GOOD news for Derry is good news for him, so of course Martin O’Neill was delighted to see his county’s minors complete back-to-back All-Ireland titles this year.
“They did something we couldn’t do,” says O’Neill (who did win back-to-back European Cups) in a tone that suggests regret as opposed to jealousy.
He came close to setting the bar for the class of 2024. He wore the red and white in the 1969 All-Ireland minor final against Cork and the semi-final against Kerry the following year.
The list of what O’Neill achieved in sport as a player and manager with Nottingham Forest, Northern Ireland, Leicester City, Celtic and the Republic of Ireland (to name but a few) is longer than your arm but the ones that got away always hurt and some big fish – including an All-Ireland final and a Hogan Cup final – wriggled off his hook during his GAA days.
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Because of his talent, his time in the game was too short but it was action-packed while it lasted and decorated by points, goals, medals and controversy over ‘the Ban’ that overshadowed a MacRory Cup semi-final in 1971.
HIS Boy’s Own story began in the stanchly GAA family home he shared with his four brothers (he’s the middle one) and four sisters in Kilrea.
“My older brothers Gerry and Leo played for Kilrea and for Derry as well so I was pretty well entrenched in Gaelic Football from an early age,” he explains.
“I went to a lot of my brothers’ matches to support them and it was really exciting, it was great.
“At that time the FA Cup finals were the only games that were shown live on TV so from the time we got a television – about 1960 – I watched the Cup finals so I had two things that I loved playing – soccer and Gaelic. But GAA was very strong in the household and my father was a founding member of the Kilrea Pearses club.
“When Derry got to the All-Ireland final in 1958 I was six and my mother took me to the final at Croke Park. I remember the bus trip from Kilrea to Dublin. The bus left very early in the morning, half-five I think, and it took hours and hours to get there.
“Then I remember travelling with my brothers to watch them play at carnivals around Derry – Kilrea had a very good sevens team at that time. So there was plenty of craic at the bumping cars and then going to watch the brothers in the matches. It was terrific.
“A lot of big matches at that time were played up at Casement Park and my father used to take me up to watch them, we had frequent visits to Belfast.”
His older brothers were his personal heroes and his mind drew pictures of the men they played against as mythical Celtic warriors as he listened to Michael O’Hehir’s radio commentary of All-Ireland finals from Croke Park.
“I got most of my information from listening to him commentating on Kerry, or Galway, or Cavan who had a good team at that time,” O’Neill explains.
“You got to know the players: Dan McAuliffe, Paudie O’Keefe… Mick O’Connell, the Kerry midfielder, was revered around the country and I actually met him some years later and it was really memorable.
“But if you asked me who my heroes were, I’d have to say my brothers in the sense that I didn’t want anybody to be better than them. I was cheering on Derry and Kilrea all the time and I cheered on Down, like everybody did, when they played in those finals in the 1960s.
“I had the feeling they were representing all of us in the Six Counties. There always rivalry between Derry and Tyrone or Armagh or whatever but when the Ulster champions went to Dublin most people supported them.
“Down didn’t need outside support – they were a fantastic team, physically strong, capable of dealing with anything and they also had some great players.”
DOWN were Croke Park regulars throughout the 1960s and by the end of the decade O’Neill was a regular there too.
He was a boarder at St Columb’s in Derry from 11 to 16 and won the Corn na nOg twice, the second year as captain. When the O’Neill family moved to Belfast, he transferred to St Malachy’s College, Belfast and linked up with legendary coach and former Derry star Phil Stuart.
He won the Rannafast in his first year and then turned his attention on the MacRory.
“I have to say this without boasting but I was a really good player,” he says, without boasting.
“I had a good side-step and I might not have been absolutely brilliant in the air – I couldn’t catch a ball higher than everybody else - but if I was up against somebody who could out-jump me and was able to palm the ball down and get round the other side of him.
“I was quick and nippy and I could score points from acute angles and a few goals too.”
That ability was well known by 1969 when he was the attacking focal point of the Derry side named to play Antrim in the Ulster Championship.
Not for the last time a bureaucratic killjoy intervened.
O’Neill was getting his gear on in the dressing room when an Antrim official came to the door: “If O’Neill plays we’re going to object,” he announced.
It turned out that O’Neill had played in Division Five of the Antrim League with some of his St Malachy’s mates as an undocumented player with the St Columba’s club and so – rules being rules in the GAA – he didn’t feature in the Ulster campaign.
Derry won the provincial title and O’Neill returned for the All-Ireland semi-final against Wexford. He scored five points to help the Oak Leafers over the line by a single point.
Cork won the final but Derry came roaring back the following season and in the 1970 Ulster Minor decider the Oak Leafers took on a talented Fermanagh side.
The only goal of the game was a “blistering” 25-yard shot from O’Neill (according to the match report).
“Thanks for bringing that up,” he says.
“I remember that goal distinctly. I was playing against a fella called Ciaran Campbell who went on to play for Ulster. Fermanagh always had good teams then and so did St Michael’s, Enniskillen. I played as a roving full-forward at Clones that day and I had a good game – I rocketed this shot and it went off the underside of the crossbar. Good memory!”
His marker Campbell recalls how the Fermanagh players had been well warned to keep a close eye on the Derry dangerman.
“I remember Martin O’Neill and Mickey Moran and Eugene Laverty playing in midfield,” says Campbell.
“I was marking Martin – he was playing in at full-forward and centre half-forward. He had a good pedigree, he was well known even before that game, we knew he was one of Derry’s dangermen.
“I followed his career after that, he went on to great things. I can’t say I remember his goal – when you’re a defender you don’t like to remember things like that.”
