THIS WEEK HAS mostly been like any other for Dave Webster.
He worked the usual 40 hours in his job as a printer in the label and signage department of Jones Engineering, and went training on four of those evenings when his shift finished. By the time he got home, washed his gear, prepared his bag and lunch for the next day, it was close to 10.30pm.
If he was lucky, maybe he got to see his fiancée, Olya, before collapsing into bed.
By 6am he was up again, unloading the dishwasher and sorting the bottles for 10-month-old-son Charlie, who turns one on St Stephen’s Day. Of course, that uninterrupted sleep all depends on Charlie.
Aria, his five-year-old daughter, will most likely still be asleep so he will give her a kiss on the head before slipping out the door. If she’s awake, he might just be able to spend a few minutes on the couch watching YouTube and having breakfast together.
For the last 10 months he has only really seen his children on Tuesday evenings during the week. “Then your body is wrecked at the weekend,” he says.
After training on Monday night, in the carpool back to Dublin with teammates Darragh Markey, Warren Davis, Shane Farrell and Conor Kane, they still had their coffee slices as a treat.
He won’t “eat any rubbish” as Olya puts it, and definitely won’t find the time to pick up the banjo that has been resting in the corner of the dining room for most of this season.
It was ordered online after a few drinks in his local – along with the usual random collection of books – and while he quickly learned Dublin in the Rare Auld Times, and Wagon Wheel, it has remained in its case for the last few months. It will soon be cracked open again.
The only difference with this week is that the biggest game of Webster’s career is tomorrow, when he walks out with Drogheda United in the FAI Cup final against Derry City.
Seventeen years. That is how long the centre back has been a fixture in the League of Ireland.
Seventeen years and his medal tally stands at zero. This is also his first cup final.
“I’ve seen so many lads my age come and go early but I’m still here. I’ll take surviving that long. I’ve done well to last this long. I have enjoyed myself, I’ve had a laugh and I’ve loved every minute. I’ve never ever felt comfortable,” he says. “But I’ve loved it.”
The 42 visited the family home the weekend before Irish football’s showpiece. The house is in Kiltipper, and feels like it’s on the edge of Dublin. It faces out towards Bohernabreena Reservoir Park and, beyond that, the Wicklow mountains.
Webster and Olya managed to buy here not long after Covid, although none of his earnings as a footballer for the last two decades were accepted by the bank towards mortgage approval. That came from his job with Jones Engineering and Olya’s as a teacher.
From left: Dave Webster, Aria, Charlie, and Olya. The 42
The 42
On this Saturday afternoon, Aria stands beside Nanny Lisa – Webster’s Mam – helping to feed Charlie in the highchair.
Olya is doing a million and one other things upstairs. Webster’s father Paul – another musician who plays the guitar and moved from England 40 years ago to marry Lisa – sits on the couch watching Newcastle United v Arsenal. Aria soon drags him over to the small table and chairs to do some colouring together, Grandad’s knees almost tucked under each cheek.
She is too young to be a mascot tomorrow but is still excited for the day ahead and the family’s visit to Aviva Stadium.
“I’ve got loads of jerseys,” she says.
She wasn’t born when her Daddy made his debut at 19 for Bray Wanderers in a 1-0 win over Shamrock Rovers in a League Cup game in May 2008. Truth be told, it was just as well. The night before his surprise call-up by manager Eddie Gormley, Webster was in Newcastle enjoying the darts with friends. “Probably dressed as one of the Teletubbies,” he says.
It was then that he got word from coach Dave Mackey informing him of the news. He had no choice but to come clean about the state he was in, but still got some words of advice from Mackey.
“Eat as many digestives biscuits as you can to soak it all up and try to sleep it off,” Webster laughs.
So he did, on the floor of Newcastle Airport, before arriving back to Dublin Airport on the morning of his debut.
Fairytales have to start somewhere, and the end is now in sight. Whether there will be a happy ending depends on the outcome of the final with Derry, and the promotion/relegation play-off the weekend after. Of course that just happens to be against Bray.
Of those 17 years in the League of Ireland, just five have been as a full-time professional. Webster took the plunge when he left Bray for Shamrock Rovers from 2015 to 2017.
A season with Waterford and another with St Patrick’s Athletic followed, before it was back to part-time – and more hours than he cares to remember in the car – with Finn Harps.
He fought the good fight with Ollie Horgan for three seasons before relegation was confirmed to the First Division for the first time in his career. A cruciate knee ligament injury in that last year compounded matters.
“Even this season, at the start when I wasn’t playing, you have your pride and think, ‘Is it fucking worth hanging on?’ Olya could be sick, one of the kids could be sick, and you’re away from them trying to play football but not being any use at all.”
He returned to Bray in 2023 for what was then supposed to be an emotional swansong. “But the knee still wasn’t right, I thought I was done.”
