My dad died last year. Cancer. He was diagnosed in May, he was dead by August. Those three months were punctuated by tear-stained trips back home and awkward phone calls early each morning. “Just wanted to let you know I am still alive,” he would say. You could almost hear him trying to put a smile on a brave face. But what do you say in that situation? How are you? How do you feel today? Has the doctor been in? Does he think the chemo is working? Do you think the chemo is working? It’s hard and many fall silent. Luckily we always had football – and we always had Liam Coyle.

Liam Coyle may sound like a local butcher, the place where your mother used to buy the good meat when the relatives came over, but he is one of the greatest players you have probably never heard of. For those of us who followed Derry City, he was a footballing god amongst leaden-footed mortals. He was strong, his touch was silken and, on the mud-plagued pitches of the oft-drab League of Ireland, his skills shone with the force of a trillion watts. He was a brilliant goalscorer, too, from any angle, from any range, from any part of his body. To top it all off, he also had this preternatural ability to read the game and see moves and moves ahead, like a Russian super grandmaster.

Born and raised in the Bogside of Derry – like my dad – but signed from Finn Harps, he came on to the City scene in what is arguably the club’s greatest side, the treble winners of the 1988-89 season. Aged 20, he announced himself to the league with a hat-trick on his debut against Cobh Ramblers after coming on as a substitute when Noel Larkin’s hamstring gave in. The scouts from Manchester United, Celtic, Rangers, Benfica and Bordeaux came over to see him play. He even earned an international cap for Northern Ireland against Chile at Windsor Park, much to the annoyance of many home fans, who baited him with anti-nationalist chants. Coyle ignored them and kept on performing – but only for so long.

A serious knee injury put an end to those scouting trips and Coyle was told by doctors he would never play football again. He was forced to retire at the end of the 1989-90 season and a few weeks short of his 22nd birthday, Derry played a testimonial game for him against Newcastle. The black and white photos show him wiping away tears as a packed Brandywell rises to applaud him. His uncle had died that morning and he had not wanted to play until his mother forced him to. Things would get worse. He swapped football for alcohol and became an increasingly difficult person. “I sank into a deep depression,” he would write years later. “I began to drink heavily and put on a lot of weight. By the end of the year I had driven my mother to distraction and was seeing a doctor about depression.”

When his money petered ran out he started to run again and “started to get an interest in life again”. There was a one-game comeback for Coleraine and then a visit to a faith healer in Creggan called Betty, who had a special interest in Padre Pio. Coyle claims that visit helped cure him. He strapped up his knee and togged out for Omagh. By 1993 he was back in the kit of the Candystripes.

Coyle scored plenty of times for Derry throughout the years but there was one that Dad and I would always come back to when the summer conversations stalled. That goal happened at the end of the 1994-95 campaign. On the final day of the season, three teams could still take the title: Derry, Dundalk and Shelbourne. Dundalk and Shelbourne were at home to Galway and St Patrick’s Athletic while Derry had to travel to Athlone, a team already assigned a place in the relegation play-off and a team they had already beaten that season. Derry were top of the table – Dundalk had not been first all season but went into the game against Galway having won six in a row – and had a better goal advantage over the others. “In my own mind, I could not see Derry getting anything but a win in Athlone at St Mel’s Park,” said the former Dundalk midfielder Tom McNulty. “They were a top team and I think everyone thought Derry would win the title.” The Football Association of Ireland certainly did. They brought the league trophy to Athlone. Dad bundled the old scarves, the Round the Horne tapes and myself, and my then best friend, Rob, into the car. We would join them for the expected celebrations.

We were not the only ones awaiting a certain win. Shane Curran, the Athlone goalkeeper, drove to the ground in his old car only to see Derry arrive “in all their pomp and glory on a lovely bus, their players looking splendid in their shiny suits”. On his journey to the dressing room he spied something else. “Walking in with my team-mate Barry Murphy, we noticed [musician and an ex-president of the club] Phil Coulter stepping off the team bus with a couple of champagne bottles tucked under his arms. I remember Barry turning to me and saying ‘Jaysus, Shane, they’re planning a bit of party here!’” Coyle, for his part, says there was nothing special about Derry’s preparations and that they turned up for the game in the same way they had for every other away one that season. A decent champagne can last for a couple of years before it goes off but it took only 15 seconds for Athlone to send Derry’s flat.

Coyle kicked off and the ball made its way back towards the Derry goal. The left-back, Paul McLoughlin, looked to hack it clear it but Donal Golden, a student at the local regional college, charged it down and swept it past Dermot O’Neill from 20 yards out, with the help of a deflection of another defender, Stuart Gauld. Jaws dropped and a boisterous crowd, swollen with Derry supporters, piped down immediately. This was not how it was supposed to be. Hadn’t Athlone read the script? Didn’t they know they were to roll over and let Derry tickle their belly before City ruthlessly plunged a knife into them and made off with the title. “The nerves really kicked in for a few boys then,” says Coyle. For the fans, too, although they reassured themselves that there was plenty of time left for City to draw level. Fifteen minutes later, Derry did just that. Big games, big players, big Liam.

