Time to say goodbye to Twiggy ….. October 16, 2012
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So after months of speculation its now official…
Gary Twigg’s last home game for the Hoops will be on Friday v’s UCD…..
Shamrock Rovers Football Club can confirm that striker, Gary Twigg will leave the club at the end of the current season.
Speaking ahead of his final home game for the Hoops, Gary said: “I want to thank everyone at the club, the manger who brought me in, and those I’ve played under this season, for everything they have done for me over the past four seasons. And I especially want to thank the fans, they have been brilliant to me and I couldn’t have achieved what I did at the club without them.
“I also want the fans to know that I am only leaving to be nearer my family. I don’t want to leave the club and wouldn’t be if it was only a football decision, but it isn’t. My family is the most important thing to me and I had to make this decision for their sake. I loved played for Rovers and have great memories from my time here.”
So Friday I’ll trudge up to Tallaght (and its been a trudge lately… when you find yourself going to games out of guilt) knowing that it will be the last time I’ll see the great man wearing the Hoops.
In his time at Rovers Twigg has scored 78 goals in 88 games. Amongst those goals the first goal for the Hoops in Tallaght.
Twigg is a hero, a legend, an idol to Rovers fans. His goals, his rapport with the fans, the joy he gets from scoring goals.
As someone on the Rovers Forum put it… “He has been the first LOI icon in years. Fans, especially young kids came to watch Gary Twigg as much as they came to watch Rovers. His signing coincided with our move to Tallaght, and Twigg and Tallaght Stadium went hand in hand as far as people who were new to Rovers were concerned. Ask a kid in general his favourite player and he’ll tell you someone from the premiership. Ask any kid who was caught up in the Rovers/Tallgaht hype he’ll tell you Gary Twigg. He done as much as anyone to raise the profile of this club, simply by scoring goals….”
I remember the thrill when my son got his autograph as we spotted him leaving training when we were up at the stadium buying something in the club shop. He was walking on air for days afterwards.
Twigg is a gent off the pitch and on it too.
Just before he signed for Rovers, he supposedly was going to give up the game but Michael O’Neill persuaded him to follow him from Brechin City over to Rovers.
He will be missed.
End of an era, alright – especially since he’s not moving to another club in this league. Although what’s the betting you get Portadown (that’s where he’s going right?) in the Setanta next year?
We hated him, obviously, but there was a certain amount of fear and respect hidden in that. The last striker I was as afraid of was Jayo B. when he was at Shels.
Nice to see your old manager Michael O’Neill proving his mettle tonight by steering Northern Ireland to a fantastic away draw against Portugal beside which our valiant victory against the Saltees looks like very thin gruel indeed.
Twigg was a terrific striker though one of Sligo Rovers’ main strengths was that Gavin Peers probably did better on him than anyone else. SOS is right about the fear he inspired all the same.
Funnily enough I was singing O’Neills praises to a Portuguese colleague yesterday. Must confess I dont mind seeing the North do well, I remember cheering for them in the 82 world cup,
Twiggs a big loss not just to Rovers but to the league as hes one of those players non LOI fans know and he is idolised in my house by my kids (and myself).
Although he did score the opening goal in Tallaght, it was the night he scored twice in the dying minutes in our first game v Bohs in Tallaght that really began the fans love affair with him. It was one of the best nights of my life, just pure and utter unexpected joy.
Just for that I’m tempted to post the picture of him looking dejected in front of a jubilant F+G towards the end of the 4-0 this season
…….that night was pure and utter etc. from this side
I know … no need to remind me nor of your victory in Tallaght
Please note Eamonn that somewhere back in the mists of time there was a rule brought in that everyone in the south is supposed to hate Norn Iron (or ‘Prodistan’ according to a left-wing blog which I doubt would ever consider itself sectarian) and treat them as if they were the Springboks during Apartheid.
Eamonn McCann wrote a funny piece on this a few years ago, noting how all these ‘republicans’ supported England against Norn Iron in 2005- but the North went and bloody beat them!
Was that before or after the ‘boo any Rangers player, past or present’ rule came in?
Damn, I’m afraid I didn’t get that memo. I always like to see the North doing well. The ‘seething cauldron of sectarian hatred’ thesis about soccer North of the border has never explained why players from down here, Fenlon, Arkins, Gorman et al, were idolised at Portadown and Linfield.
Funnily enough I was talking to a former League of Ireland player currently playing in the Irish League at the weekend and he reckoned relations between the clubs and between the players on opposite teams were actually better North of the border.
I think the sectarian hatred is reserved for opponents in the Irish League – and in fairness, the clubs have gone a long way to trying to put an end to it since the lunatic days of grenades being thrown at the Cliftonville support by Linfield fans.
