Waterford regained the League of Ireland title in 1968, seeing off strong challenges from Dundalk and Cork Celtic (who were now being managed by their 23-year old English forward Carl Davenport). The Blues (who added Cork Hibernians centre-half Jackie Morley to their squad ahead of the league campaign) rode their luck in terms of results, losing to each of the other top four clubs and winning a number of matches without playing especially well, and also in terms of injuries, with players often carrying knocks in the run-up to games but almost always being declared fit to play. They also survived a managerial upheaval when wing-half Vinny Maguire took over from the departed Martin Ferguson (brother of future Manchester United supremo Alex), who was surprisingly dismissed after a 1-0 home loss to Dundalk. Ferguson himself had scored an important winning goal against Shamrock Rovers earlier in the season, and was one of just 15 players that the Suirsiders used on the way to becoming champions.

Waterford also made it to a first F.A.I. Cup final in nine years to give themselves a chance of picking up their first league and cup “double”, and the fact that cup specialists Shamrock Rovers (who were aiming to complete a five-in-a-row and equal their achievement from 1929-1933) were waiting in the decider meant that it was an ideal match-up for the Blue Riband showpiece. The much-hyped showdown (attended by nearly 40,000) ended up being a bit of a disappointment, however, as two Mick Leech goals and one by Mick Lawlor (both players were still just 19) gave the Hoops a rather straightforward 3-0 win. Lawlor (whose father ‘Kit’ had won the cup with Drumcondra in 1957) had scored a goal in every round and the Milltown club also kept a clean sheet in each of their four F.A.I. Cup matches.

The clubs renewed rivalries in the final of the Top Four Cup, and this time the match came close to living up to expectations, with Waterford surviving a Rovers comeback to win on a 3-2 scoreline. Two goals by Alfie Hale and one by Al Casey (goalkeeper Peter Thomas also made some excellent saves) gave the Blues just their second win over Rovers in the sixth meeting of the season between the two sides. Liam Tuohy’s men had beaten the Blues on the way to lifting the League of Ireland Shield (they went unbeaten to win the competition for an incredible 18th time), and they also knocked them out of the Dublin City Cup, at a point in the season when most observers felt Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk were the two best teams in the country. These two sides would play out draws in both the shield and the league before drawing twice more in the Dublin City Cup final, with a Ben Hannigan goal needed to finally separate the teams in the second replay.

Hannigan had actually left Dundalk at the end of the 1966-67 league season having failed to agree new terms, and ended up spending a couple of months with Wrexham before eventually returning to Oriel Park. Despite the Lilywhites doing enough to finish second in the shield (and because of Shamrock Rovers’ cup win, gain the European place that it had to offer), their forward line had lost a lot of its lustre in Hannigan’s absence, and the club were also dogged by a number of other setbacks this season, as an 8-1 European Cup defeat by Vasas of Hungary led to player-coach Alan Fox being suspended by the club for “mismanagement of the team”. Fox asked to be placed on the transfer list and several other players suggested they might consider leaving too, before the board relented and reversed their decision. The reigning champions then took just one point from their first four league games before kicking into gear with a 10-game winning streak, but disaster struck in mid-January when Oriel Park’s new floodlight system (unveiled ahead of the home leg against Vasas) got badly damaged by high winds. This put paid to the club’s plans to have European champions Celtic F.C. visit for a friendly later in the season (the Glaswegians did end up playing Shamrock Rovers at Dalymount), and then, his relationship with club officials having become increasingly strained, Fox was released from his contract in March.

Former Ireland internationals Arthur Fitzsimons (who helped Drogheda scale new heights this season) and Amby Fogarty (Cork Hibernians) were among the new managerial appointments during the close season, but in spite of bringing a couple of candidates over from the U.K. (and adding Republic of Ireland forward Andy McEvoy to the playing squad), Limerick were finding it difficult to fill the position recently vacated by Ewan Fenton. Paddy Coad took the reins, but with the club keen to have someone who could also act as an on-field leader, Scotsman Tommy Anderson (who had been one of those linked with the job during August) was appointed as player-coach in mid-December. Anderson’s tenure was going along quite well until Limerick decided to release him and appoint Alan Fox as player-coach just a few days after Fox had parted company with Dundalk.