CIARAN Campbell has been able to erase the memory of that O’Neill major but his adversary that day is still haunted by ghosts from that 1970 season.
Derry went on to an All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry which came to the boil when the Oak Leafers won a penalty in the second half. O’Neill stepped up to take it…
“I think the goalkeeper threw his cap on it,” he says.
“I just didn’t hit it. I’m still good friends with Seamus Mullan, the boy who should have taken the penalty because he was taking all the free-kicks at the time. I took it and it was such a bad one.
“We needed the goal but a point might even have been alright. We lost by four points but we had momentum at the time.
“Honestly I could go on forever about different games.”
That loss is rivalled, perhaps even overshadowed, by the painful memory of the 1970 Hogan Cup final against Colaiste Chroist Ri.
St Malachy’s had beaten St Michael’s, Enniskillen in the MacRory final and Claremorris in the Hogan semi and with O’Neill and younger brother Eoghan Roe outstanding, the Belfast school ran riot in the first half of the final. Despite hitting the woodwork three times, they led the Cork students 1-8 to 0-3 at the break.
But then, as underage games often do, momentum swung in the second half…
“Every time they went up the field they scored a goal and so they kept themselves in it,” says O’Neill.
The match report records that there were no stoppages in the game but the referee played two minutes of injury-time. Deep into it, O’Neill (who “owned the park” in the second half according to the newspaper report) tried a pass to his brother which was intercepted and the Cork school’s fourth goal (a long ball bounced over the head of the St Malachy’s goalkeeper) clinched the cup. He still blames himself…
“That’s one of the biggest disappointments of my life,” he says.
“I’ve had some great days in football as a player and a manager but lots of disappointment too and losing that game still hurts after 50-odd years.
“Defeats stay with you longer than victories - they do. I was in Glasgow recently for a charity event that John Hartson was running. We discussed some of the great moments with Celtic but the losses were the ones that plagued us especially the Uefa Cup final in 2003, the Porto game (3-2 defeat).
“The Hogan Cup final was the same, we should have won by a distance, honestly. They got the upperhand and started scoring goals, the referee played too much injury-time… All of those things, but the result is there and you can mope and moan but you can’t change it.”
HE was back in St Malachy’s colours in1971 for another tilt at the MacRory and Hogan Cups. By then he had progressed from Rosario to Distillery in the Irish League and, as his reputation as a soccer player grew. So did the resentment of eagle-eyed members of the GAA’s ‘vigilance committee’. Their job was to ban anyone who played – or even watched – ‘foreign’ sports such as soccer or rugby from the GAA.
When St Malachy’s drew St Mary’s CBGS in an all-Belfast MacRory Cup semi-final, the Antrim County Board decided that, because of O’Neill’s soccer involvement, the game wouldn’t be played at Casement Park or any GAA ground.
“Casement is where I wanted to play because I had been there so many times with my father over the years to watch Derry and watch Ulster finals,” says O’Neill.
“It was very disheartening. I felt I was at the centre of something that I really shouldn’t have been in. The furore over it should never have taken place.”
The game was switched to the Omagh CBS pitch and a lamentable affair ended when St Mary’s CBGS won and they rubbed salt into O’Neill’s wounds by going on to win the Hogan Cup.
The Ban (Rule 27) was deleted from GAA Official Guide later in 1971.
JUST a few months later, during his first term studying law at Queen’s, O’Neill, who had been watched by Celtic scouts among other clubs, was signed by English top flight side Nottingham Forest for £15,000.
He played soccer and Gaelic Football the same style – with skill, pace, flair and complete confidence. He scored on his Forest debut then, a couple of months later at Old Trafford, he picked up the ball in his own half. A drop of the shoulder, a surge of pace and he left the great Bobby Charlton in his wake and then he stroked a right-foot bullet into the corner of Manchester United’s net from the edge of the box.
“In my early days at Nottingham Forest I tackled like a Gaelic man,” he says.
“I was hauling players down in that GAA fashion. I think playing GAA definitely gave me the strength to play at that level. I’m full of admiration for the GAA and I’ll always be a Gaelic man.”
A half-hour chat with him barely skims the surface. Half-a-century on from those days he can look back on a career that included a league title and two European Cups with Forest, the 1982 World Cup finals with Northern Ireland as captain, the treble with Celtic, the 2016 European Championship finals as manager of the Republic…
Yes, all that. But his love for his Derry roots still shines through.
“The great Sean O’Connell asked me would I play for the seniors and of course I did,” he says.
“We played Meath in Navan. One of the big Meath men – I didn’t seem him coming - he took me out and Sean, who has passed away since, said to the fella: ‘Hi ye big hallion ye, he’s only a kid…’ And the boy said: ‘If he’s only a kid he shouldn’t be on the field’.
“That was his answer which was probably fair enough. In those days anything went – the boys could have knocked your teeth out and got away with it. After that I think I was a bit groggy and Sean decided maybe I’d had enough.
“But at least I can say I played for Derry seniors.”
Martin O’Neill is the special guest at this year’s Irish News Ulster All-Stars. You can find out who are among ‘Ulster’s Finest’ at this year’s awards night which take place in ICC Belfast on Friday September 27. To book your place at this star-studded event which will feature the former Celtic and Republic of Ireland manager and other special guests, go to allstars.irishnews.com/
The Irish News Ulster All-Stars, in association with Kingsbridge Private Hospital Group, is proudly sponsored by Louis Boyd Menswear, O’Neills Sportswear, Spar NI, Options Technology and TD Active Holidays
