That season in the old Second Division, when he was 10-years-old, dressed in tartan flares and listening to The Bay City Rollers, was when he fell in love with United.
He remembers his first away trip, getting the No82 out to Oldham, watching the rumble on the street as he waited for the bus home, singing ‘We’re all part of Doc’s army’ on the way back.
He remembers the names of the people on his road. They, the Fagans from Westmeath, lived in the end house of Norton Street, one of those terraced rows that’d remind you of Coronation Street.
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The Scullys were there, too, and the Gilmartins, the Kellys, the Finnegans and the Cooneys. Down the alleyway was this young fella, Johnny Marr, who always had a guitar in his hand and a dream in his head.
This other kid, Steven Patrick Morrissey, went to the same school as the Fagans, but he was two years older and a bit quieter. Together they became The Smiths - for a time music's biggest band.
But it was another fella, a Sheridan, who he knew better because the pair of them kicked a ball around.
And now on this Easter weekend in 1993, now that he was a 29-year-old man, standing on the Stretford End, Richie Fagan watched his former school pal line up to take a penalty for Sheffield Wednesday and puncture his dream.
When you think of Manchester United now, your mind may wander towards its revitalised team, chasing a cup double. Or perhaps it is to the boardroom drama, revolving around the hateful Glazers.
You may think of their share price, be vaguely aware of the club’s value, reported to be €4.7 billion, be conscious of the financial motivation behind their summer tours to Asia, mindful that the words global brand are never far away from any description.
But in 1993 everything felt different.
Richie Fagan, now a grandfather at 59, laughs when we tease him about being a glory hunter, because there is a context where this conversation takes place.
We walk as we talk, while he lines the touchline of a small, rural club in Streete, county Westmeath, where he serves as chairperson, first-team manager, youth team manager and groundsman.
“The only difference between here (Inny FC, his local club) and Manchester United, is that they get 73,000 more people at their home games,” he says, laughing. “United, like Inny, is a community. Certainly it was when I grew up.”
He was putting up the nets for an Under 12 semi-final on Thursday night when he reminisced about away days, one at Norwich where the fans fell through the roof of the stand, another at Oxford United, Alex Ferguson’s first game, when he stayed at a cousin's house that overlooked the Manor Ground.
He remembers his dad walking him across Hollard Park from their home, his dismay when Charlton and Law grew old, and Best grew bold, the hope when Tommy Docherty rebuilt the team, the hope struggling families got from the Manchester United Development Association.
“The money raised from that (grouping) went to help inner city schools,” he says, before recalling other stories, getting Dave Sexton, Docherty’s successor, to sign the back of his Maths copy, going to every cup final from 1977 to 1999, the latter year being the summer he relocated home to Westmeath.
Names and places. Sexton was a ‘lovely man’, Busby ‘a quiet one, he studied people’. “Atko had charisma, Fergie a presence. It didn’t seem that big a deal meeting them because it was my local club. It took 15 minutes to walk there. Old Trafford was closer to my house in Manchester than Streete (Inny FC’s home) is to my where I live now.
“This might sound mad to you but United was as much of a local club to us as Inny is. Dad worked there once (as Busby’s minder for the 1983 FA Cup final replay), Marie (his wife) worked there. I helped do the concrete at the Stretford End.”
Now, on this day in 1993, he was standing on the Stretford End, watching Sheridan, his old pal score.
It was Easter Saturday. Another league title seemed to be slipping away.
**
Across the Irish Sea, Francis Carroll was moving into his new home, listening to that Sheffield Wednesday game on the radio when Sheridan scored, cursing at the top of his voice.
His wedding day was coming up and his wife-to-be was worried what their new neighbours would think by this unexpected shouting and roaring at 4.30pm on a Saturday afternoon.
But there was little chance of him staying quiet, not just because this was the day Steve Bruce scored a late equaliser and an even later winner, but also because of who he was and what he was.
His first trip to Old Trafford was in 1972, an arduous trek by boat and coach, an even harder day watching United lose 1-0 to Leeds.
