Reporting on Drogheda United for the past 26 years has been a rollercoaster ride - but I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Drogheda United weren’t known as the yo-yo club for nothing and I saw why they’d gained that tag in my first two years watching them in Division 1 of the then eircom League. They failed to win any of their first 13 games in the 2000/01 season and only avoided finishing bottom when they beat St Francis 1-0 on the final day in front of about 150 fans at United Park. Twelve months later they were First Division champions after memorably beating Dublin City 6-1 in their penultimate game and then sealing the title by edging out Sligo Rovers at The Showgrounds thanks to Shaun Gallagher’s solitary strike. I was there that day and have travelled the length and breadth of Ireland - and further afield - ever since to cover Drogheda games. I’ll come to the silverware and European adventures later on these pages, but there have been other memorable games for all sorts of reasons. I got a puncture a few miles out of Derry en route home from The Brandywell one winter’s night and got home at some ungodly hour. Another time the sat-nav directed me through the Sperrin Mountains as I travelled north and I had to check into a B&B after the match, so traumatic was the journey. A similar fate befell me going to Sligo one year when I somehow ended up on a farm track and again I resorted to a B&B after the match. In many ways, the final game of my journalistic career last Friday week summed up the past quarter-century reporting on the Drogs as they trailed 2-0 to Waterford, then staged an amazing comeback to lead 3-2 before conceding a worldie to finish the game with a point.