He wasn’t, and his own confidence improved. A week’s training with Drogheda in pre-season was enough for manager Kevin Doherty to offer him a deal. The instincts that always served him so well remained sharp; awareness, anticipation, calmness, bravery, honesty, humour.
They have helped to shape a career on the frontline with the respect and appreciation of peers and fans the most tangible reward. So far.
EA Sports rate him as the slowest player in the league – a fact his friends take great joy in, presenting him with a framed poster. “No chance, I can still leave some of the younger lads behind,” Webster insists.
It’s part of the reason he was prepared to continue to work and play part-time this year. Some might call him a relic and a dinosaur, and that stories like his and players like him will soon become extinct as the League of Ireland continues to progress and evolve.
Drogheda may do close to full-time hours on the pitch but around half of their squad have other jobs and they are now the only part-time element of the Premier Division.
Webster’s experiences are why he and so many others became enraptured by the League of Ireland in the first place.
Attendances are now rising, interest is increasing and, of course, wages are too. His first contract as an 18-year old at Bray was for €120 a week. There are players that age now earning upwards of €500.
Webster turns 36 in August but there is no bitterness or resentment about his time coming to an end, and it seems almost apt that tomorrow won’t even be his grand finale. That will come in the relegation/promotion play-off next weekend.
“I know it’s time to go, the sacrifices and bit of selfishness. If we can go and do it on Sunday, and then stay up, that can make the sacrifices feel even more worthwhile, not just for me but my family. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat but the time is right.”
Webster has made over 400 appearances in his career – including eight in Europe. He had one trial in his teens with West Ham United but mostly he remembers those schoolboy days for being collected at his house and jumping in the back of a white van to travel around Dublin to games.
By the time he was at Bray he progressed to driving his Mam’s Peugeot 106 – “The Red Rocket” – and that is when he met Chris Shields.
Chris Shields (left) and Dave Webster (right) during their early days with Bray in the LOI.
They spent three years together but so much was packed in that they remain close friends now.
Webster slips into a story. “We were on the same deal at Bray and we were owed a good bit of wages. We got an advance and decided to go to Ibiza. Just the two of us. Nutjobs. Kevin and Perry Go Large. We got two envelopes from Bray packed full of fivers. We thought we were loaded and started to spend it…”
“Go on, try him on FaceTime,” The 42 suggests.
“Nah, sure he’ll be playing today,” Webster says.
A quick check of Linfield’s fixtures shows they’re not playing until the following day.
“Oh, I’ll try him,” he says.
Webster takes out his phone and brings Shields’ details up on his screen. There is a Union Jack emoji beside his name. A few rings but no answer.
Webster begins another story before Shields calls back. For the next 15 minutes or so, The 42 just has to listen, and laugh.
Webster: Alright horse?
Shields: Ah, boys!!!
Webster: Was just saying there that we probably wouldn’t be described as the best professionals in our younger days…
Shields: In the younger days?
Webster: Ibiza shopping with the envelopes full of fivers.
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Shields: Penney’s didn’t know what hit it.
David Sneyd: Tell us about those Bray days.
Shields: Remember Devo (Pat Devlin) was going to leave us up in Galway?
Webster: Was that one of the [relegation] play-offs?
Shields: No, it was actually our good year. 2011. Last day of the season and a team night in Galway. They put me and him in a room together. I was left out of the squad because Devo was going to send me on trial to Wolves. A few of us went for a few pints of Smithwicks while you played the game, we went out, back to the room and stayed up drinking.
Webster: Setting off the smoke alarms…
Shields: We came down for breakfast still rubber.
Webster: Devo just looked at us.
Shields scrunches his face and begins his best Pat Devlin impression.
Shields: ”See you two, find your own way home, you’re not coming back on the bus with us.”
Webster: We had to pay a fine for the hotel.
Shields: The rooms either side of us had to be moved and reimbursed.
Webster: We hadn’t a washer.
Webster with Chris Shields on FaceTime.
Shields: There were a few others in there with us. We were pranking lads pretending to be managers. I was phoning people pretending to be Liam Buckley.
Shields scrunches his face and begins his best Liam Buckley impression
Webster: Daire Doyle (now Drogheda assistant manager) was the one who organised the whip around.
Shields: Gary Dempsey wouldn’t give us anything for it because he didn’t like us.
Webster: Leave them there!
Shields: He didn’t like me and Webby at all because we just fucked about non-stop.
Webster: We’d train on a Sunday and he knew we would be out on the Saturday. We’d come in and he’d be like, ‘Show us your lips, show us your lips’. We’d be sucking them in.
Shields: Danny O’Connor was another experienced pro and Dempsey thought he’d back him up but he’d be asking us what we got up to and loving it. The Plaza, €2.50 Sundays. Diva was Fridays. Sundays was usually in someone’s gaf, then €2.50 gargles in The Plaza.
