Final number seven for Derry's Michael Duffy

Derry City winger Michael Duffy admits as he gets older he’s starting to enjoy the simple things in life.

The 30-year-old states playing in Sunday’s Sports Direct FAI Cup Final against Drogheda United, even more special, as he gets the chance to play in front of his two boys Eli and Georgie.

In fact, Duffy, who is playing in his seventh cup final, believes that his five-year-old Eli is going to be more excited than his father come Sunday and his fiancée Emily is going to have her hands full keeping an eye on their youngest son Georgie.

“It’s brilliant and it’s always an unbelievable day, which I’m thankful I have been there a lot of times,” he stated.

“I think there's players who go throughout their career and don’t get to play at the Aviva Stadium in the FAI Cup Final, so I’m privileged in that way.

“To be honest it’s even better now as well because I have my wains at the final now. My eldest wee boy Eli, he’s five years old, he’s really all into football and he can’t wait for the final. While my other son Georgie, he’s one and a half, so he’s going to be good craic at the final.

“I have to admit Eli has been asking me about the final for the last four months and I had to keep telling him that we weren’t there yet, so it would have been a hard one to break to him if we weren’t going to be there, so thankfully we’re there.

“So for me it feels that much better the older I have got and I can’t wait for the final.”

The ex-Dundalk man knows that the Candy Stripes have down the decades been a cup team and this season’s form in the FAI’s showpiece competition has been impressive, as they still haven’t conceded a goal in their previous four wins over St Patrick’s Athletic, Cork City, Shelbourne and Bohemians.

In their last visit to the Aviva Stadium, Ruaidhrí Higgins’ side produced a masterclass display to defeat Damien Duff’s Shels 4-0 and Duffy would love another great memory this weekend.

“Cup games are completely different and it’s about who shows up, because anything could happen in a cup tie, which we’ve seen over the years in previous finals,” he explained.

“Look we know it’s going to be a tough game, Drogheda put it up to us this year whenever we’ve played them and they’ve turned us over a couple of times, so it’s going to be very tough.

“They’ve so many threats in their team, which we’ve seen in previous games against them, so we need to be at it for the full 90 minutes, we all need to do our jobs, but we’re all buzzing for it, but we need to look after our own business and hopefully we can get it done.

Michael and his fiancée Emily with their kids Eli and Georgie.

“Obviously the last time we were at the Aviva we’ve great memories from the final.

“We played some unbelievable football that day and we got an unbelievable result and that’s something we’ll look back on going into this Sunday’s final and hopefully we go and put on a similar performance this time round.”

MEMORIES

That 2022 final continues to live long in Duffy’s memory, especially the injury hit campaign he had two years ago.

“At that time I was really coming back to myself around that time and to be honest see everything I went through that year and then came back and played in that final and won it, that was an amazing day and ended what was a really tough year for me personally,” he explained.

“To be honest that day was also the reason why I signed back for the club, to win trophies and to get one in my first year. That was a special moment in my career, which I’ll never forget.”

The Galliagh native acknowledged losing out on the Premier Division title was a hard one to take for the Foylesiders and that disappointment is something Derry are using for motivation.

“Not winning the league has given us motivation and that’s the only way we can look at it now, because that definitely hurts a lot,” he expressed. “It feels like we should have won the league and it was really, really tough to take seeing Shels win the league at the Brandywell.

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“After Friday night it has been a hard one, to be honest one of the hardest ones I’ve had to take in football, because we had so many opportunities to take control of the league and it just kills you thinking back on how many times we slipped up whenever we should have put ourselves in a great position going into the last couple of games.

“Look at the start of the season that was the main prize that we wanted and now that we haven’t done that kills you really, but we need to just use that hurt as motivation to get our hands on the FAI Cup, which is a massive trophy.

“As I said before the FAI Cup Final is an unbelievable day and an unbelievable week leading up to it, the whole build up to it, is great. All your friends and family are at the game and you remember these days forever, so we need to really end the season on a high.”