When Moyola Park and Cliftonville Olympic lined up at Mill Meadow at the weekend, it was about more than a place in the last eight of the McComb’s Coach Travel Intermediate Cup.
Not just a cup tie, it was a fixture that carried echoes of the very dawn of organised football in Ireland.
Moyola were founded in 1880 by Major Spencer Chichester, later to become the first Irish FA president, and on Saturday 14 February that year the fledgling club played its first ever match.
The visitors, and 3-0 winners that day, were Cliftonville, the pioneers of the game on the island, who travelled to face Chichester’s side in an exhibition game on his estate.
Moyola went from strength to strength and, famously, became the inaugural winners of the Irish Cup a year later, without conceding a goal enroute and, ironically, beating Cliftonville in the final.
146 years later to the day, the Reds were back at Mill Meadow.
To mark the anniversary of that auspicious occasion, Moyola commissioned special navy commemorative tops – the original club colours – that the current squad wore as a one-off in the Intermediate Cup clash to honour their founding fathers.
And it felt as though those trailblazers from 1880 were casting a proud eye over Mill Meadow, as Martin Smith’s side delivered a performance worthy of the occasion, easing to a polished and thoroughly deserved 4-1 victory.
Goals from Bobby Deane and David Parkhouse had Smith's men in control before Eamonn Tohill reduced the deficit just before the break.
Joe McCready restored the two-goal advantage early in the second half with Parkhouse going on to double his tally later in the game to round off a memorable afternoon for the hosts.
