After another fractious season, Cork City are seeking to become the first club to combine FAI Cup glory with relegation from the top flight since Dundalk in 2002.
It would be a fifth title for Cork in their current guise, though a 13th for the city overall, if you group together the various entities that have represented Cork football since the foundation of the State.
The city has had more clubs than Tiger Woods, as people are wont to say, and they have gone through almost the entire rolodex of standard football club monikers - United (twice), Celtic, Hibernians, City (twice).
The initial club was comprised of workers from the Ford Motor company in the city and won the Cup as Fordsons in 1926, beating Shamrock Rovers in the final. This was common at the time, with St James's Gate, the inaugural Cup winners and an LOI regular until the mid-1990s, being formed by workers at the Guinness brewery, while Jacobs FC were also founder members of the League of Ireland.
After rebranding as Cork FC, they won another Cup in 1934. Their successor club Cork United dominated the league in the first half of the 1940s - the Second World War was a glorious time for Cork sport - winning a couple of FAI Cups in 1941 and 1947. The latter was won entirely with Cork-born players and included future Manchester United manager Frank O'Farrell at the antiquated position of 'wing-half'.
Given their short existence, Cork United surely have the greatest strike-rate of any team in the history of the League of Ireland, winning five league titles out of nine entered. This came at the cost of a financial loss in every year of their existence and they were wound up in 1948.
They were swiftly succeeded by Cork Athletic, who became the city's standard bearers for the next decade. However, they were joined by Evergreen United - subsequently to rebrand as Cork Celtic - and this yielded the first and only all-Cork FAI Cup final in 1953, which was won by Athletic.
Athletic suffered the indignity of losing a 2-0 lead to Shamrock Rovers in the final 10 minutes of the 1956 FAI Cup final - an episode gleefully recalled by RTÉ's rather partisan radio commentator Philip Greene in a 1987 interview on the Late Late Show, two days before the Hoops secured the double for the last time.
Though born beside Dalymount, Greene was well known to be a rabid Shamrock Rovers fan, a leaning which was tolerated with greater generosity back then than it might be in the present era (#NoSocialMediaInThemDays). Greene's alleged lapses in impartiality passed into League of Ireland folklore and became a staple of broadcasting - not unlike 'Colemanballs' across the water.
Greene recounted how one of the Athletic directors nipped out early to purchase some celebratory champagne ahead of the 7pm Sunday closing time (yes, it was a truly repressive era). By the time he got back, everything was in ashes and Greene noted that "to his eternal credit, he gave the champagne to his Hoops". He'd have been as well to ask for an invoice. Athletic were ejected from the league the following year due to their dismal financial position.
Evergreen's arrival in the league saw Turner's Cross used as a League of Ireland ground for the first time - Athletic continued to play at the Mardyke as all previous Cork LOI clubs had done.
Around this time, the Ancient Order of Hibernians purchased Flower Lodge. AOH FC won the FAI Intermediate Cup in 1952 and rebranded as Cork Hibernians when they replaced Cork Athletic in the league in 1957.
The 60s were a barren one in trophy terms for the two Cork clubs, though both at least remained a going concern for the duration of the decade.
The early 70s was a giddy time for Cork football. Hibs, under the management of the former Arsenal defender Dave Bacuzzi, won the city's first league title in 20 years in 1971, followed by back-to-back Cups in '72 and '73, Miah Dennehy famously becoming the first player to score a Cup final hat-trick in the former.
Future All-Ireland winning captain Dinny Allen was Man of the Match for Cork Hibs in the 1973 Cup final replay, while Jimmy Barry Murphy also played for Cork Celtic for a time. It's a well known feature of Cork sport in the 70s that their top 'ballers' played everything.
Celtic got in on the act, the Turner's Cross club winning their sole league title in 1973-74, helped greatly by Chelsea's long-time top goalscorer Bobby Tambling, who abruptly quit Crystal Palace at the age of 32 to become a Jehovah's Witness missionary in Cork. In addition to his evangelical duties, he formed a cracking partnership up front with Alfie Hale, their goals powering Celtic to their only major trophy.