Webster: He’d spend the day with me and my mates on a Sunday.
Shields: The amount of times I’d go out with 30 quid from Clondalkin and walk back from The Plaza.
Webster: Whenever one of us had a free gaf and our mam and dad were away, we’d all move in.
Shields: Gafs upside down. Weeks on end. Remember we organised a big team day out and a meal. Arranged it all because we knew we were going to Oxegen [Musical Festival] and we got that weekend off.
Webster: We played UCD on the Friday. We had the car full of tents, crates of beer. Then straight there after the match.
Shields: Driving around that Friday night trying to get in and we could hear The Black Eyed Peas.
Webster: Then he went missing and I don’t think we saw him for about 30 hours. 6am in the morning, it’s quiet and we’re wondering where he is, getting a bit worried, ye know. Then all of a sudden, you can just hear it…
Nah, na-na-na-nah Na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na Here comes the hotstepper I’m the lyrical gangster Nah, na-na-na-nah Na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
Webster: This fella has a megaphone singing, waking everyone up. Was it a cone on your head?
Shields: Different time. It was a bucket hat.
Webster: He had ‘Here comes the hotstepper’ printed in marker on his chest and had no top.
Shields: Got it off the next day with baby wipes and cause the top had been off, I was scalded, so it was sunburned into me.
Webster: We spent the whole weekend there, had training on the Monday night, and he’s in the shower with ‘Here comes the hotstepper’ burned across his chest.
Shields: The lads asking where we were for the team day. ‘Ah, Webb’s mam won tickets on the radio on Friday so we just had to take them’.
Shields’ daughter grabs his phone as he speaks.
Webster: Hiya Emily.
Chris: There’s Webby, say hello.
Emily: Hiya.
Webster: Are you good?
Emily: Hiya
Shields: Is Webby going to win the cup?
Emily: Yeah!
Shields: Will he score?
Emily: Yeah!
Shields: Will he take free-kicks like Gary Cronin?
Emily: Yeah!
Webster (right) in action for Shamrock Rovers. Tommy Dickson / INPHO
Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO
Two of Shields’ kids begin fighting in the background as he breaks it up and sends them on their way.
Shields: Anyway, your debut, I couldn’t stop laughing on the bench when you were told to warm up. Remember that weekend session in the house when we played Middlesbrough on the Monday?
Webster: I was captain!
Shields: Adam Mitchell went through Kris Boyd. I still went in and got my da’s Rangers top signed by him when he was on the treatment table, though.
Webster: That’s why he signed for Linfield.
Shields: I’ll get you up here.
Webster: Nah, done. Finished.
Shields: Stop. Win the cup and you’re playing Europe next year.
Sneyd: Will you make it down?
Shields: Oh, yeah, a couple of us coming down.
Webster: We went together last season, sat inside… didn’t see much. If we win it, you might be able to come back and rob another cup…
Shields: Don’t know if I’m still welcome in Sligo for that.
Sneyd: Tell us…
Webster: The first cup final at the Aviva [in 2010]. Sligo done [Shamrock] Rovers on penalties. Devo got us a box. Obviously Doyler (Eoin Doyle) is my cousin, and me and Chris would go to all of Doyler’s finals. We went to two in Scotland, the two Hibs losses as well.
Anyway, Sligo in the Aviva. Devo sorted a box, our end of season do. Plan was to meet in the box a couple of hours before the match. Me and him were knocking on door of my local at quarter to 12 in the morning. Lashing into pints of Smithwicks. We walk up, all with Sligo flags, the headbands, Sligo gear. Went up to the box and Longer (Keith Long) was on us straight away.
Shields: He was not happy.
Webster: He goes, ‘Look at you two fucking eejits, you’re fucking Bray Wanderers players, what are you doing with fucking Sligo gear on?’ He’s beside me sniggering.
Shields: Come on Rovers!
Webster: Sligo won and went back to the Clayton Hotel at Liffey Valley. Us and the Doyles are really close. My mam and dad, we all turned up.
Shields: I’m only down at Fonthill so I got a taxi back, got a lend of 50 quid off my mam so I could go back out.
Webster (left) beats Karl Sheppard to a header while playing for St Patrick's Athletic. Tommy Grealy / INPHO
Tommy Grealy / INPHO / INPHO
Webster: Sligo had won the EA Sports Cup as well and it was on the table. He starts putting it under his top and I’m keeping sketch.
Shields: The handles were poking out like horns. Someone spotted us and then I’m there in the car park trying to convince them I brought it with me.
Webster: We were worse luck for Doyler’s cup finals with Hibs. Got beat 3-0 by Celtic and 5-1 by Hearts.
Shields: My poor Scottish nanny.
