Rebel Army right back Neal Horgan is tomorrow’s special guest at Cork City library’s The Year of the Constant Reader. In fact, he will be co-special guest with my colleague Michael Moynihan.
The dependable defender, in his last season at the only club of his senior career, has chosen Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from which to read an excerpt.
Hopefully that’s not a dark metaphor for his own impending retirement to take up an opportunity in the legal profession. Had Paul Doolin’s men not won 2-0 at Galway United on Friday night, it would have handed a cheap opening for me to describe the fortunes of the club as a whole.
But instead, the sun is shining again and a win tonight against Pat's in the League of Ireland Premier Division will have them two points off the top where leaders and champions Bohemians are showing the odd sign of vertigo.
The aforementioned Gibbon (and I have to go to Wikipedia for this because unlike professional footballers with a decent education I don’t have time to be reading these tomes) blamed Christianity for Rome's decline and, indeed, fall. He wrote that "the populace was less interested in the worldly here-and-now and more willing to wait for the rewards of heaven".
Kind of like football supporters actually. Doolin’s been drilling it into anyone that will listen that progress needs patience. But what fan has ever listened to such reason?
Meanwhile, anyone who has forsaken Michael Jackson’s memorial service at the Staples Center in LA is being treated to his greatest hits over the PA system. It’s wall-to-wall Wacko until kick-off and sure why not?
On the pitch, Cork City are unchanged from the side that beat Galway while Jeff Kenna has brought in David Partridge for Noel Haverty in the centre of defence.
CORK CITY: D Connor; N Horgan, D Murray (capt), P Sullivan, D Murphy; C Healy, J Gamble, S O'Donnell; G Silagailis, D Behan, F Kuduzovic.
ST PATRICK’S ATHLETIC: G Rogers; J Gavin, J Harris, D Partridge, E Stevens; S Maher, G O'Connor, S Byrne (capt), B Ryan; R Guy, G Fitzpatrick.
Referee: Padraigh Sutton (Clare).

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