Darker days followed but like Fagan he kept going along, sticking to his little rituals as he grew older, calling into see the Phoenix family, old neighbours from Finglas who had moved to Chester Road, near Old Trafford.
He too had known Busby, a family friend, and he too had inherited his love of the club from his father, who grew up on Attracta Road in Cabra, a contemporary of Liam Whelan, the Busby Babe.
Like Fagan, he was drawn to the community aspect of the club as much as the football side of things, events shaped around United’s fixtures, like the rescheduling of his son’s confirmation dinner so they could watch the 2007 FA Cup final.
Unlike Fagan's 15-minute stroll, getting to Old Trafford for Carroll, and thousands of United Irishmen like him, was costly and time consuming. Yet he has done it every year since 1972 because it was never about winning, it was always about belonging.
The adrenaline, the noise, the colour, the songs. He loved all that.
But most of all, he loved the kit Busby once gave him which he has in a frame at home; loved the United jerseys his parents got him and his brother each Christmas, loved the fact this was his birthright.
But at 31, he’d never seen them win a league, and then one day, a week before they did, word came through. His brother had secured two tickets for the Monday night game against Blackburn, which ended up being the match when the trophy was presented.
**
AS NIGHT FELL and the Old Trafford floodlights disappeared from view, Francis Carroll thought less about the seven-hour trip ahead and more about the 21-year journey he’d just left behind.
This was 1993, the season that dragged English football away from the desperate, hooligan-filled era of the 80s, hurling it towards the future, fuelled by money and ambition.
For Carroll, a Dubliner from Finglas, the night was personal. “You know the saying,” he laughs, “that you can change your family, you can change your religion, but you can’t change your football club. Well, that’s me and United.”
It had been a long trek, through the abyss of the early 70s, underneath the shadow of rivals Liverpool, watching bad players like Ralph Milne come and go, seeing titles slip away in 1980, 1986 and 1992.
“After Leeds pipped us in ‘92, I thought the chance to win it (the league) had gone forever,” says Carroll.
All this went through his head as he journeyed back to Hollyhead from Manchester on this Tuesday morning, as the car he shared with three fellow United fans bypassed one shitty town after another.
The club, the journey. The car, the road.
He’d left home the morning before to catch the 6am ferry out of Dublin, hitting the road at Hollyhead for a three hour trek to Manchester, then watching his team beat Blackburn Rovers to claim their first championship since 1967.
It was 5am when the boat moved towards Dublin Port, 24 hours after he’d woken. The sun was coming up, the morning after Manchester United’s first league title in 26 years. This really was a new dawn.
**
That Blackburn game drew the season’s largest crowd, 40,000. These days the capacity is nearly twice that, at 73,900.
These days every second conversation around football has words like billionaires, financial fair play, accountancy and conglomerates in the sentences.
But that’s not how Fagan or Carroll or any Irish Manchester United supporter remembers 1992/93.
Everything seemed different that year. The First Division was now the Premier League. More games than ever were being broadcast. Dilapidated grounds were being rebuilt. Managers were casting the net beyond traditional shores, the Premier League populated by a new breed of player, the most exciting one being a Frenchman, Eric Cantona.
“But United was still a community based club,” says Fagan. “You still saw the same old faces. Look, our road (in Manchester) was Irish. United was an Irish club. It just had an English address.”
After 1993 they became a global entity, the ground getting bigger, the tickets more expensive. They even started serving prawn sandwiches.
Life changed too. Fagan and Carroll became fathers.
Their kids grew up seeing their team win titles on a regular basis but for Carroll, 1992/93 remains the greatest year, the fulfilment of something special. For Fagan, that season was fun but not as much craic as the 1974/75 year under Doc.
“For me, United was always a great day out," Fagan says. "I loved the 70s and 80s as much as the 90s and the 2000s. Most of all I loved the fact it was just like here (Inny FC). It was a community club. It just so happened to be the biggest one in the world.”
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