IT was a chance meeting with an old neighbour on Easter Monday. I was leaving the gym and he was coming in. Paul was in rehabbing a badly broken leg he sustained two months earlier.
During Cliftonville’s title-winning 1997/98 season a few of us sat in the same row of seats together in the old stand at Solitude every nerve-shredding Saturday afternoon watching Marty Quinn’s Red Army achieve the impossible.
Harry McCourt, Jody Tolan, Tim McCann, Mickey Donnelly, Marty Tabb and Gerry Flynn. Local heroes each one of them.
In that five or 10-minute conversation at the gym’s reception, everything revolved around Cliftonville’s elusive search of the Irish Cup.
The last time the north Belfast club won the cup was in 1979. Nobody imagined that the Reds wouldn’t win another one. With each passing season, the heartache has been palpable on the Cliftonville Road and beyond.
In 1997, Glenavon’s Tony Grant scored the only goal of the game to deny Cliftonville in the decider.
Two years later, the Reds found themselves in another Irish Cup final that sadly never took place due to an ineligibility row over young Simon Gribben who’d played for Amateur League club Kilmore Rec in an earlier round of the competition that same season.
North Belfast neighbours Crusaders beat them in the 2009 decider - a game the Reds players left behind them at a sunny Windsor Park.
Tommy Breslin’s brilliant league winning team of 2013 were denied by Eddie Patterson’s Glentoran side - Andy Waterworth emerging as the hero of east Belfast - and Oran Kearney’s Coleraine team were just too tough for Barry Gray’s Reds in 2018.
Paul even cast his mind back to some bitter semi-final defeats.
His parents wouldn’t allow him to go to the 1979 final and remembers waving off neighbours earlier that day who went to the game.
In those 10 minutes in the gym, Paul picked through each of those embittered archives as if they were yesterday, perfectly capturing both the heartache and eternal hope that resides in the heart of every Cliftonville supporter that this could be their year.
I’ve watched the current Cliftonville team on a regular enough basis this season.
They’re the kind of team that don’t always add up. They’re good but not a vintage Reds team.
Which makes the job Jim Magilton has done all the more remarkable.
Sitting third in the league - still in with a title shout before Larne avenged their Irish Cup semi-final defeat on Easter Tuesday at Solitude - and an Irish Cup final date with Linfield on Saturday May 4.
What’s not to love about the west Belfast man and the raw emotion he showed after last Saturday’s epic win over Larne.
The first time I saw Jim Magilton play was in a summer competition at Donegal Celtic Football Club where they’d just put the finishing touches to a fantastic new pitch. Someone mentioned it had exactly the same dimensions as Wembley. It was a carpet.
A teenager at the time, Magilton had made his cross-channel move from Distillery to Liverpool in 1986 and was back home for the summer.
He was big news.
Magilton was never fast but he was an absolutely beautiful passer of the ball.
I remember watching a couple of the games he played during that summer competition - possibly for Turf Lodge Celtic - and being mesmerised by how consistently accurate he was with his passes.
With the kind of innate game intelligence he possessed, he could dominate the midfield area.
Of course, having just moved to Anfield, he should never have been anywhere near playing in a local football competition, but this was a time long before mobile phones.
He went on to have a very successful playing career and accrued loads of experience along the way. Magilton his had many coaching and managerial pitstops and has stayed involved in the game for over three decades.
To survive in what is one of the most ruthless professions, you must have two things: knowledge and resilience.
And yet, when you reflect on the negativity surrounding his appointment as Cliftonville manager in June of last year, it’s hard to fathom the angst of those supporters who were wholeheartedly against Magilton taking the reins.
The managerial vacuum created by Paddy McLaughlin’s departure was seen, on many levels, as an opportunity by some to exert pressure on the Reds board.
Magilton was collateral damage in the process – probably worse than that when some tried to drag his managerial reputation through a few rose bushes via the cesspit of social media before his imminent appointment.
But, through his knowledge of the game and resilience built up over many years, Magilton has guided the club adeptly – and, if truth be told, better than anyone anticipated.
For Cliftonville to find themselves in the lofty position they are in at the beginning of April following the departures of Chris Gallagher and Luke Turner, in particular, is a stunning achievement because Magilton has had to manage a work-in-progress defence and midfield.
He’s still building a squad at Solitude but while doing so he’s daring the club’s supporters to dream of Irish Cup glory. One last push to reach The Holy Grail.
It was only in conversation with diehard Cliftonville fan Denis McMullan at the back of the McAlery Stand during the second half of Tuesday night’s league game between Cliftonville and Larne – as Tiernan Lynch’s team bounced back to reassert their title credentials – that I got further insight into what the Irish Cup means to the people of the area.
The Reds were only trailing Larne by a goal and still very much in contention - but Denis’s mind had already drifted to Windsor Park and Irish Cup final day.
Like Paul at the gym’s reception on Easter Monday, Denis regaled me of the many near misses since 1979.
Like the Cloths of Heaven, endless generations of Cliftonville fans have spread their dreams under Jim Magilton’s feet.
He treads softly as he goes...
