LAST week, I caught up with Liam Boyce – one of my all-time favourite Irish League footballers – following his move to Derry City from Scottish Premiership club Hearts.
It was perhaps wishful thinking on my part that he would be reunited with Joe Gormley at Solitude for the remainder of the season.
Imagine that.
When there were rustlings of Boyce leaving Tyncastle in early January, a loan deal was mooted to bring the striker back to the north Belfast club – but for lots of reasons the move never really got off first base.
Still, you can but dream.
To see Gormley and Boyce playing together again and forming the Reds attack would’ve been akin to your favourite band getting back together and wooing the crowd with their back catalogue of hits.
There haven’t been many better partnerships in Irish football than Boyce and Gormley.
For a few utopian seasons, they were a joy to watch under the late Tommy Breslin and worth the admission fee alone.
Boycie was a nightmare to police; he’d drift anywhere on the field and pull strings wherever he went, while Gormley did his best work in and around the opposition penalty area and scored goals for fun.
The pair made sweet music together. As a manager, they couldn’t have wished for anyone better than ‘Bressy’.
Cliftonville’s loss is Derry City’s gain.
Boyce is bound for the north-west and will rip it up at the Brandywell.
Even though he’s 33 now, the Derry City fans are in for a treat this season.
In an in-depth interview that will be appearing in Saturday’s edition of The Irish News, Boyce reminisced about his partnership with Joe at Cliftonville.
“It is absolutely mad Joe is still banging goals in for the club,” Boyce said.
It was the kind of conversation that made you stop and think about Gormley’s remarkable season to date.
Last Saturday night, the Ardoyne man notched his 17th goal of the season in all competitions against Linfield. It didn’t matter he was being marked touch-tight in the Blues penalty area, he still managed to convert Arran Pettifer’s cross from the right with unbelievable economy.
The finish was another compelling piece of evidence – if any more was needed - of Gormley being virtually unmarkable in the penalty box.
According to the NIFL website, he’s joint top goal-scorer with 16 league goals. The website also generously added another phantom birthday to his 35 years. He doesn’t turn 36 until the end of the year.
Joe Gormley’s alleged demise over the last couple of seasons has been greatly exaggerated on a couple of occasions now.
For a long enough period during Paddy McLaughlin’s reign, Gormley found himself among the substitutes more than any player would have liked.
Of course, it’s every manager’s prerogative to go in a different direction and McLaughlin can look back on his time at Solitude with immense satisfaction.
But I never quite understood the rationale behind benching Gormley because I never saw any slippage in his performances.
While different permutations were tried in attack, the answer nearly always resided with the club’s record goal-scorer.
During the Republic of Ireland’s successful Euro 2016 qualification bid, the media and fans like felt at the time Robbie Keane was past his prime and that the team would benefit from looking beyond the ageing striker.
At pitch-side at Gannon Park one sunny afternoon, Roy Keane reminded the media that his Dublin namesake was still able to achieve the hardest part of the game: scoring goals.
Assistant to Martin O’Neill at the time, Keane turned the debate on its head with simple, straightforward reasoning.
“We should concentrate on what Robbie’s good at – and that’s putting the ball in the back of the net.”
Ireland have never been able to replace Robbie Keane.
No-one celebrated Cliftonville’s fairytale Irish Cup triumph last May more than Gormley. And yet, he never kicked a ball in the extra-time win over a shell-shocked Linfield.
Ronan Hale, Sam Ashford and Ben Wilson were ahead of Gormley in the pecking order for a place in Jim Magilton’s cup final team.
Arms out-stretched, Ronan Hale’s legacy will last a lifetime at the Reds.
Ashford scored in the decider too and Wilson’s cameo appearance from the bench was crucial to the outcome.
The trio left Solitude in the summer - leaving a gaping hole in attack.
Worrying times for the club with many Reds fans wondering where the goals would come from.
Probably because of the creeping years, we’re often guilty of writing off a player’s career too quickly because of what it says on their birth certificate, but Gormley looks exceptionally strong and still has good cardio capacity.
He never looks leggy in the way you imagine some 35-year-old strikers to be when they’re running onto a through ball or chasing down defenders.
Indeed, what Gormley has achieved in the first half of the season is nothing short of remarkable given the high number of personnel changes in Magilton’s squad.
In a transitional team, Gormley remains a prolific goal-scorer.
He wasn’t always first choice under McLaughlin or Magilton, but he remains brilliant at what he does: scoring goals.
It’s hard to overstate the positive impact he’s had on his own community over the last decade.
In an interview before the cup final, he laughed at his own ‘legend’ in the Ardoyne area.
Shaking his head, he said: “When I’m walking down the street people say to me: ‘Well, what’s happening ‘The Goal?’ People actually call me ‘The Goal’!”
We’ll only fully appreciate the magnificence of ‘Joe the Goal’ when he retires from football.
Looking at his numbers this season though, you’d imagine the Prince of Solitude will be around for a little while yet…