As Leicester City celebrate an unexpected English Premier League title, did you know they had connections with the League of Ireland's Cork City at one time?
Ruairi O'Hagan of Red FM joined Oisin Langan and Richie McCormack on this week's Newstalk Airtricity League podcast to reminisce about the time Cork and Leicester were joined in a loose form of footballing matrimony.
"What happened was back in the year 2000, a link-up was proposed between Leicester City and Cork City which to the average Cork City fan - which was me at the time - just saw that as Leicester coming in, cherry-picking our best players and giving us pittance, patting us on the head and saying 'thanks for that lads, sure aren't ye great' and that's essentially what happened," O'Hagan explains, while also giving background on ex-Cork boss Colin Murphy's role in the link-up during his one-game spell in charge.
Crystal Palace centre-back Damien Delaney, who went on to win nine Ireland caps but won't be going to Euro 2016, was one player to make the switch from his hometown Cork City to Leicester in 2000.
"[Murphy] left the job just out of nowhere but taking Damien Delaney with him," said O'Hagan of Murphy who took up a football co-ordinator role with Leicester.
"Damien Delaney was a massive prospect at the time and a big, strong centre-half. He was 18, 19 at the time and really, really highly rated. You could see he was going to go cross-channel eventually, but ended going off with Colin Murphy for practically nothing and the rest as they say is history."
O'Hagan also spoke about the protests, he was involved in, that took place in the aftermath. As he went on to explain, the link-up with Leicester had no tangible benefit for Cork City, did not last long and fortunately Delaney was the only major move that transpired.
On this week's podcast, our own resident Sligo Rovers fan Daniel Kelly talked about the club's form this season, while The42's Ben Blake also joined the lads to talk about the latest results across the league. Listen to the full show on the player below or stream on iTunes:
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