Sneyd: Please explain.
Shields: The first one was 2012 and I have a Scottish nanny who is still alive. I was at Dundalk then and told [manager] Sean McCaffrey that she died so I could go over with Webby. McCaffrey then got sacked so when Doyler got to a final again, I got to kill her the next year when Stephen Kenny came in. She’s still alive but she’s died twice!
Sneyd: You’ll have to kill her again if he wins this cup final…
Shields: Nah, I’ll be back on the last train up. We’re training the next day and we’re good professionals now.
Webster: Go on, we’ll let ya go!
***
Reflection and reminiscing – ‘remember when’ – seems appropriate in a week like this.
The house is a little bit quieter now, and not just because the FaceTime call with Shields has ended and the laughing has stopped.
Aria has gone for a walk with her grandparents and there is just the soft sound of lullaby music on the baby monitor as Charlie naps upstairs.
Webster celebrates with Finn Harps (left) and Waterford (right).
Olya was just nine when she and her mother left Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, the port city just outside Odessa that touches the Black Sea in Ukraine, for Ireland.
Her parents’ relationship had ended and her father, along with all of her extended family – grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins – remained in their native country.
Offaly was her first port of call before eventually settling in Tallaght. It took a couple of years to learn English – and some cúpla focal – and settle in.
The six or seven weeks she would spend in Ukraine each summer throughout her teens were some of Olya’s happiest. She could play on the beach with cousins, reconnect properly with family and continue to speak Russian.
That helped when she could take it as an extra subject for her Leaving Cert. Of course she got an A. By that stage, she had her mind made up to study Social Care in Tallaght IT.
It was around then that she also met Webster for the first time. They worked together in Lifestyle Sports for a number of years and became friends. He was still at Bray and she was preparing for the next stage of her own life.
A placement in a local primary school as part of college set Olya on the track to becoming a teacher.
“I really love it and it made me want to be that person at the top of the class,” she says.
After one year in London for her Masters, followed by three more teaching in west London, Olya was ready to come home to Dublin – and to Webster – in her mid 20s.
He had come back and forth in between during her time in England
“I missed the warmth of Dublin, everything, and I wanted to be with him.”
Yet part of what she knew she was signing up for would be being away from him as he continued to juggle football, work and, eventually, family.
“Of course I can keep playing but I don’t want to now. There is a different priority in my life. Olya has given so much to me, especially this last year, all for me in a sense of what she has sacrificed. It’s obviously much harder now with two young kids, Olya can’t be the one to take the brunt of that when I’m barely seeing them,” Webster says.
“There is big guilt there. I’ve been still able to go and do something I love and enjoy with her support.”
When Doherty offered him the chance to return to the Premier Division with Drogheda after that season at Bray was decimated by injury, Webster needed to have one more conversation with his family.
“I asked Olya, we spoke to my Mam and Dad, we spoke to Olya’s Mam, and asked could they be there to help out because Olya would be on her own again. I’m just grateful she gave me that support and so did our families because there have been tough times at home over the last couple of years.”
Webster (right) shakes hands with Padraig Amond after a Drogheda game with Waterford earlier this season. Ken Sutton / INPHO
Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO
Olya has not been back to Ukraine since Russia increased their aggression with the war. She managed to bring Aria to her hometown when she was two, just after Covid restrictions lifted, and it pains her that her daughter cannot be exposed to the same beautiful experiences that she once enjoyed.
Instead, she has daily calls with friends and family who talk about the daily sirens that signal rocket attacks and other Russian threats.
One of Olya’s cousins has managed to flee to Ireland but others have not been so lucky. There are stories of young men being conscripted on the streets. “It’s like they’re capturing boys with zero experience to fight. So many people have died, lads with their whole lives ahead of them who barely know how to hold or shoot a gun. Families have been ruined,” Olya says.
“We don’t know how blessed we are. When the sirens go off, even if it’s 3am, technically you are supposed to get out of bed and find safety, but some don’t even do that now because this has been going on for so long.
“The sirens are every day. My nanny is very sick at the moment and you cannot be with her. I have a cousin who has two kids the same age as mine. They cannot leave the house, they cannot get proper childcare or prepare for school.
“What I feel is so much sadness, I’m listening and hearing here but they are the ones over there living it. Everyday we are hopeful that it will end and something will change but when there is a war someone is benefitting from it.
“I would love for my kids to be able to go back like I was able to do as a kid and see their family, be around them. I’m hopeful of life changing but I’m not optimistic because it is still really scary. Like, there are WhatsApp groups for the areas and they will get notifications about where the next rocket is going to hit. If it’s not too close to their direction they stay where they are but when it’s aimed towards them then they have to find shelter. This is all still going on.”
Olya’s voice doesn’t crack and the conviction doesn’t waver, but the emotional toll is clear.