Reading the old reports of the match, what sticks in the craw is just how unremarkable the goal seemed to the journalists at the time. Writing in the Irish Times, Peter Byrne describes it as “superb” but his piece swiftly moves on to the rest of the match. Others brush over it just as quickly. “We would never have got any plaudits off the Dublin press,” says Coyle. For Dad and I, it was the goal from the player. Apropos of nothing, we could turn to each other and say: “Remember that Coyle goal?” and the other would smile. Or if watching a match together and some player beat all 11 opponents on the other side by juggling the ball on his head and shoulders before bicycle-kicking it from his own 18-yard box into the net, we would say: “Yeah, it was good but that Coyle one was better.”

At that stage of the season, Derry had gotten into the habit of playing big games and Coyle had gotten into the habit of performing at his peak. “I’d had a really good year. I was playing well and there was a lot of things coming off for me that wouldn’t normally come off, stuff that you would hesitate to do when you have a wee doubt in your mind or if you’re afraid … but at that stage there was no fear in me” – much to his surprise, his efforts that season would later be recognised by the football writers of Ireland, who made him their player of the year. It was that form and the confidence it brought with it that dragged Derry back into the game in some style.

With the pressure already on, Derry won a throw on the left-hand side in the Athlone half. McLoughlin took it and found the feet of Coyle. He was being marked by the Athlone centre-half, Barry Murphy. “He was just one of them centre-halves who punched and kicked and didn’t want to play. He just wanted to annoy you,” says Coyle. Murphy, however, was always afraid of getting too tight to Coyle as he knew the striker had the pace, power and skill to turn him and leave his keeper exposed. This time Murphy showed Coyle inside and it opened up for him 35 yards out. “As I came in, I thought ‘I am just going to have a crack here’ and as soon as it left my boot I knew it was in. I remember it curling and sailing into the top corner.” Curran dived but did not stand a chance. Coyle was mobbed by his team-mates and even the match official was suitably impressed. “I think it might have been Dick O’Hanlon who was refereeing the match and he turned around to me and said: ‘You bollock, you knew that was in as soon as you hit it.’”

Coyle may been having one of his best seasons but it was still a wondrous strike, especially with our view from right behind him. It was as powerful as a brown bear and packed with as much beauty as a Botticelli. Like when your mum or dad lets go of the saddle for the first time and you realise you are doing it all yourself or that first kiss at the disco, it is one of those childhood moments that still seem so vivid. McLoughlin does not remember the first 20 minutes of that game but Coyle does and, given the tension and the situation – it was late April, a grey day and St Mel’s was so tight fans could hear the players think – believes it was the best goal he has scored. “When you score a goal on a good pitch you can always say, ‘right, that’s great,’ but when you go to one on a rainy day and the team is kicking you all over the place and you curl one in from 35 yards, you look back at it and say: ‘yeah, that probably was my best goal,’” In the pub the day after the match, Gauld would agree. “I remember,” says Coyle, “him saying to me: ‘It was a good enough goal to win any league’”.

With the scores level, Derry laid siege to the opposition’s goal. “It was like the Alamo from that point on,” said Curran, who swiftly transformed from a common-or-garden variety goalkeeper into the Lev Yashin of Athlone. He leaped across his line to pull off to save from Pascal Vaudequin deep into the first half before denying an effort from Kyle Maloney on the stroke of half-time. Nine minutes into the second half he sent the Derry fans into a state of shock. Athlone’s Ray McLaughlin was adjudged to have handled the ball in the box. What had actually happened was that Coyle had tripped the defender, who subsequently grabbed the ball thinking it was going to be a free-kick only to hear the referee blow for a penalty. As Gauld placed the ball and stepped up to take it we all cheered as if we had won the game. He had only missed one in 38 attempts and Byrne, quite rightly, deemed him “the most skilled penalty taker I have known in Irish football”. He struck his effort to the right but Curran guessed correctly and parried the ball to safety. “I knew then it wasn’t going to be our day,” says Coyle. He was right.

Athlone held on and two goals within the final 15 minutes at Oriel Park meant the title went to Dundalk; Shelbourne, for their part, could only manage a draw with St Pat’s. Dad spent the silent and awkward journey home muttering to himself, blaming the referee or the FAI for bringing the trophy to the ground in the first place. It would take him a while to get over this one.

Back in the Derry dressing room, a distraught Gauld cried and through the paper-thin walls the Athlone players could be heard celebrating stopping Derry in their title tracks. “I think if we had won the league that day with that goal it would’ve been talked about more than it is,” says Coyle when asked if people still come up to him to ask about it.

“But because we didn’t win, people talk about Gauld’s penalty miss more than my goal.” Some people do. Not all.