As fate would have it, Limerick and Dundalk were set to meet at the Markets Field on March 24th, and an all-ticket game exploded into life midway through the second half, when Fox struck Derek Stokes, and Kevin Blount then ran from the other end of the pitch to land a punch on his former manager. After the referee got things under control (a total of five players were booked during the game), play resumed with a penalty for Dundalk, which was converted by Kevin Murray to give the visitors a 3-2 win. The home crowd were incensed, however, and stones were thrown at the referee and linesman, and a crowd of about 500 gathered at the main entrance to the ground after the game. The officials and the Dundalk team had to be smuggled out via a back exit (the injured referee being taken to hospital), and after the crowd eventually forced their way back in through the front gate, the gardaí were able to reassure them that the dressing rooms were, indeed, empty.

There was nearly some crowd trouble at the end of Waterford’s 3-3 draw with Cork Celtic at Kilcohan Park in December, and Martin Ferguson’s last match in charge of the Blues also had some issues, as the 1-0 loss to Dundalk was watched by a crowd much bigger than the ground was able to safely accommodate. It was estimated that about 12,000 people had found their way in, and the second half was delayed by about 15 minutes as the referee threatened to abandon the game unless spectators moved back from the sidelines. A shield match between Sligo Rovers and Shamrock Rovers, meanwhile, ended with a pitch invasion and the referee being assaulted for awarding a contentious penalty that allowed the visitors to snatch a 2-2 draw. Following on from an incident the previous season, the Sligo board decided to install five-foot high mesh fencing (topped off with barbed wire) around the perimeter of the pitch.

Shamrock Rovers had spent most of the close season in the U.S.A., after being invited to participate in the first edition of a new American soccer league as the ‘Boston Rovers‘. The league (called the ‘United Soccer Association’) had been hastily created some months ahead of schedule in order to keep abreast of a rival competition. The franchises that were supposed to make up the league had not been properly formed yet, so the Hoops were one of 12 clubs (the bulk of them from the U.K. and Ireland, with Brazil, Uruguay, Italy and Netherlands also represented) who travelled to take part, with the competition set to run from late May to the middle of July.

Rovers had a full-strength squad and also brought a number of guest players (including Sligo Rovers’ David Pugh and Derry City’s Doug Wood), but after making a decent start by drawing their first two games, a mounting injury list was a factor in them subsequently going on a run of six straight defeats. Things improved for their final four games, with the team picking up two wins (against Brazilian club Bangu and also Aberdeen, playing as Houston and Washington respectively) and another draw, but they finished three points adrift at the bottom of the six-team Eastern Division. The Hoops had played in front of crowds that ranged from the hundreds to almost 10,000, and scored 12 goals in the 12 games, with Frank O’Neill their standout player in terms of goals and assists.

Like the previous season, Sligo Rovers made a very good start in the league (they won their first three matches), but the departure of star players David Pugh and John Brookes for pastures new saw their form fall off very quickly. Player-manager Tony Bartley had hoped to bring in some players from his native England, but travel restrictions imposed because of concerns about foot-and-mouth disease meant his transfer business was delayed by a number of weeks, and as bad results began to pile up, the crowds at the Showgrounds started to dwindle away. The club still had a high wage bill, however, and when Bartley was finally able to bring in some new faces (including former Newcastle centre-forward Len White), it was now said to be for an assault on the F.A.I. Cup. A first round defeat by Dundalk put paid to that plan, however, and over the next few games (which included a club record 9-0 defeat by Waterford), the cross-channel players were gradually phased out of the team. Sligo were left with an almost completely local side and although there were some positives (future club legend Tony Fagan had been successfully bedded in, and erstwhile goalkeeper Fintan Brett scored the winner against Limerick while playing in the right-back position) the club ended up finishing in the bottom two.

