IT’S funny the things you remember about Christmas morning and the Steel & Sons Cup final at Seaview.
At half-time, six or seven brave souls would carry what resembled a giant-sized bed sheet around the perimeter of the pitch inviting the crowd to toss their loose change into it.
Looking back, it was the weirdest and most hazardous way of trying to gather up a few pounds for charity. But this was a different time, long before Just Giving Pages on social media and where the phrase 'health & safety' hadn’t been invented.
I’m sure some of those Co Antrim FA officers were split open on occasion by a few wayward coins as copper and silver rained down on this slow-moving and increasingly heavy bed sheet.
The Steel Cup final on Christmas morning is something of a pilgrimage for so many junior and intermediate football supporters – a game that would see just as many neutrals push through the ground’s turnstiles as followers of the competing teams.
A cold and nervous November night in Ballyskeagh in 1989: A Steel Cup semi-final between Cromac Albion and Glentoran II.
Cromac Albion had reached the Holy Grail in 1978 after beating Ballyclare Comrades after a replay.
In 1989, my father – Gerry Crossan – was manager of Cromac and drew players from every corner of Belfast.
Maybe it was because he was manager but I thought - and still believe - they were a special football team.
At the start of each season Cromac Albion had two goals: to win the Amateur League Division 1A and reach a Steel & Sons Cup final.
They achieved back-to-back Division 1A titles in the mid-80s, but the Steel Cup eluded them.
Under clear black skies and watching from the crumbling concrete terrace of Ballyskeagh, Glentoran striker Gary Hillis hit two late goals to dump Cromac out of the Steel Cup.
Semi-final defeats are tough. Steel Cup semi-final defeats are tougher again.
The following month, on Christmas Day, the star-studded ‘Wee’ Glens would go on to beat East Belfast 4-1 in the final, the handiest victory you could ever imagine.
What might have been for Cromac...
It proved to be one of Cromac's last rages against the dying light because a season later the club disbanded.
Like so many other supporters and scorned lovers of intermediate football, I attended the Steel Cup final most years after 1989.
Every Christmas morning, kick-off 10.45, burgers and onions, cigarette smoke and stale beer scenting the cool morning air.
Comber Rec, Cliftonville Olympic, Chimney Corner, Dundela, Linfield Swifts, the Welders, Kilmore Rec.
Kings of Steel.
And there was always a weird hush among the supporters that packed out the Shore Road ground.
You could hear every manager’s instruction echo around the ground, every defender’s shout and even the thud of the ball when it hit the back of the net.
Mervyn Bell was a gentleman, too softly spoken, I thought, to be a ridiculously successful football manager.
And yet, he guided Dundela to an incredible six Steel Cup victories during his legendary reign as Wilgar Park boss.
Some players would give their right arm to experience playing on Christmas morning at Seaview and never did, while some Dundela players got to play in four and five finals.
When Dundela turned up on Christmas morning they rarely lost a final. Bell, who sadly passed away at the age of 78 earlier this year, had the Midas touch.
Nobody managed the Steel Cup final nerves quite like Dundela.
I remember Dee Heron playing for Killyleagh in the mid-to-late 1980s and some of the battles that great Co Down side shared with Cromac Albion as they eagerly contested the bragging rights for Division 1A.
Heron, a no-nonsense midfielder, was a force of nature on the pitch and later proved to have the managerial touch in the Killyleagh dug-out.
They performed heroically to see off a fancied Chimney Corner side in the 2002 Steel final before Paddy Kelly’s hugely talented Donegal Celtic team denied them in the decider the following year.
Akin to horse-racing’s Grand National, there was the odd outsider that would break out of the pack and upset the favourites.
Underdogs Brantwood, memorably, tasted Steel Cup glory in 2006 denying red-hot favourites H&W Welders in an extra-time thriller.
Four years later, the Welders would come back and win the cup, beating Knockbreda 3-1 – a fitting tribute to long-serving club member Fred Magee.
The ageless Steel & Sons Cup is like a religion that has lost none of its evangelical allure over the years.
It’s a cup competition like no other.
On Christmas morning, Newington and Linfield Swifts will contest this season’s Steel & Sons Cup final.
It’s a remarkable quirk of fate that the two sides faced one other in the 2017 and 2019 deciders, winning one apiece.
After more than 40 years, Newington are still fighting the good fight, winning football matches and representing all of north Belfast as best they can.
For some players, it will be their third time sampling that magical, surreal feeling of playing in a Steel Cup final.
For others, it will be their first.
The Co Antrim FA officers no longer carry a giant-sized bed sheet around the ground at half-time, but everything else looks, feels and smells the same come quarter-to-eleven on Christmas morning at Seaview.
The burgers, onions, cigarette smoke and stale beer wafting through the stands, nerves you can almost touch and where glory awaits the brave.
Always the brave...