“That’s what I mean,” Webster says, extending his hand across the table to his fiancée. “That’s why there is that feeling of guilt there.
“So, yeah, Sunday will be great and I’ll be doing all I can to win, but I know the time is right to finish.”
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At home with Dave Webster: The tears, laughter and pain of a 17-year LOI career - and hope of first Cup Final
THIS WEEK HAS mostly been like any other for Dave Webster.
He worked the usual 40 hours in his job as a printer in the label and signage department of Jones Engineering, and went training on four of those evenings when his shift finished. By the time he got home, washed his gear, prepared his bag and lunch for the next day, it was close to 10.30pm.
If he was lucky, maybe he got to see his fiancée, Olya, before collapsing into bed.
By 6am he was up again, unloading the dishwasher and sorting the bottles for 10-month-old-son Charlie, who turns one on St Stephen’s Day. Of course, that uninterrupted sleep all depends on Charlie.
Aria, his five-year-old daughter, will most likely still be asleep so he will give her a kiss on the head before slipping out the door. If she’s awake, he might just be able to spend a few minutes on the couch watching YouTube and having breakfast together.
For the last 10 months he has only really seen his children on Tuesday evenings during the week. “Then your body is wrecked at the weekend,” he says.
After training on Monday night, in the carpool back to Dublin with teammates Darragh Markey, Warren Davis, Shane Farrell and Conor Kane, they still had their coffee slices as a treat.
He won’t “eat any rubbish” as Olya puts it, and definitely won’t find the time to pick up the banjo that has been resting in the corner of the dining room for most of this season.
It was ordered online after a few drinks in his local – along with the usual random collection of books – and while he quickly learned Dublin in the Rare Auld Times, and Wagon Wheel, it has remained in its case for the last few months. It will soon be cracked open again.
The only difference with this week is that the biggest game of Webster’s career is tomorrow, when he walks out with Drogheda United in the FAI Cup final against Derry City.
Seventeen years. That is how long the centre back has been a fixture in the League of Ireland.
Seventeen years and his medal tally stands at zero. This is also his first cup final.
“I’ve seen so many lads my age come and go early but I’m still here. I’ll take surviving that long. I’ve done well to last this long. I have enjoyed myself, I’ve had a laugh and I’ve loved every minute. I’ve never ever felt comfortable,” he says. “But I’ve loved it.”
The 42 visited the family home the weekend before Irish football’s showpiece. The house is in Kiltipper, and feels like it’s on the edge of Dublin. It faces out towards Bohernabreena Reservoir Park and, beyond that, the Wicklow mountains.
Webster and Olya managed to buy here not long after Covid, although none of his earnings as a footballer for the last two decades were accepted by the bank towards mortgage approval. That came from his job with Jones Engineering and Olya’s as a teacher.
On this Saturday afternoon, Aria stands beside Nanny Lisa – Webster’s Mam – helping to feed Charlie in the highchair.
Olya is doing a million and one other things upstairs. Webster’s father Paul – another musician who plays the guitar and moved from England 40 years ago to marry Lisa – sits on the couch watching Newcastle United v Arsenal. Aria soon drags him over to the small table and chairs to do some colouring together, Grandad’s knees almost tucked under each cheek.
She is too young to be a mascot tomorrow but is still excited for the day ahead and the family’s visit to Aviva Stadium.
“I’ve got loads of jerseys,” she says.
She wasn’t born when her Daddy made his debut at 19 for Bray Wanderers in a 1-0 win over Shamrock Rovers in a League Cup game in May 2008. Truth be told, it was just as well. The night before his surprise call-up by manager Eddie Gormley, Webster was in Newcastle enjoying the darts with friends. “Probably dressed as one of the Teletubbies,” he says.
It was then that he got word from coach Dave Mackey informing him of the news. He had no choice but to come clean about the state he was in, but still got some words of advice from Mackey.
“Eat as many digestives biscuits as you can to soak it all up and try to sleep it off,” Webster laughs.
So he did, on the floor of Newcastle Airport, before arriving back to Dublin Airport on the morning of his debut.
Fairytales have to start somewhere, and the end is now in sight. Whether there will be a happy ending depends on the outcome of the final with Derry, and the promotion/relegation play-off the weekend after. Of course that just happens to be against Bray.
Of those 17 years in the League of Ireland, just five have been as a full-time professional. Webster took the plunge when he left Bray for Shamrock Rovers from 2015 to 2017.
A season with Waterford and another with St Patrick’s Athletic followed, before it was back to part-time – and more hours than he cares to remember in the car – with Finn Harps.
He fought the good fight with Ollie Horgan for three seasons before relegation was confirmed to the First Division for the first time in his career. A cruciate knee ligament injury in that last year compounded matters.
