Jimmy Hasty remains revered at Dundalk FC. The Belfast-born striker lost an arm as a teenager, but went on to forge a successful career in the League of Ireland. Hasty inspired ‘the Town’ to their first win in the European Cup and, 50 years on from his final appearance in black-and-white, Andy Watters recalls the legendary ‘one-armed wonder’, who was murdered by the UVF in 1974...
GROWING up in Dundalk in the 1960s, Pat Malone’s life revolved around Jimmy Hasty. And little wonder.
Hasty is a genuine boy’s own story, a true-life version of the popular comic character 'Limp Along Leslie' from the Wizard. Leslie had been permanently injured in a car crash, but recovered to forge a fictional career as an international striker.
Hasty did it for real. Born in Belfast’s Sailortown in 1936, he lost his left arm in a horrific accident on his first day at work in a factory at the age of 16. But he learned to run again and find his balance again and play football again - first with Islandmagee, then Newry Town and, later, Dundalk.
Standing at 6’1”, the two-footed centre-forward drove the Louth club to League of Ireland titles and their first win in the European Cup. Hasty had been spotted and signed by Malone’s father Jim and young Pat idolised him - even the family dog was called ‘Hasty’.
“Everything my father ever did, from the day he signed him to the day he died, seemed to revolve around Jimmy Hasty,” he said.
“My dad heard about him and went to see him play for Newry Town in a match in Belfast on a Saturday night. He was so impressed that he signed him there and then on the spot and paid him a signing-on fee.
“Then, he went back to the board. Dad was chairman of the club at the time and he proposed to sign him without telling them that he was already signed. It went to a vote and dad lost the vote on the basis that ‘we’re not signing a freak show’.
“Dad always said: ‘I proposed him for goalkeeper and got him in at outside-left’ - they finally agreed to play him to shut him up. He was doing the gate the following Sunday - Dundalk played all their matches on a Sunday at that time - and one of the other directors put his head around the door after 20 minutes and asked ‘what’s the gate like?’ and he said: ‘It’s nearly double what it usually is’.
“He said: ‘Well Jim, take the signing-on fee out of it because he has just scored one and made another’. That was the beginning of the legend that is Jimmy Hasty.”
Hasty arrived at the club in 1961/62 season - the following year, Dundalk won the League of Ireland for the first time in 30 years and Hasty was the spearhead as the little-known Irish outfit made their first foray into the European Cup against Switzerland’s FC Zurich.
The first leg, played at Dublin’s Dalymount Park, didn’t go to plan - Dundalk were 3-0 down after 20 minutes, but at least kept the Swiss out for the remainder of the game to give themselves a glimmer of hope in Zurich.
“On the return leg, the chairman of Zurich went out to meet the team at the airport and Jimmy got off the plane with one arm, Jimmy Lyons got off with a broken elbow [he didn’t play] with his arm in a sling and Davey McArdle got off with a sprained ankle on crutches,” Pat explained.
“The chairman of Zurich is meant to have said ‘lads, you got the wrong plane, the one to Lourdes was the next one’.”
But Dundalk’s players, no doubt angered by their host’s smart-arse jibe, quickly turned the tie around. Hasty scored the club’s first goal in Europe and another from Francie Callan followed to leave just one in it.
Ten minutes from time, Hasty went agonisingly close to levelling the tie on aggregate, but his shot hit the crossbar and Zurich broke late on to score and held on to win 4-2 over the two legs.
Dundalk were out, but they had come away with an away win - the first time any Irish side, north or south, had ever won a match away from home in the European Cup, or any European competition.
“If you ask people to name the greatest player they’ve ever seen, then Hasty would be one of three players they’d mention,” said Pat.
“Tommy McConville and Joey Donnelly [who also played for Belfast Celtic] and Jimmy Hasty would be the three they would talk about, but most people, if they were forced, would choose Hasty.
“Years later, I talked to a former League of Ireland referee and asked him: ‘What was it like refereeing Hasty?’ he said: ‘It was a nightmare, every time he fell over when I didn’t know whether he was playing for a free, or had been fouled or just fell because he was imbalanced. But no matter where on the pitch he fell, the crowd were shouting for a penalty’.”
Hasty scored 35 goals in the 1963/64 season and remained at Dundalk until the end of the 1965/66 campaign, when he moved on down the Dublin Road to spend a year with Drogheda United.
Retirement followed and Hasty returned to Belfast in 1968, where he and his wife brought up their sons Paul and Martin. He worked as a bookie but, on October 11, 1974, he was murdered by the UVF in Brougham Street in a sectarian killing as he left his home for work.
“The only time I ever knew my father to cry was to tell me he was dead,” said Pat.
“We played a League of Ireland selection in a testimonial for him and the normal charge into the ground was £2 and we increased it to £3. I was doing a turnstile and people were coming in and I was going to give them back the change of a fiver.
“They said: ‘How much is going to the club?’ I said; ‘Nothing, Mrs Hasty gets the lot’. They said: ‘Well, don’t insult me or Mrs Hasty and hold onto it.’ People were playing double the price to get in simply to say thanks. He was a remarkable man, he was extremely well liked by everybody.”
