Damien Duff’s desire to be hated was always the oddest thing about his spell in the League of Ireland. Here was this national icon, this universally adored figure in Irish sporting history, grouching around the place trying to convince you that nobody liked him and that he didn’t care. It was such a transparently silly conceit.
Okay, so he got up the noses of rival fans within the league but that’s part of the gig. Football fandom is one-eyed and irrational, gloriously so. In a way, his presence in the league was the ultimate test of the limits of opposition supporters’ capacity for unreasonableness. If you can bring yourself to hate Duffer, you must really love your club.
But in the broader world, the idea that everyone was out for Damien Duff was always self-evidently nuts. What was there to hate? Here was one of our greatest ever players testing himself in full view of everyone when he didn’t need to. A man of enormous personal wealth getting down and dirty in a league that had no ability to pay him what he was worth.
And doing it full-bore. Not as a figary, not as something to keep his hand in. Ask any of the Shelbourne players – even the ones he butted heads with over the course of his time there – the one fault they would never be able to find was with Duff’s commitment. He brought them from Division One to the Premier Division title, with a FAI Cup final appearance along the way. He did it by being all-in, all the time.
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So why was he always so annoyed by the whole experience? It’s not as if he was known during his playing career for being a particularly truculent sort. Beyond his mesmerising footwork and serving-dish crossing, Duff’s major characteristic in his time as a professional footballer seemed to be an ability to sleep. He was a dozer, not a fighter.
And yet, throughout his time in charge of Shelbourne, he seemed dead-set on picking fights all over the place. There was a logic of sorts to it at the start – if he wanted to torpedo the notion that he was an idle millionaire ex-player killing time between naps, there was no better way to go about it than obsessing over minor disagreements and getting a name for it in public.
When Shels won the league last year, it all looked to have been worth it. That night in the Brandywell last November, Duff and his team pulled off one of the great stories in Irish sport. The level of warmth towards him, towards his team, towards the league as a whole rose to a level unseen for decades in domestic football. All fights fought, all wars won.
And yet he came back this season as tetchy, cranky and out there as ever. The carry-on with the coat and the hat and the chair and the laptop behind the goal in Dalymount Park last month was mad enough. His gnomic response to it the following week, declaring it an embarrassing episode for the league, as if he had nothing to do with it, was madder still. It was as if he was intent on going to ever weirder and illogical lengths to make himself unpopular.
All the while, his team didn’t have the fizz or cohesion that had won them the title. They lost seven games in total in the 2024 campaign. They’ve lost six already in 2025 and there are still 14 games to go. Even in their season of glory, they were never particularly free-scoring but their concession stats have gone through the roof – 23 coughed up in 22 games so far this time around, compared to 27 in the whole of last season.
Along the way, Duff’s mood had noticeably curdled. Getting into endless ding-dongs with opposition managers like Stephen Bradley was, in retrospect, a bit of a red flag. Whatever about the push-and-pull of club rivalries, both men are very obviously sane, intelligent people. For Duff to take exception to the idea that Shamrock Rovers would play a song after beating them seems a bit like someone looking for a row and not really caring where they find one.
Ultimately, there’s no way of dressing this up – Duff’s departure is a blow to the league. He brought people in who were never interested before and they may or may not stay. What he himself does next will be fascinating. He’s an obvious pundit, if he ever lets himself come back to it. One way or the other, he’ll always be hard to hate.
Sorry, Duffer.
