O'Connor swoops to seal rare double

In the end, the capacity crowd at Tolka Park for yesterday's Harp Lager FAI Cup got a fairy tale all right, just not the one the supporters who had travelled furthest for the game had come to Drumcondra hoping to see.

Instead, Bohemians won the second half of their double and deservedly so, too. For a while they were outplayed but the manner in which they survived that spell, like everything else yesterday, merely served to strengthen their credentials as the best team in the country. It's a claim they haven't been able to make with conviction up at Dalymount since the club won its last league and cup double back in 1928.

But the real story of the day was provided by Tony O'Connor, the 33-year-old Bohemians full-back, whose 61st minute strike from the middle of the box won the game for the north-side Dubliners. The only remaining part-timer in his side's starting line up yesterday, the defender rounded off what might easily have been his last season for the Phibsborough club on a wonderfully emotional high.

After eight barren seasons at a club he had joined to win medals, Roddy Collins admitted he had come close to shunting the Dubliner aside last summer. Yesterday he marked the end of campaign number nine in style, scoring a cup final winner and as a bonus, taking home the man of the match award.

"Unbelievable," he gasped afterwards, still slightly breathless as he and his 12 year-old son, Pearse, attempted to absorb everything about a afternoon neither will forget in a hurry.

"It's been a long time coming," he beamed as what seemed like most of the departing Bohemians fans stopped by to pay personal tributes, "but what can I say except that at this stage it feels like it was worth every minute of the wait."

His manager, meanwhile, heaped handsome praise on one of the few players remaining at the club from the panel he inherited two, nearly three seasons ago. He added that every member of his squad deserved recognition for the way they have performed over the course of what has been a remarkably eventful season.

"I'm always the one out there with the big mouth and the brown shoes who goes on the telly," he said, "but they're the ones who have to do all the graft and I'm proud of every one of them right now."

Just a few feet away the Longford camp was attempting to come to terms with their defeat but nobody from the midlands club suggested that they had any complaint.

"We did well in the first half," said O'Connor's opposite number, the Longford right back Alan Murphy. "We created chances but didn't take them and previous finals have shown that if you do that then you end up paying for it in the end."