Recalling the League of Ireland's Crazy Gang - short-lived yet brilliant team
It doesn't seem like 20 years since Dan Connor was being struck by broken vodka bottles, scoring FAI Cup winning pennos, being sneaked out of football grounds to avoid an angry mob, and making a name for himself as a potential international.
Remember that period from 2003 to 2008?
Drogheda were running away with the league and then running out of money; Waterford were a milder form of Wimbledon's Crazy Gang; too many clubs didn't know how to balance their books.
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And in the middle of all this madness was a young keeper who decided to take the biggest gamble of his life.
In England's League One, a footballer's wages were secure.
You couldn't say that about the League of Ireland in that era.
Yet Connor, a Dubliner, was attracted by the idea of stepping up from being a No2 keeper at Peterborough United to being a first-choice at Waterford. Jimmy McGough, a straight-talking Belfast man, called. He answered.
Connor says: 'I'd never met anyone like Jimmy. He was the blood and thunder type and his training could be chaotic. Like, we'd play a five a side game and each team would have a football each.
'It was madness … but he knew how to man-manage. The team gelled. He was strong enough to allow senior pros have their say. I loved it.'
Sometimes too much. Against Cork City, Waterford were cruising to a 3-0 win one night when Connor decided to sit on the ball midway through the match.
The insult wasn't forgotten. A few months later he was at Turner's Cross. The Cork fans went nuts. A broken bottle was fired at him, hitting him on the leg, leaving a deep cut. This was the night the League experimented with Scottish officials.
'What's up with you, keeper?' the ref asked Connor.
He pointed to the vodka bottle lying next to him; the blood dripping out of his leg.
'Throw it off the pitch and get on with the game,' the ref told him.
And he did.
That was how players acted in that era. League of Ireland players got on with things. So when McGeough's successor, Alan Reynolds, told him to take a crucial penalty midway through the FAI Cup semi-final at the Brandywell, Connor didn't blink.
His opposite number, David Forde, did, however - diving to his right. Connor fired his shot left. Waterford won 2-1.
That put them in the Cup final, which they led 1-0 late into the game before controversy struck when Longford's equaliser came after officials failed to stop the game when two footballs appeared on the pitch.
Connor said: 'The fact we didn't complain is a testament to that group of players. There were no whingers. We were really young men and we just got on with things.
'The dejection was raw. It still hurts to this day to be honest.
'But looking at the overall picture, that group of players really bonded. There were no cliques. We probably socialised too much, either going out for meals together, for drinks after matches, for golf days, but we fought for one another on the pitch. Always.
'Maybe we were like the Crazy Gang - but definitely not as wild. Reynie was a great character. The lads loved him. It was a great time in our lives.'
And better ones followed when he switched from Waterford to a Drogheda team who were on the cusp of something special.
They were spending big money - more, it turned out, than they could ultimately afford - and a title winning team was put together by Paul Doolin who Connor describes as the League's 'first head coach'.
'What I mean by that is that the League of Ireland up until then was full of managers rather than coaches," he says.
'Paul was meticulous, so professional. Every minute was planned in training. Get an injury, you got the best medical care. We were prepped with video analysis at a time when that was rare enough.
'When we won the FAI Cup in 2005, we all kind of realised the potential the club had. The subsequent League winning side stemmed from that Cup win because of the confidence it gave us.
'And at the heart of everything was Paul. He should still be working in Irish football. Maybe I'm looking back with rose-tinted glasses because I am sure he brought me down a peg or two at times when I needed it, but the respect I have for his coaching is huge. He was a great manager.'
It was Doolin who brought him to Cork City into the lion's den, the ground where he once had to be sneaked out the back door after an angry set of City fans waited to berate him at the main exit.
That relationship soon mended: 'I've nothing bad to say about Cork City as a club. Their fans are great.'
But things soon turned sour with the then chairman, Tom Coughlan. Connor says: 'We went months without getting paid. We had Christmas without any money. Santa had to be paid for; friends, family members helped us out. I dug deep into my savings. It was a case of surviving.'
Yet this is where the Dan Connor story really takes off.
He did survive that Christmas and then the hip injury which ultimately ended his playing career and hastened his journey into coaching, which began with Hereford United in 2012 and has continued since, via Shrewsbury, Wigan Athletic and Forest Green Rovers, where he has been a successful assistant manager.
From 16 until now he has stayed in professional football - his best playing years spent in the League of Ireland where ultimately he'd love to return some day to manage in.
Connor says: 'The League of Ireland is a great place. I loved it when I was there. I'm in touch with nearly all the managers there now. It has come on leaps and bounds.'
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