It was eventually decided that the two rival U.S. leagues should be brought together, and this meant that former Bohemians coach Seán Thomas never got to take charge of the Boston-based team he had signed with, as it was the other league’s Boston franchise that was accepted into the new competition. Thomas spent the next few months in limbo (albeit with his contract being honoured and a number of clubs enquiring about his availability), before the way was clear for him to return to Bohemians (who had finished bottom of the league in his absence) in the summer of 1968. A number of League of Ireland players did go to play in the new league, as Paddy Mulligan and Tommy Kelly of Shamrock Rovers and David Pugh of Sligo Rovers all joined the ‘Boston Beacons’, and Pugh’s former Sligo teammate Johnny Brookes ended up playing for Cleveland Stokers. The transfer fees received for Pugh and Brookes also allowed Sligo Rovers to make a small profit at the end of a very challenging season.

Ex-Shelbourne players Eric Barber and Joe Haverty had also gone to play in the U.S., but the Reds themselves (having finished bottom of the league the previous season) were hoping to revive their own fortunes, with Gerry Doyle returning to the club he had managed with great success in the first half of the decade. They had a very good shield campaign (winning seven of the 11 games), and one of the young players Doyle introduced was 19-year old inside-right Jimmy O’Connor, who scored three shield goals, and also scored a hat-trick against Bohemians in the quarter-finals of the Leinster Senior Cup. This treble, though, was just a dress rehearsal for a much more impressive feat by O’Connor, as he followed it up by scoring a hat-trick in just two minutes and 13 seconds on a visit to Dalymount Park in the league on the 19th of November, turning around a 2-0 half-time deficit to give Shels a 3-2 win. Scored between the 54th and 57th minutes, it was the fastest hat-trick in top flight football at the time, still stands as the fastest hat-trick in any European top division, and another point of note is that it happened to be witnessed by Manchester United manager Matt Busby. Sligo Rovers’ John Brookes had helped set the scene by scoring a 15-minute hat-trick against St. Pat’s a couple of weeks previously, and two trebles by Waterford’s John O’Neill in the closing weeks of the shield had helped him finish that competition with a total of 11 goals.

This season also saw the introduction of a new end-of-season cross-border competition, which was to be sponsored by a Northern Irish clothing company called Blaxnit. Featuring the four semi-finalists from both the Irish Cup and the F.A.I. Cup, it saw each southern club face an Irish League side in a one-off quarter-final, with the final itself being contested over two legs (though just one if it featured two clubs from the same jurisdiction). The competition (where teams competed for a trophy called the ‘Cashel Cup’) had a prize pool of £2,000, with half of this going to the winning club. Shamrock Rovers won a semi-final against Waterford (their fifth win from seven this season against the Blues) to set up a final against Irish Cup holders Crusaders, and after goals by Micks Leech and Lawlor had given the Hoops a 2-0 win at Windsor Park, another Lawlor goal at Dalymount (in front of a crowd of 15,000) saw them win the first ‘Blaxnit’ decider 3-2 on aggregate.

League of Ireland 1967-68

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Waterford	22	16	2	4	59	18	34
Dundalk	22	14	2	6	44	24	30
Cork Celtic	22	12	6	4	40	27	30
Shamrock Rovers	22	11	5	6	44	26	27
Drogheda	22	10	6	6	33	29	26
Limerick	22	9	2	11	35	45	20
Shelbourne	22	8	3	11	32	36	19
Drumcondra	22	6	7	9	31	35	19
St. Patrick’s Athletic	22	7	4	11	29	46	18
Cork Hibernians	22	6	5	11	19	28	17
Sligo Rovers	22	6	4	12	24	48	16
Bohemians	22	2	4	16	20	48	8

European Competition : European Cup First Round, Dundalk 0-1 Vasas SC (Hungary), Vasas SC 8-1 Dundalk European Cup Winners’ Cup First Round (first leg at Dalymount Park), Shamrock Rovers 1-1 Cardiff City, Cardiff City 2-0 Shamrock Rovers Inter Cities Fairs Cup First Round (first leg at Dalymount Park), St. Patrick’s Athletic 1-3 Bordeaux, Bordeaux 6-3 St. Patrick’s Athletic

League top scorers : Carl Davenport Cork Celtic, 15 Ben Hannigan Dundalk, 15 Alfie Hale Waterford, 14

S.W.A.I. Personality of the Year : Johnny Fullam, Shamrock Rovers

Representative matches : League of Ireland 3-2 Irish League, League of Ireland 2-7 English League