plan of action.
“In and out job, 30 minutes, happy days,” Duffy says.
Club physio Michael Hegarty had been staying with him and when he went home was getting updates. “He didn’t like the look of it, his instinct was something else was wrong.”
The surgeon was contacted about another scan before the scheduled surgery that morning was requested.
“It was just as well because that’s when they saw that the meniscus had fallen in. It has collapsed. If they’d done the keyhole surgery it would have been a disaster. I could have been done, it’s scary to think about. Micky Heggs saved it.”
The operation was two and a half hours instead. Afterwards, the surgeon asked Duffy if he could do a case study on what happened and write a paper to publish everything that happened because they’d come so close to doing one surgery instead.
The surgeon and doctors had told Duffy that he would not play again in the 2022 season. “And to be honest there are all sorts going through your head about whether you will ever make it back.”
He would return before the end of the campaign, and lifted the FAI Cup, but this was also the start of a period he felt his body was beginning to fail him.
Duffy and Emily had not long moved into their new house. Eli was only three and in creche. Emily, a classroom assistant in school, was out to work every day. At the start of the recovery, Duffy could only lay on their recliner sofa and drink tea from the big flask that Emily would fill for him.
His close friends, brothers Patrick and Shane McEleney, were regular visitors to bring lunch and badly needed company.
“The things that you think about during that time and let go through your head,” Duffy says.
He pulls up the trouser of his right leg to point out a “this wee lump sticking out” in the middle of his right leg. There are seven screws in the leg and – by pure chance – the scar that remains is in the shape of the number seven.
He was back playing after four months but the metal was not settling correctly. “I could feel the metal when I moved. Adrenaline was getting me through training and games.
But so were injections. “There was a lot of pain, but anytime I felt I could walk I’d say I could play.”
In the pre-season ahead of the 2023 campaign he thought it was beginning to ease but an injury in the warm up before their very first game ruled him out for eight games. It was the start of other issues creeping in all over his lower body.
His calves. His thighs. His hamstrings.
“The physios would tell me my body was mad.”
Then opposite knee became a serious problem. There were seven injections in a five-month period. “It was a numbness down the side of the leg. The scans weren’t showing anything.”
The physio knew what to look out for. “The leg would go wobbly, it wasn’t a bad pain, it was worse, I’d tried to move and have no feeling in the leg.”
Those who know what to look out for would see him give it a shake. “Trying to wake it up.”
It went from happening after 60 minutes to half-time to 30 minutes. “Until eventually we played [Shamrock] Rovers and I was gone in less than 15.”
A visit to the specialist Fortius Clinic in London provided a quick, albeit surprising prognosis. “They said I needed Botox injections high up in the leg. It basically switched off the muscle that linked further down in the leg. So, aye, Botox fixed me and help save my career.”
The relief was immediate. The thoughts that dominated his waking moments were no more.
“Is this me forever?”
“Am I on the way down.”
“Am I finished?”
“I try to be a positive person as much as I can. My confidence has definitely come back the last couple of years. I feel better in myself. I will try and play football until my legs cannot work anymore. I know what it’s like to feel like they won’t work on the pitch.
Those thoughts of life after playing have made him consider coaching, management is not something he thinks will be for him. Duffy loved business and computers in school and had meetings with the local university recently about doing something in business and IT.
“But for now I want to focus on football and the family. Whatever is left I want to give it to Derry. Those worries about what is coming next after football are there. They worry me, they do. Football has been my whole life, and I feel lucky that I feel so good now. I want to play for the next five, six years if I can.”
Yes, even after a year like this one.
“Right then, let’s check on the madness,” Duffy says, leading the way back into the house.
Spaghetti bolognese is on the go; the mince is seasoned and the pasta boiling.
Emily is back from her parents’ house. She took the boys there when Eli’s meeting in school was finished.
“See if we need help with the school runs, it’s great. Daddy just around the corner. It takes a village, and we have it,” Emily says.
Eli slides into the kitchen wearing his Derry City kit with ‘Daddy 7’ on the back.
“That’s what he’ll be wearing walking out with his daddy at the Aviva,” Emily beams.
“Is Georgie going?” Eli asks.
“Aye, of course,” his mammy says.
“Why is he going?” Eli asks.
“To see daddy. We all are.”
Emily is explaining how she’s organising for more than 30 of the family to travel down. Michael Snr usually prefers to relax at home and watch his son on telly after work in the Western Health and Social Care Trust.
Josephine will fight through the nerves to come down to the Aviva. “She is an earth angel,” Emily beams. Do anything for you. She won’t watch the match. She’ll just say she’s taking Georgie for a walk around the place.”
And you’ll have to keep an eye on him. Georgie climbs onto the kitchen island and begins to play with some fruit. His daddy has shown good anticipation; he lifts him down and thinks he’s cleared the danger.
He turns his back for only a split second. Duffy has switched off. A disappointing lack of concentration for any father of two.
He’s lost his man. Georgie makes a beeline for the fridge and shows a turn of pace to reach it first. He starts to hang off the handle and pull himself up.
“Mummy, mummy,” he says with a smile.
“No, Georgie, don’t open the….”
She’s too late.
The door swings open with Georgie clinging on for the ride.
“Mummyyyyyy!”
“Georgieeeee!”
The lights go off in the hall and the sitting room. Duffy flicks the switch on the mains to bring it back on.
“That fridge,” Emily sighs. “I swear.”
The boys go back inside. The sound of relative peace is precious.
Duffy is trying to piece some of the timelines around his leg break back together with the help of Emily.
“Oh hi! The flask of tea and flask of shite,” she laughs.
“Was I pregnant then?”
“Were you?” he replies. “Something happened because I remember Ruaidhrí [Higgins] saying it would be good for me head.
“I went three weeks early on Georgie,” Emily says.
