The record attendance and raucous atmosphere at Sunday's Sports Direct FAI Cup final shows the potential for growth within Irish domestic football, according to three-time former cup winner Graham Gartland.
St Patrick's Athletic got their hands on the trophy for the second time in three years with both the Inchicore club's fans and the Bohemians support flocking to the Aviva Stadium to make up 43,881 attendance.
It marks the latest apogee of an upward trend from recent finals with the previous two attracting 32,412 and 37,126 respectively.
Ex-Drogheda United, Longford Town and Shamrock Rovers defender Gartland, who was on co-commentary duty for the live RTÉ coverage of the final, was impressed by the vibrancy and colour within the Lansdowne Road venue on Sunday and pointed to how both clubs and organisers got their finger on the collective pulses in the weeks running up to it.
"It was amazing I have to say. It was thoroughly enjoyable to be part of it in terms of doing the commentary," he told the RTÉ Soccer Podcast.
"The day belonged to St Pat's. I think it's a great advertisement for the league. It's a real barometer of where this could go if the right people get behind it and the infrastructure comes.
"Both clubs have really engaged in their communities which is massive and we saw that with the sell-out.
"I think it's attracting a lot of neutral fans as well, like kids that play at National League level. I saw a lot of them that were at the game.
"I'd say everyone in Inchicore was at it. It was just a fantastic occasion and it's probably up there as one of the best occasions the league has ever had with a record attendance.
"I think the build-up to it was brilliant. Full credit maybe to the FAI and the people behind it. The flags along the quays for both teams, there were billboards... I'd never seen billboards for games and I always used to say, 'why don't they have billboards for Cork games or advertise things in Derry' and things like that for the area and everything about it was brilliant. It was really, really well done."
Former Saints player and manager Johnny McDonnell was also speaking on the podcast and detailed how the Dart line on the way to the game was packed in an unprecedented way on a cup final day.
Witnessing that evoked a similar view to Gartland about how the interest levels can be tapped into to spark a domestic football industry.
"For me yesterday, it was the industry that we've talked about all the time, that the industry sometimes is not here," he said.
"Yesterday was the product, it was the industry. People are going to look at that game all over Europe and say, 'Wow, did you see the cup final in Ireland? Did you see the atmosphere?'
"It was proper, it was done proper. I travelled over from the northside. There weren't enough Darts. I didn't know Bohs had that many fans. I think Bohs probably had more fans at the game than Pat's and they made brilliant noise."
In the full podcast, Gartland and McDonnell analysed how Pat's got the better of Bohs and why Jon Daly's Saints are better primed to build on this success in comparison to when they won the cup final two years ago.
Listen to the RTÉ Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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