Monaghan

Where: Monaghan.

An Alternative History of Monaghan

Realising that the club alphabetically due an alternative history was Limerick, Stig decided that we can’t spent our lives slaved to an arbitrary lexicographical ordering, so we skipped on to the stony grey field that is Century Homes Park.

The alternative histories have left me at something of a loss recently. You’d think this sort of thing would be easy. You just do a little research on the internet, apply whatever creative stimulus you’re into. Keats, Coleridge, Wilde, Poe and Conan Doyle all took opium, for example, but it’s kind of frowned upon these days. Anyway, you do your research, turn the handle and Bob’s your left-handed obstetrician, right? If only. I keep find myself writing a history of clubs younger even than Theo Walcott, clubs whose entire career has been less eventful than a UCD-Pats game. Usually, you can make something of a stab at it though.

Monaghan are different though. They were founded in 1979, a fact that comprises the entire nod towards their history available on their website. That’s right, their entire history can be summed up into five words. I can’t beat that – I can’t get Rovers any shorter than seven, "Won loads, pissed it all away, relegated." (Someone later suggested one for Dublin City, "Bankrupt, 2006.")

Sometimes, I’ve resorted to a potted history of the county, but Monaghan has a rather short one. The MacMahons ruled, but got kicked out in 1591 for being a little conspicuously anti-English. Possibly, the huge flag with "Albionus Eunt Domus" written on it in the blood of the previous messenger had given it away.

A couple of years later, O’Neill decided to have a whack at the English garrison there, ambushing the 1700 or so English soldiers with a group of about 4,000 men. Hampered by a lack of powder (a related problem has hurt Robert Downey Junior’s acting career), he didn’t do the damage he intended and slunk off back to Donegal. Actual English casualties are a matter of debate. The English claimed about four dead and -7 injured. The rebel forces reckoned they’d killed at least 10,000. This tradition lives on today at Waterford and Galway’s home games.

After that, it seems that absolutely nothing happened in Monaghan until the bombing in 1974, which confused the hell out of the sixteenth century English soldiers still hanging around. Various jokes about casualty figures and O’Neill finally finding some powder come to mind, but won’t be expanded upon because people died in recent memory, and making fun in the vicinity of an event that killed seven people in living memory is of course far more likely to get Stig in trouble than all the fun in the 1500s.

This brings us neatly to 1979, when an order of druids (Monaghan’s fairly isolated) divined the concept of a football club, and created Century Homes Park on the inside of one of those black slanting Ulster hills Kavanagh kept going on about. Initially, the club struggled with issues with gravity, soil creep and pitch aeration, but these were all sorted out by a quick druidic orgy involving much ritual slaughtering of cattle. During preparations, people worried that this would hurt the local farming industry, but the cattle were just the twins of others over the border at the time, which soon sorted things out. Having sorted out their problems with the laws of physics, Monaghan applied for membership of the league in 1985. With the league expanding to two divisions that year, the FAI inspectors overlooked the odd nature of the local facilities and Monaghan entered the league along with Bray Wanderers, Derry City, Cobh Ramblers, Newcastle United and EMFA.

Initially, it was held that Monaghan were too awful to continue, and no one could quite figure out why the league continued to put up with them, but in 1888, a deal was struck, where druidic magic would help fill a franchising gap in the league a century later. I’m still not sure how the whole thing worked out, especially with the FAI not existing in 1888, but come 1988, EMEA ceased to exist, and Monaghan’s shaman created a Kilkenny City from a strand of hair and a piece of clothing from each player in Monaghan.

The naturally awful pair of teams continued unheeded by the FAI, who were now bound by contract since 1888 to ignore it. Since that time, the clubs are 3-3 on bottom of the league finishes, with many more close scrapes. In 2004, the club landed themselves in hot water when the league found them guilty of fielding an undead player. They were docked three points, and had to return Best to his hospital.

I have no idea how to wrap this up.