Tremendous story here from Emmet Malone in the Irish Times as two brothers from Cabra, James and Thomas Mohan, aged 11 and 10, lead out the Cypriot side APOEL Nicosia in their Europa League game against Eintract Frankfurt last night.
Emmet, as we all know, is an APOEL hero since he drew their name out of the hat in the draw to decide who would replace the barred Galatasaray in the Europa League.
The club and its fans were overcome with gratitude for this and invited Emmet and his family over for a game. However, Emmet reckoned this didn't feel right and instead used his status as a folk hero for the Cypriot club to send over two young lads and their mother on "the holiday to remember."
I emailed a handful of organisations looking for likely candidates and Heart Children Ireland, which I knew of since June when Damien Duff, whose son Woody was born with a congenital heart defect, did an event for them, got straight back to me.
They suggested James, who loves football but can’t play much because of his a condition that may eventually require a transplant. James, his brother and his Mum headed off to Cyprus last Sunday.
They attended training this week and the pre-match press conference when manager Paolo Sergio and his players made them extremely welcome and last night they were guests of honour at the game.
“They’ve been living a dream,” says Brenda. “I don’t think it could get any better than this for them. The club have been wonderful, they’ve bent over backwards for us and the boys have had a really great time.”