“Maybe you told me you were pregnant? I think I’ve mentally blocked out so much from that time. I broke the leg in March 2022 and Georgie was born in 2023.”
“So I was pregnant shortly after [breaking the leg],” Emily says. “We’re getting right into it now, aren’t we!”
Her laugh is one that could probably turn on the lights if needs be.
But she remembers how bad it got for Duffy dealing with that injury.
“I remember thinking, ‘is there nothing we can do to fix this’. I really feared for his mental health. I was so glad he opened up to me and spoke to me about how he was feeling. He was very lonely.”
“And I was worried,” Duffy says. “Football moves on, someone else can come and replace you.”
The McEleney brothers were so important, so too the friendship he developed with Ciaron ‘Jackie’ Harkin who was recovering from an ACL injury.
They’d spend time together in the gym, on the bike, in the pool, and when neither had the head for it they would just go for a coffee instead.
“He needed his friends reaching out. I felt guilty but had to go to work, I had to leave the house,” Emily says.
Doubts remained for Duffy throughout the recovery process. “I wanted Derry to beat what we achieved at Dundalk. I wanted to have my best years here,” he says.
“And you have,” Emily insists. “I don’t try to talk about football with him. I want to leave him be but I know what he needs.”
They got together as teenagers a year before Duffy was signed by Celtic. Emily was planning on doing what most of her friends were planning after school by going down the route of doing nursing. She applied and was ready to take up a course in university in Manchester.
But she just wanted a reason not to follow the crowd. She decided to take her life in a different direction and find out what she wanted. So she went with him to Scotland. They lived in Hamilton. She loved her job and independence working in the local Tesco Express.
But there were still people at home having their say.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re very young to be moving away.”
“They’re not together long.”
Among them was even the family friend who, as fate would have it, will be their wedding photographer next year.
“You get it from everybody. Derry is small. Things travel fast in Derry,” Emily says. “Everyone has something to say.”
She gets it in school from the kids in the class or in the halls.
“Sometimes I’ve to watch what I say and remember I’m Mickey’s missus. You’ve to be careful. I’d be in work and you hear it all.”
“What’s the craic with Mickey?
“What’s happening with Derry?”
“Aww, miss, he’s a baller, he’s a baller.”
“Are you Mickey Duffy’s wife?”
“Not yet, I say to that one. Almost! Almost!”
“Out of nowhere a wean will ask how much he gets paid a week.”
Duffy laughs. “Me and Brian [Maher] got that today too from a wee boy, ‘How much do you earn?!’ It can be funny. It’s good if you’re liked. Not if you’re not… Especially this year.”
The announcement that James McClean’s contract was terminated by mutual consent came a day after speaking with The 42.
The Republic of Ireland centurion arrived amid so much excitement but it was a move that ended in rancour. Former manager Tiernan Lynch was relieved of his duties on 5 August and director of football Mark Connolly placed in caretaker charge.
The title push that billionaire owner Philip O’Doherty wanted never materialised. The cup is more than a consolation, of course, but the ultimate prize is the league.
“Sometimes players, I don’t know if we were using it as an excuse, it definitely affects focus in some games. You can’t just be a certain way all week and then switch it on in a game. Not with that much going on. You’d nearly forget half of it, it’s been that mad. It got to a point where we came together as players and said ‘blank it all out and let’s come together, let’s only worry about us as a team,” Duffy says.
“We needed to turn it around. I get on great with James. James was brilliant with the players. He was brilliant with all of us. When James signed back here, I was so excited. It was James McClean coming back to Derry. For it to turn out the way it has is sad. Every player in there would wish that it turned out a different way.
“I just want to see everyone give everything every day for the club, for each other, that’s all I want to see. We are very lucky to have Philip [O'Doherty] too. He has done so much for the club. He loves the club like we all do and cares for it like we do. We feel now like we’re coming into this final with momentum.”
The 2024 final defeat to Drogheda United, when they were deservedly beaten after coming up short in the run in of the league season, has left some scars. There is also a sense of liberation coming up against a Waterford side that have been one of the form teams in the country.
The Blues avoided relegation with plenty to spare despite being bottom of the table after 14 games and without a win until Graham Coughlan took charge.
“I don’t feel nervous. It’s pure excitement, sheer excitement to play this game. Waterford will be the same. They have been brilliant. I can’t wait for it. Mark [Connolly] has given us a new lease of life and he has come in with a ‘fuck it’ attitude.”
Little ears were burning, and Eli returns to the kitchen clutching some of his artwork.
He says that ‘Brando’ Fleming is his favourite player. Other than his daddy, of course.
He only needs to think about who he loves more between Derry and Arsenal for a split second. “Derry, way more,” he beams.
Eli goes to every match at the Brandywell. Emily has no choice but to bring him. The circle of sporting life continues.
“I like watching my daddy. I love Derry.”
But Shamrock Rovers are the best team, they won the league. “No they’re not,” Eli says.
Bohs?
“No, Derry.”
Pat’s?
“No, Derry.”
Shels?
“No, Derry… “Derry are in the final.”
Eli won his own cup final, scoring one and setting up the other, and hopes it will be 1-1 in 90 minutes with his daddy scoring the winner in extra-time.
“And then you can shush the Waterford fans with your celebration.”
“He wants the drama,” Duffy says.
“Yeah, I love it,” Eli smiles.
“Do you want to show your picture?” Emily says.
Eli has drawn a picture of his daddy scoring the winning goal and reads the message he’s written on it.
To daddy, I hope my daddy plays good in his football match. Good luck.
Duffy kneels down to get to eye level, gives his son a big hug and then lifts him into the air.
Sunday – FAI Cup final: Derry City v Waterford, Live on RTÉ 2 from 2pm, kick-off 3pm.
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