Things took a sour turn by the end of that decade. The trophies dried up and both clubs engaged in tawdry and ill-advised gimmicks to keep interest alive.
Hibs forked out £600 per game on an increasingly dissolute Rodney Marsh, who had dirtied his copy book in England and was soon to head Stateside. Celtic roped in George Best for a few games in 1975-76. The fifth Beatle was now deep into his drinking years and badly out of shape. He failed to impress in three appearances and went AWOL ahead of his fourth game.
Hibernians were wound up amid financial problems ahead of the 1976-77 season and replaced by the bizarrely named Cork Alberts - previously Albert Rovers.
Amid issues with Turner's Cross and bad relations with other clubs, Celtic were expelled from the league in '79, with Shamrock Rovers' Louis Kilcoyne and Finn Harps' Fran Fields leading the charge for their expulsion. Cork Alberts' delegate John O'Riordan observed at the same meeting that soccer in Cork was at its lowest ebb and the city could barely support one League of Ireland club, let alone two. They were replaced by UCD.
Cork United - previously Alberts - were the latest entity to go bankrupt in 1982 and Cork had no representative in the League of Ireland for the 1982-83 and 1983-84 seasons.
League of Ireland returned to the city ahead of the 1984-85 season, with Cork City returning, with Tambling installed as their first manager. Amid many ups and downs, they have remained a fixture of the league ever since.
The question of whether a continuity is assumed between the various Cork LOI representatives is an interesting one.
In a feature on the BBC's 'Standing Room Only', filmed during the three-way play-off for the 1993 Premier Division title, Sultans of Ping FC drummer Morty McCarthy was interviewed about his love of Cork City.
Before hopping on the bus for the marathon trip to Dalymount, McCarthy remarked that "we're hoping to win the league, first time since '74", harking back to the Cork Celtic triumph of that season and clearly assuming a commonality between them.
Noel O'Mahony, the manager who led City to the long-awaited title that summer, had previously played as a Cork defender on the Cork Hibs championship-winning team of 1971.
City have added four FAI Cup victories to the ledger in their relatively long assistance. Under Dave Barry's management, they won the city's first Cup in a quarter of a century in 1998. Dave Coughlan's headed winner in the replay piled more misery on Shelbourne, who lost the league on the final day with a defeat at Dundalk.
They won it again nine years later during the somewhat forgotten RDS years, beating Longford Town 1-0 in what turned out to be Damien Richardson's final game as manager.
They weathered more financial turmoil at the turn of the decade, with the supporters trust FORAS (Friends of the Rebel Army) rescuing the club in 2010.
Then came another boom period in the second half of the 2010s, the John Caulfield era yielding a league title and two Cup victories, including the city's first double since Cork Athletic in 1951 and its third in total.
Cork's complicated and often chaotic history in the League of Ireland does showcase the historic difficulties of running clubs outside the capital - even in the second biggest city in the State.
Their latest Cup final appearance comes amid a particularly fraught time, with City continuing to yo-yo between the divisions and the fans at loggerheads with the owner Dermot Usher.
The televised semi-final was delayed as stewards worked overtime to remove scores of toilet rolls from the pitch in front of the Shed End, which were pegged onto the pitch in protest at the ownership. City proceeded to smash St Patrick's Athletic 3-0 in one of their best performances of the season.
The upper echelons of the Premier Division table has taken on a more Dub-centric complexion than ever, with the bottom four places all occupied by clubs outside the capital.
Cork, under Ger Nash, did enjoy an uptick in form and competitiveness near the end of the season, best exemplified by the last-four demolition of Pat's.
Across the continent, 2025 has been a year of Cup final shocks and Cork need that to continue if they're to claim the city's 13th crown.
Watch the Sports Direct FAI Cup final, Shamrock Rovers v Cork City, on Sunday from 2pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on the RTÉ News App and on rte.ie/sport. Listen to live commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1.
