This Sunday sees two of Ireland’s most talented teams do battle at the Aviva Stadium for the Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup. Sunday will mark the sides 4th consecutive time meeting, with Cork City currently edging on Cups collected having bested Dundalk for the last two years.
The competition has been contested 97 times since the first final was played between St. James’s Gate and Shamrock Rovers in the 1921-22 which James’s Gate won in a replay in Dalymount Park. Counting replays a total of 122 matches have been played with total goals scored of 176 (1.4 goals per game). In terms of attendance, a total of 2,314,080 individuals have attended the various games (18,968 per game). These include venues such as Dalymount Park, Tolka Park, Lansdowne Road, the RDS, Tallaght Stadium and, most recently, eight final in the revamped Aviva Stadium.
The figure below plots the attendances at these eight finals. As can be seen there was been a large fall in attendance from the 1st Final in the Aviva Stadium (2010) to the 2nd. The can be explained by the presence of Shamrock Rovers in the 2010 Final, the Dublin club's first since 2002.
Attendance from 2011 to 2017 has been relatively stable. The red line on the figure below indicated the previous three finals between Cork City and Dundalk. It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues on Sunday.