“Even this season, at the start when I wasn’t playing, you have your pride and think, ‘Is it fucking worth hanging on?’ Olya could be sick, one of the kids could be sick, and you’re away from them trying to play football but not being any use at all.”
He returned to Bray in 2023 for what was then supposed to be an emotional swansong. “But the knee still wasn’t right, I thought I was done.”
He wasn’t, and his own confidence improved. A week’s training with Drogheda in pre-season was enough for manager Kevin Doherty to offer him a deal. The instincts that always served him so well remained sharp; awareness, anticipation, calmness, bravery, honesty, humour.
They have helped to shape a career on the frontline with the respect and appreciation of peers and fans the most tangible reward. So far.
EA Sports rate him as the slowest player in the league – a fact his friends take great joy in, presenting him with a framed poster. “No chance, I can still leave some of the younger lads behind,” Webster insists.
It’s part of the reason he was prepared to continue to work and play part-time this year. Some might call him a relic and a dinosaur, and that stories like his and players like him will soon become extinct as the League of Ireland continues to progress and evolve.
Drogheda may do close to full-time hours on the pitch but around half of their squad have other jobs and they are now the only part-time element of the Premier Division.
Webster’s experiences are why he and so many others became enraptured by the League of Ireland in the first place.
Attendances are now rising, interest is increasing and, of course, wages are too. His first contract as an 18-year old at Bray was for €120 a week. There are players that age now earning upwards of €500.
Webster turns 36 in August but there is no bitterness or resentment about his time coming to an end, and it seems almost apt that tomorrow won’t even be his grand finale. That will come in the relegation/promotion play-off next weekend.
“I know it’s time to go, the sacrifices and bit of selfishness. If we can go and do it on Sunday, and then stay up, that can make the sacrifices feel even more worthwhile, not just for me but my family. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat but the time is right.”
Webster has made over 400 appearances in his career – including eight in Europe. He had one trial in his teens with West Ham United but mostly he remembers those schoolboy days for being collected at his house and jumping in the back of a white van to travel around Dublin to games.
By the time he was at Bray he progressed to driving his Mam’s Peugeot 106 – “The Red Rocket” – and that is when he met Chris Shields.
They spent three years together but so much was packed in that they remain close friends now.
Webster slips into a story. “We were on the same deal at Bray and we were owed a good bit of wages. We got an advance and decided to go to Ibiza. Just the two of us. Nutjobs. Kevin and Perry Go Large. We got two envelopes from Bray packed full of fivers. We thought we were loaded and started to spend it…”
“Go on, try him on FaceTime,” The 42 suggests.
“Nah, sure he’ll be playing today,” Webster says.
A quick check of Linfield’s fixtures shows they’re not playing until the following day.
“Oh, I’ll try him,” he says.
Webster takes out his phone and brings Shields’ details up on his screen. There is a Union Jack emoji beside his name. A few rings but no answer.
Webster begins another story before Shields calls back. For the next 15 minutes or so, The 42 just has to listen, and laugh.
Webster: Alright horse?
Shields: Ah, boys!!!
Webster: Was just saying there that we probably wouldn’t be described as the best professionals in our younger days…
Shields: In the younger days?
Webster: Ibiza shopping with the envelopes full of fivers.
Shields: Penney’s didn’t know what hit it.
David Sneyd: Tell us about those Bray days.
Shields: Remember Devo (Pat Devlin) was going to leave us up in Galway?
Webster: Was that one of the [relegation] play-offs?
Shields: No, it was actually our good year. 2011. Last day of the season and a team night in Galway. They put me and him in a room together. I was left out of the squad because Devo was going to send me on trial to Wolves. A few of us went for a few pints of Smithwicks while you played the game, we went out, back to the room and stayed up drinking.
Webster: Setting off the smoke alarms…
Shields: We came down for breakfast still rubber.
Webster: Devo just looked at us.
Shields scrunches his face and begins his best Pat Devlin impression.
Shields: ”See you two, find your own way home, you’re not coming back on the bus with us.”
Webster: We had to pay a fine for the hotel.
Shields: The rooms either side of us had to be moved and reimbursed.
Webster: We hadn’t a washer.
Shields: There were a few others in there with us. We were pranking lads pretending to be managers. I was phoning people pretending to be Liam Buckley.
Shields scrunches his face and begins his best Liam Buckley impression
Webster: Daire Doyle (now Drogheda assistant manager) was the one who organised the whip around.
Shields: Gary Dempsey wouldn’t give us anything for it because he didn’t like us.
Webster: Leave them there!
Shields: He didn’t like me and Webby at all because we just fucked about non-stop.
Webster: We’d train on a Sunday and he knew we would be out on the Saturday. We’d come in and he’d be like, ‘Show us your lips, show us your lips’. We’d be sucking them in.
