David Sneyd

THE GENESIS for this column was when The Beat crossed over Liam Whelan Bridge in Cabra and parked up on Connaught Street before Bohemians’ home game with St Patrick’s Athletic on Monday night.

A man with a captain’s gait headed towards those rusty, beaming, beautiful floodlights. Owen Heary looks like he could still do a job at full back. Such was the purpose of his stride he was away into the distance before we could get close enough to shout ‘man on’.

Turning onto St Peter’s Road at around 6.15pm, an hour and a half before kick off, some of the St Pat’s players also began to arrive. Their captain, Joe Redmond, had a gaggle of his teammates in his car as he drove down Norfolk Road, red brick terraced houses flanking him on either side.

Any away player coming to Dayler knows the first battle to be won is not with a first touch or a tackle or a pass. It’s finding free parking.

Redmond drove deep into the street in search of a spot while one road over on Cabra Park his teammate Kian Leavy skipped towards Dalymount with a look of contentment.

It was getting dark, so we can’t be sure, but he may even have been twirling his keys around his finger.

“Free parking?” The Beat asked.

“Just about,” Leavy said, beaming.

Further down St Peter’s Road, on the corner with the junction to New Cabra Road, is the shop now known as Your Stop. The Beat remembers it as The Elmo, and family lore suggests an uncle once co-owned it in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Sipping on a coffee and eating a Galaxy chocolate bar, The Beat was impressed by the parallel parking skills of the person squeezing their Volkswagen Polo into a spot that opened up in front of one of the houses.

The Dublin Tourism plaque beside the faded blue door on No.5 St Peter’s Road tells you this was ‘The family home of James Joyce – author of Ulysses – 1902-1904.’

A closer look at the driver – I mean, who doesn’t like someone staring through the window as you parallel park – confirmed it was in fact St Pat’s winger Simon Power. Getting out of the passenger seat was Mason Melia.

He turned 18 last month and will head for Tottenham Hotspur in January. His days of helping a teammate parallel park before an away game will hopefully be behind him once he embarks on the next stage of his fledgling career.

Melia’s time in the League of Ireland has been brief but he might never have graced it at all had he been born a few years earlier. His early development would have seen him head for a club in England or Scotland by the time he was 15 or 16.

As another season inches towards its end, success and failure are still to be decided. Monday’s Dublin derby between Bohs and Pat’s also brought home the stark passing of time.

It started with spotting Heary passing on the street, as when the team sheets landed he was used as a reference point for the players about to go into battle.

Heary had just turned 33 when he captained Bohs to the Premier Division title in 2009. It remains their last league triumph, while their last trophy came later that same month when he lifted the FAI Cup.

Melia was two at the time, while the only player in the Bohs starting XI who was in his 30s was defender Jordan Flores, and he only celebrated the milestone on 4 October.

Their captain, Dawson Devoy, is just 23 while a skim of Stephen Kenny’s starting XI showed their oldest player was… deep breath… brace yourselves… Chris Forrester.

At 32, the man known as Git was the oldest player on the pitch.

But how?

How can this be?

How can that kid with sparkling feet now be the one threatened by flecks of grey in his hair?

Time passes quicker than it takes Git to spot an opponent’s legs ajar and produce a nutmeg.

St Pat’s defender Al-Amin Kazeem summed up the passing of the guard. The 23-year-old is from Essex and has taken a bit of time to settle into his stride after joining from Galway United in July 2024.

“I’ve had very good professionals around me that encourages me, keeps me positive. Like Git, Chris Forrester, he’s been in the league for so many years now that he’s one of those senior players that tells us young lads how to like aspire to be, and just be a professional. I look up to him.

“He’s just very confident and very sure in himself, always positive and he may not be one that always leads by talking but he leads by example with his actions and what he does.

“He looks forward, tries for the team, runs hard for the team. He’s just a good role model to have and a great professional. And he’s a great player, so he just adds on to that.”

Git as an elder statesman will take a bit of getting used to, and this was still quite jarring on Monday night as the players continued to filter out of the dressing rooms and head for home.

One of the other quirks of Dalymount Park is that those players who have parked near St Peter’s Road must walk back across the pitch to get to their cars.

The whole arrangement will no doubt change once redevelopment begins, and that’s due after the end of next season.

Before we know it, progress will bring even more change and players might not even have to go in search of free parking.