For the first time in their 120-year history, Crystal Palace will play a competitive fixture in Ireland when they visit Tallaght Stadium to face Shelbourne in the Uefa Conference League (Thursday, 8pm).
The Eagles were reluctant tourists, even going to court in an attempt to avoid making the trip. Having beaten Manchester City 1-0 in the FA Cup final to win a first major trophy, Palace celebrated their success by suing Uefa for demoting them from the Europa League into the Conference League for breaching multi-club ownership rules. Their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport was unsuccessful, leaving Crystal Palace in the unusual position of arriving in Dublin as hot favourites to win a competition they took legal action to avoid having to compete in.
Palace have occasionally visited Ireland for a pre-season friendly, most recently in 2013 when they defeated Waterford United 4-0 in front of a little over 1,000 fans at the RSC. Since then, they have become the Premier League club with the strongest links to Ireland. The most significant current link is Paddy McCarthy, who is simultaneously employed as an assistant coach by both Palace and the Republic of Ireland. As a player, McCarthy made 151 appearances for the English club. He was capped by Ireland all the way from under-17 to under-21 level, but never won a senior cap despite being named as a substitute by both Brian Kerr and Giovanni Trapattoni.
Palace buy Irish so frequently that Enterprise Ireland should consider giving them some kind of award. They usually recruit directly from the League of Ireland, but even the most talented youngsters have found it difficult to break into the first team.
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In 2021, a teenage Jake O’Brien moved from Cork City to Crystal Palace. The following year Killian Phillips joined the Eagles from Drogheda United. Although both O’Brien and Phillips quickly became full Irish internationals, neither made a single league appearance for Palace.
A similar difficulty now faces Ireland under-21 international Tayo Adaramola. Since joining Palace from Dublin nursery St Kevin’s Boys in 2020, he has been sent out on loan five times and is currently based temporarily at Leyton Orient. In 2022, fellow under-21 international Seán Grehan joined from Bohemians before recently signing for Doncaster Rovers.
The closest to breaking the glass ceiling at Selhurst Park was Ireland under-21 international Franco Umeh, who moved from Cork City in 2023 and was named on the Eagles bench 15 times without ever making his debut before completing a deadline day transfer to Portsmouth.
This growing trend of Irish players not getting a start at Palace is in sharp contrast to an earlier generation of Irish players, including Ray Houghton, James McCarthy and Eddie McGoldrick who all enjoyed long spells in the Eagles first team. Clinton Morrison scored 112 goals for Palace during two successful spells and is the club’s fifth all-time top goalscorer. Damien Delaney was a key member of the Palace team promoted to the Premier League in 2013 and was also part of their side that lost the 2016 FA Cup final to Manchester United before leaving two years later to rejoin his hometown club, Cork City.
The only Irish player included by Palace in their Conference League squad is teenage centre back Jake Grante, who joined aged nine and is capped by Ireland up to under-19 level. The outstanding Irish talent currently interesting Crystal Palace is 18-year-old Cork City winger Cathal O’Sullivan, who visited the club in May shortly before a cruciate ligament injury prematurely ended his season.
One player on the up at Selhurst Park is Justin Devenny, who scored his first goal for Northern Ireland in September in a World Cup qualifier. Devenny was part of Palace’s Cup-winning squad in May and in August he scored the winning penalty in their Community Shield victory over Liverpool. That match featured all three Premier League footballers with surnames that are palindromes (reading the same forwards and backwards) with Eberechi Eze and Romain Esse of Crystal Palace facing Liverpool’s Hugo Ekitike.
Palace arrive in Ireland in fourth place in the Premier League, enjoying their best ever start to a season. Worryingly for Shelbourne, their opponents have the best away record in the Premier League despite being so short of players that last week Oliver Glasner named two goalkeepers on his bench for a 1-0 victory away to Burnley. Unfortunately for Glasner, he manages the only Palace in London willing to sell off its crown jewels, with Eze joining Arsenal in August for £60 million a year after Michael Olise departed for Bayern Munich for £59 million.
The usually diplomatic Glasner has recently been increasingly vocal about the difficulty of satisfying Palace’s growing appetite for success, commenting: “If you have soup every day, it’s nice. But as soon as you have beef, you want more beef.” This comment was interpreted more literally than the Austrian might have anticipated, with one unsympathetic supporter observing: “One day Oliver Glasner is going to discover oxtail soup and it will blow his mind.”