Shields: Danny O’Connor was another experienced pro and Dempsey thought he’d back him up but he’d be asking us what we got up to and loving it. The Plaza, €2.50 Sundays. Diva was Fridays. Sundays was usually in someone’s gaf, then €2.50 gargles in The Plaza.
Webster: He’d spend the day with me and my mates on a Sunday.
Shields: The amount of times I’d go out with 30 quid from Clondalkin and walk back from The Plaza.
Webster: Whenever one of us had a free gaf and our mam and dad were away, we’d all move in.
Shields: Gafs upside down. Weeks on end. Remember we organised a big team day out and a meal. Arranged it all because we knew we were going to Oxegen [Musical Festival] and we got that weekend off.
Webster: We played UCD on the Friday. We had the car full of tents, crates of beer. Then straight there after the match.
Shields: Driving around that Friday night trying to get in and we could hear The Black Eyed Peas.
Webster: Then he went missing and I don’t think we saw him for about 30 hours. 6am in the morning, it’s quiet and we’re wondering where he is, getting a bit worried, ye know. Then all of a sudden, you can just hear it…
Nah, na-na-na-nah
Na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
Here comes the hotstepper
I’m the lyrical gangster
Nah, na-na-na-nah
Na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
Webster: This fella has a megaphone singing, waking everyone up. Was it a cone on your head?
Shields: Different time. It was a bucket hat.
Webster: He had ‘Here comes the hotstepper’ printed in marker on his chest and had no top.
Shields: Got it off the next day with baby wipes and cause the top had been off, I was scalded, so it was sunburned into me.
Webster: We spent the whole weekend there, had training on the Monday night, and he’s in the shower with ‘Here comes the hotstepper’ burned across his chest.
Shields: The lads asking where we were for the team day. ‘Ah, Webb’s mam won tickets on the radio on Friday so we just had to take them’.
Shields’ daughter grabs his phone as he speaks.
Webster: Hiya Emily.
Chris: There’s Webby, say hello.
Emily: Hiya.
Webster: Are you good?
Emily: Hiya
Shields: Is Webby going to win the cup?
Emily: Yeah!
Shields: Will he score?
Emily: Yeah!
Shields: Will he take free-kicks like Gary Cronin?
Emily: Yeah!
Two of Shields’ kids begin fighting in the background as he breaks it up and sends them on their way.
Shields: Anyway, your debut, I couldn’t stop laughing on the bench when you were told to warm up. Remember that weekend session in the house when we played Middlesbrough on the Monday?
Webster: I was captain!
Shields: Adam Mitchell went through Kris Boyd. I still went in and got my da’s Rangers top signed by him when he was on the treatment table, though.
Webster: That’s why he signed for Linfield.
Shields: I’ll get you up here.
Webster: Nah, done. Finished.
Shields: Stop. Win the cup and you’re playing Europe next year.
Sneyd: Will you make it down?
Shields: Oh, yeah, a couple of us coming down.
Webster: We went together last season, sat inside… didn’t see much. If we win it, you might be able to come back and rob another cup…
Shields: Don’t know if I’m still welcome in Sligo for that.
Sneyd: Tell us…
Webster: The first cup final at the Aviva [in 2010]. Sligo done [Shamrock] Rovers on penalties. Devo got us a box. Obviously Doyler (Eoin Doyle) is my cousin, and me and Chris would go to all of Doyler’s finals. We went to two in Scotland, the two Hibs losses as well.
Anyway, Sligo in the Aviva. Devo sorted a box, our end of season do. Plan was to meet in the box a couple of hours before the match. Me and him were knocking on door of my local at quarter to 12 in the morning. Lashing into pints of Smithwicks. We walk up, all with Sligo flags, the headbands, Sligo gear. Went up to the box and Longer (Keith Long) was on us straight away.
Shields: He was not happy.
Webster: He goes, ‘Look at you two fucking eejits, you’re fucking Bray Wanderers players, what are you doing with fucking Sligo gear on?’ He’s beside me sniggering.
Shields: Come on Rovers!
Webster: Sligo won and went back to the Clayton Hotel at Liffey Valley. Us and the Doyles are really close. My mam and dad, we all turned up.
Shields: I’m only down at Fonthill so I got a taxi back, got a lend of 50 quid off my mam so I could go back out.
Webster: Sligo had won the EA Sports Cup as well and it was on the table. He starts putting it under his top and I’m keeping sketch.
Shields: The handles were poking out like horns. Someone spotted us and then I’m there in the car park trying to convince them I brought it with me.
Webster: We were worse luck for Doyler’s cup finals with Hibs. Got beat 3-0 by Celtic and 5-1 by Hearts.
Shields: My poor Scottish nanny.
Sneyd: Please explain.
