Thirteen Streets, No Turning

There was a time when a decade at the top felt like a lifetime. You'd win a couple, lose one, win another, and the years would roll by with a bit of give in them. What we're watching now, across the water, has no give in it at all. Thirteen seasons, thirteen titles, and nobody has yet found the trick of prising the thing loose.

A word on what that means. A league is a long conversation, and the side that keeps winning it is the side that keeps answering every question the season asks. Everyone else gets a summer to plan, a winter to regroup, a fresh idea in August. Shamrock Rovers have heard them all and kept the trophy where it lives.

So let's talk about the men who put the ball in the net, because a run like this is built on goals, and the goals belong to people.

Four Names on the Scoresheet

James McDonnell leads the way with 109 goals across those seasons, and there's a figure that tells you how the whole thing worked — not a flash of brilliance here and there, but a steady hand on the rudder year after year. Ronnie Topcu isn't far off with 92, and when your second name is nearly matching your first, defenders don't get a night off.

Matthew Fletcher's 81 and Jake Marks's 52 make up the rest of the picture. Four scorers, four different ways of hurting you, and between them the arithmetic of a decade and a bit. You don't need me to add it up. You can feel it.

The thing about a long run is that it stops being about any one season. The supporters stop asking whether they'll win it and start asking by how much. The players carry a weight that isn't in the coaching manual — the knowledge that a bad afternoon is a story, because everyone else in the country is watching for the crack.

Still Going

The notebook says this one is still going, and that's the important part. Thirteen titles from 2050 to 2062, and the latest was won in 2062. No full stop. No gentle fade. The run is alive, and that means the next chapter hasn't been written, which is the most exciting place for any football club to be.

And it isn't happening in isolation. The Irish Senior Challenge Cup has gone their way twenty-one years running, from 2042 to 2062, with the latest won in 2062. The President's Cup, fifteen in a row from 2049 to 2063, the latest won in 2063. Whatever the competition, whatever the format, the answer keeps coming back the same. You can call it dominance if you like. I'd call it a habit nobody can break.

Not every run lasts forever, mind. There was a Leinster Senior Cup sequence that ran from 2027/28 to 2032/33 and then ended, and older supporters will tell you about the Leinster Presidents Cup four-in-a-row that stopped in 1988, and the Shield run that finished in 1966. Runs end. That's the nature of them. Which is exactly why you should enjoy this one while it's still breathing.

The View from the Bar

I spent my career as a centre-half, which means I spent it watching other people score and trying to stop them. So I've a soft spot for the underdog, and I'll admit that thirteen in a row is the sort of thing that makes the rest of the league feel like extras in somebody else's film. But there's no malice in admiring it. Greatness is rare, and when it turns up on your doorstep and stays for thirteen years, you might as well put the kettle on and watch.

Someone, somewhere, is plotting to knock them off. That's the game. And when it happens — if it happens — it'll be a story worth telling. Until then, the run goes on, and the rest of us keep watching to see how long a good thing can last.