Any time Pats have played Setanta Cup games up there, even away to Linfield or Portadown, we’ve always received a very friendly welcome with no trace of hostility. We even had an invite from a Linfield SC to join them for pre-match pints in their clubhouse on the Shankill which would’ve been fun, only the cops stepped in and turned it into a “bubble trip.”
Setanta games between Linfield and Derry, however, have tended to be a bit more…fraught.
As for Twigg, I’m just relieved he’s gone. Far and away the best striker in the League in recent years and like Glen Crowe or Jason Byrne before him, could instil an extra layer of dread just at the thought of facing him.
I found that McCann piece mentioned above, did NI beat Spain 3-2 back then as well?
‘Rooting for England
(Eamonn McCann, Sunday Journal)
“Here’s hoping England give Norn Iron a good spanking,” Andersonstown News editor Robin Livingstone breathed a fervent wish at the beginning of the week.
Many Nationalists across the North will have been wholly in agreement. Few will be fooled by ex-post-facto claims of satisfaction that, in the wondrous event, it was England took the spanking…. Certain politicians pressed for a quote on Thursday morning made the best they could of their sad situation. Those who’d most fanatically hoped to see the North hammered were the ones with rictus grins now affixed to their faces as they forced themselves to say, sure, they were pleased the oul’ enemy had left chastened and chased, with a flea in the ear and no points in the bag.
At the beginning of the week I took part in a handful of radio programmes in which I expressed my hope-against-hope that Lawrie’s lads would eviscerate the Brit mixum-gatherum of millionaire mediocrities. One common Nationalist reaction was sheer incredulity. Ah, come on, you can’t mean it…
Dunphy, Dunseith and Cooper separately suggested there was a stark contradiction here: militant Nationalists cheering on England (never-ending source of all our ills, and so forth) against an Irish eleven.
Maybe. And maybe not.
Take a closer look at Robin Livingstone’s rant.
He would be disappointed, he reckoned, if “the bottomless pit of enmity and the cavernous morass of malice that I bear towards Our Wee Pravince has not by this time articulated itself to everyone who knows me.”
The scornful mimicry of a supposedly distinctive Protestant/Unionist accent may not be as bad-minded as Bernard Manning jeering at the speech-patterns of “Pakis.” The Andytown editor won’t have seen it like that. But the parallels are close enough to be concerning.
Recalling “a flight attendant with a Ballymena accent” welcoming passengers to “Northern Ireland,” Livingstone, “looked up from my book and fired off a dirty look (which) went fizzing past her averted head like a badly-aimed RPG.” We won’t ponder the significance of that choice of simile, for fear of being driven to a disturbing conclusion, but might wonder instead at the derisive reference, again, to an assumed Prod/Unionist accent.
I have a minibus load of nieces from Ballymena. Brilliant broad Ballymena accents, every one of them, that they are not the slightest bit coy about. But I hope they take care to speak sotto voce in the vicinity of Robin Livingstone. He might fire off only verbal missiles. But you never know how others within hearing range might opt to ape him.
“The dread words ‘Northern Ireland’ never pass my lips,” he continued. ” I physically wince every time I hear them.”
Does he now? He must do an awful lot of wincing.
What’s the name of the Assembly the Andytown News is mad keen to see up and running again? The Northern Ireland Assembly.
What Executive did politicians the ‘paper admires serve in with distinction? The Northern Ireland Executive.
What police force has Robin Livingstone’s preferred party pledged to endorse as soon as a few changes (NOT including a name-change) are in place? The Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Strange as it might seem to mainstream broadcasters, the attitudes aren’t contradictory, but complementary.
It’s because some Nationalists are uneasy at their own acceptance of Northern Ireland that they feel they have to make a show of rhetorical opposition to it.
It is because, in practical terms, they have endorsed the legitimacy of the Northern Ireland State that they denounce symbolic representations of it all the more loudly.
The campaign to obliterate Northern Ireland having halted, they turn to battle on who’ll rule the roost within it. Communal hostility replaces the struggle for an all-Ireland. This is a pattern of play which corresponds ever more closely with the political mind-set of the Mad Mullahs of Orangeism.
It’s in this context that militant Nationalism comes to be expressed in a desire to see blue noses ground into the dirt, even by Brits. In fact, especially by Brits.
It is now the main perspective of a growing tendency within Nationalism that a united Ireland can best and maybe only be brought about by England hammering the Prods until they see that there’s no point persisting with, as Robin Livingstone would put it, Our Wee Pravince, and reconcile themselves instead to an all-Ireland arrangement.
It makes sense for such Nationalists to roar England on as they suppress Northern Ireland.
Except that it didn’t work out like that at all, did it? Nor will it in the real world.
Wonderful result at Windsor on Wednesday. Pity the Free State let us down But shouldn’t we be used to that, too, by now?
September 12, 2005