Shields: The first one was 2012 and I have a Scottish nanny who is still alive. I was at Dundalk then and told [manager] Sean McCaffrey that she died so I could go over with Webby. McCaffrey then got sacked so when Doyler got to a final again, I got to kill her the next year when Stephen Kenny came in. She’s still alive but she’s died twice!
Sneyd: You’ll have to kill her again if he wins this cup final…
Shields: Nah, I’ll be back on the last train up. We’re training the next day and we’re good professionals now.
Webster: Go on, we’ll let ya go!
***
Reflection and reminiscing – ‘remember when’ – seems appropriate in a week like this.
The house is a little bit quieter now, and not just because the FaceTime call with Shields has ended and the laughing has stopped.
Aria has gone for a walk with her grandparents and there is just the soft sound of lullaby music on the baby monitor as Charlie naps upstairs.
Olya was just nine when she and her mother left Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, the port city just outside Odessa that touches the Black Sea in Ukraine, for Ireland.
Her parents’ relationship had ended and her father, along with all of her extended family – grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins – remained in their native country.
Offaly was her first port of call before eventually settling in Tallaght. It took a couple of years to learn English – and some cúpla focal – and settle in.
The six or seven weeks she would spend in Ukraine each summer throughout her teens were some of Olya’s happiest. She could play on the beach with cousins, reconnect properly with family and continue to speak Russian.
That helped when she could take it as an extra subject for her Leaving Cert. Of course she got an A. By that stage, she had her mind made up to study Social Care in Tallaght IT.
It was around then that she also met Webster for the first time. They worked together in Lifestyle Sports for a number of years and became friends. He was still at Bray and she was preparing for the next stage of her own life.
A placement in a local primary school as part of college set Olya on the track to becoming a teacher.
“I really love it and it made me want to be that person at the top of the class,” she says.
After one year in London for her Masters, followed by three more teaching in west London, Olya was ready to come home to Dublin – and to Webster – in her mid 20s.
He had come back and forth in between during her time in England
“I missed the warmth of Dublin, everything, and I wanted to be with him.”
Yet part of what she knew she was signing up for would be being away from him as he continued to juggle football, work and, eventually, family.
“Of course I can keep playing but I don’t want to now. There is a different priority in my life. Olya has given so much to me, especially this last year, all for me in a sense of what she has sacrificed. It’s obviously much harder now with two young kids, Olya can’t be the one to take the brunt of that when I’m barely seeing them,” Webster says.
“There is big guilt there. I’ve been still able to go and do something I love and enjoy with her support.”
When Doherty offered him the chance to return to the Premier Division with Drogheda after that season at Bray was decimated by injury, Webster needed to have one more conversation with his family.
“I asked Olya, we spoke to my Mam and Dad, we spoke to Olya’s Mam, and asked could they be there to help out because Olya would be on her own again. I’m just grateful she gave me that support and so did our families because there have been tough times at home over the last couple of years.”
Olya has not been back to Ukraine since Russia increased their aggression with the war. She managed to bring Aria to her hometown when she was two, just after Covid restrictions lifted, and it pains her that her daughter cannot be exposed to the same beautiful experiences that she once enjoyed.
Instead, she has daily calls with friends and family who talk about the daily sirens that signal rocket attacks and other Russian threats.
One of Olya’s cousins has managed to flee to Ireland but others have not been so lucky. There are stories of young men being conscripted on the streets. “It’s like they’re capturing boys with zero experience to fight. So many people have died, lads with their whole lives ahead of them who barely know how to hold or shoot a gun. Families have been ruined,” Olya says.
“We don’t know how blessed we are. When the sirens go off, even if it’s 3am, technically you are supposed to get out of bed and find safety, but some don’t even do that now because this has been going on for so long.
“The sirens are every day. My nanny is very sick at the moment and you cannot be with her. I have a cousin who has two kids the same age as mine. They cannot leave the house, they cannot get proper childcare or prepare for school.
“What I feel is so much sadness, I’m listening and hearing here but they are the ones over there living it. Everyday we are hopeful that it will end and something will change but when there is a war someone is benefitting from it.
“I would love for my kids to be able to go back like I was able to do as a kid and see their family, be around them. I’m hopeful of life changing but I’m not optimistic because it is still really scary. Like, there are WhatsApp groups for the areas and they will get notifications about where the next rocket is going to hit. If it’s not too close to their direction they stay where they are but when it’s aimed towards them then they have to find shelter. This is all still going on.”
Olya’s voice doesn’t crack and the conviction doesn’t waver, but the emotional toll is clear.
“That’s what I mean,” Webster says, extending his hand across the table to his fiancée. “That’s why there is that feeling of guilt there.
“So, yeah, Sunday will be great and I’ll be doing all I can to win, but I know the time is right to finish.”
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Dave Webster Derry City Drogheda United FAI Cup final League of Ireland Soccer