Heroes All!

The current United squad has a chance to write themselves into the history books tomorrow, when they take on Glenavon in the Irish cup final at Windsor Park, Belfast. kick-off 2-30pm. The historic 1989 team were the guests of honour at the Des Allen suite, at the clubs end of season dinner last Saturday night. That they're still heroes in the eyes of Sky Blue fans, bears testament of what the Irish cup means to everybody associated with United. So a win for the current squad would lead to cult status in footballing terms.

The entire Sky Blue Sports team is adamant that they will do it, they saw the writing on the wall early, when Thommo scored our winner against the Welders. Then we were drawn against Linfield at Windsor Park and Thommo again delivered, setting up Darboy and he found our talisman Cush and the rest is history as they say. In a quirk of fate, Thommo may not get selected, as he has been out injured and only returned to play 30 minutes on Easter Tuesday.

But that's the thing about having a good squad of players, when somebody's injured, somebody else steps up to the plate. In our semi-final against QUB, at the Oval, we got an unlikely hero in Alan D, but if Thommo's fit, we at 'Sport think Alan D, will have to settle for a place on the bench. The same fate looks likely to befall Archie, who picked up a groin injury in our semi-final win at the Oval and we think Cookie Munster will get the nod and maybe play his last match in a Sky Blue Jersey.

Our keeper, Shan, 29 years-old, had never played in a semi-final before he signed for us and he will get to play in his first final tomorrow. It's a complete mystery to the 'Sport's team, how his undoubted talent was overlooked for so long, when great keepers are as scarce as hens teeth, we owe a huge debt to former keeper Dermot O'Neill for unearthing Shans talent and pointing us in the right direction, when we were in dire straits, with both our keepers out on long term injuries.

Lets not forget a grudging thanks to big fat DJ who released Jimer and let him join us, he did live to regret that and the diving bird, Oran Kearney, for doing the same with Darboy. These three players, Shan, Jimer and Darboy have contributed to the turnaround in our fortunes and our management team  deserves a lot of credit for sticking their collective necks out at transfer window. Despite all our urgings to the contrary, Fergie has stayed true to his 4,3,3 policy and we expect he'll stick with it tomorrow .

Or he could spring a surprise and deploy Archie playing in front of the back four, but we feel that would be tantamount to handing the advantage to the tramp and his cohorts. No, we expect Spike to sink or swim with his tried and trusted formula, he's a great believer in, 'if its not broke, don't try to fix it'. As if we didn't need  anymore incentives, we have found we have a turncoat in the Glenavon camp, one Nigel Law, who used to coach our under-16 team, but he's the enemy tomorrow.

Our former manager Roy Walker, used to say 'only believe', but we only believed and were let down time and time again. But we have raised this catchphrase again and we believe the cup is ours. We got our name on it when we beat the Welders and we've never looked back since, so come on United, lets shag those Mourneviewers, lets all do the bouncey and put our name on the Irish cup, where we know it belongs. 'She wore, she wore, she wore a Sky Blue ribbon in the merry month of May and when I asked her why she wore that ribbon, she said it's for United and I'm with them all the way, all the , all the way...etc!!!!!!!