It Occurs To Me: The great Brendan Bradley

Reading a super interview by Pat McArt and a colleague in the Irish News with the legendary Brendan Bradley last week brought back many happy memories.

Some years ago in this column, I wrote about running into Brendan — one of my football heroes — in Derry city centre and it brought me right back to April 21, 1974 when Finn Harps defeated St Patrick’s Athletic 3-1 at Dalymount Park to lift the FAI Cup. 

Bradley scored twice after an amazing early free kick from Charlie Ferry and the supporters went wild. Not only did the team contain many great Derry players but Harps had a huge Derry support at that time.

A mix of us were walking past the Gresham Hotel when disgruntled Pat’s supporters started giving us dog’s abuse and hurling rocks and stones across from a nearby construction site. 

Later, as manager Patsy McGowan recalled with delight... when the team travelled down O’Connell Street, some gurrier roared: “Go back to the bog where you belong!” Patsy waved the cup in the air and shouted: “We may be going back to the bog, but the Cup is going with us!”

Patsy probably never knew that, earlier, as we were under siege on the same street, one very organised Derryman shouted: “Right lad, let’s show these Free State b.....ds that when it comes to stonethrowing, they’ve taken on the wrong boys!” 

When the Bogside and Creggan lads returned the stones, the St Pat’s supporters learned to their horror that accuracy was not just confined to Charlie Ferry free kicks or Brendan Bradley headers!

In Brendan’s chat with Pat, he recalled that had it not been for a big summer cup game in Buncrana his career might never have begun.

“The story goes that in 1969 the Finn Harps manager, Patsy McGowan, was desperate to find a goal-scorer after the Donegal club had joined the League of Ireland that year with disastrous results, losing their first ever senior game 10-2 to Shamrock Rovers. He was travelling everywhere looking for a centre-forward.

“Patsy saw me that day and apparently he turned to his assistant manager, Bobby Toland, and said, ‘That’s it, that’s my centre forward there’.”

Bradley subsequently joined Finn Harps for a fee of a measly £100, and was put in the first team straight away. And soon he was on his way to a career that was to include clashes with top English and Scottish sides, representing the League of Ireland, playing in Canada with Eusébio, the famous Portuguese international, and so much more.

But there was one story Pat had to check with Brendan at the outset: “Is it true the Harps’ doctor insisted you went on a diet of Guinness and steak?” Brendan laughed that yarn off, but diet or not, he scored an incredible 29 goals in 26 games, including all six in a 6-1 victory over Sligo Rovers. He consequently topped the scoring charts for a fourth time in his career and was named the Soccer Writers’ Association of Ireland Personality of the Year for 1976 so — as Pat says… “He was, without question, the top star in Irish soccer at that time.”

John Giles and Brendan Bradley

He retired with an astonishing 309 goals in all competitions and Pat adds: “As I was leaving his home he and his wife stood at the door and during our conversation he admitted that despite being a Derry man through and through, his first love is still Finn Harps. And Marie reiterated that by pointing out that her dress was ‘Finn Harps blue!’ Brendan concluded: ‘When you go up to Ballybofey and the sun is shining it’s lovely. There’s a lovely green pitch nowadays, and I would love to go out there one more time’.”

A wonderfully warm and engaging interview… well done to both. During a time of grim news and cynicism, it did my heart good.

Mandelson and Donegal

When Peter Mandelson got the heave-ho recently as British ambassador to the US, I was reminded of a flurry of excitement some 25 years ago, when he and his boyfriend, a Mr deSilva, stayed with BBC presenter Sean Rafferty in the latter’s Ramelton home. I knew Sean — not terribly well — but colleagues in the Beeb said he was a very convivial host. The town on the Lennon was a cool venue, with Cilla Black, Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones being spotted there around the Millennium, but for Mandelson, it was a bolthole away from the abuse in Northern Ireland.

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As Northern Ireland secretary of state, he accompanied David Trimble to Portadown, where both spoke in favour of the Good Friday Agreement. All hell broke loose.

The local Orangemen — making international headlines because of Drumcree — were incandescent. “Homo!” they roared at Mandelson and “Traitor!” they screamed at Trimble, as both politicians fled to their armour-plated car through a cordon of RUC riot police. One of Trimble’s aides later said that they had “never seen such a look of fear in their lives, as Peter Mandelson had that night.”

At one of his final “big-dos” that he hosted at Hillsborough Castle, he was asked what he thought about Northern Ireland. He scratched his chin, looked vacantly into the past for a moment, before saying: “Odd, very odd.”

There was no such bother in Ramelton, other than a non-story which was supposed to have caused a security emergency. As the Indo reported at the time: “An over-imaginative account of the visit in the Belfast News Letter, including false allegations that it had caused a security nightmare for the gardaí, secured a grovelling six-paragraph retraction. Mr Mandelson told the paper that its claim that 12 gun-carrying officers were assigned to ensure his security was untrue. “There were four detectives, but other gardaí called in to meet me and have photos taken,” he said. “There were no security headaches, incidents, inconveniences or anything like that.”

The story centred around Peter having to go to another house in Ramelton for a bath when Rafferty’s water-heating broke down. Gerry Adams had said to Mandelson after the suspension of the Northern Ireland Executive, “We’re going to dump all over you, but don’t worry. It’s nothing personal.”

You’d need a long bath after coping with that Northern “shower”! Odd, very odd.

Ramblings in Belleek

I’ve often mentioned Belleek’s Joe O’Louglin in this column, his local history and knowledge being second to none. That attention to scholarship and detail runs in the family, as I recently read his brother Sean’s The Ramblings of an Amateur Historian.

Sean is a former production manager with Belleek Pottery, a director of Donegal China, and was a talented GAA footballer with Devenish and Fermanagh in the 1960’s. His own family history — O’Loughlin and his mother’s people, the Timoneys — is equally fascinating. His maternal grandfather, James Timoney, was manager of Belleek Creamery, a JP, Magistrate and member of Belleek District Council and Fermanagh County Council.

Despite this, he was served with an exclusion order in August 1922, by the infamous Dawson Bates, the virulently anti-Catholic Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs. This scandalous legislation lasted until the 1970’s and it meant that if the recipient didn’t leave the area, he could be arrested and charged.

A Protestant friend and neighbour tipped him off that the B-Specials were coming to shoot him and burn his house, so the family fled across to Donegal. Their house was broken into by the Specials, ransacked and anything of value was robbed, including a quality fiddle… spotted by someone in a house 15 miles away some years later.

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Eventually, the Timoneys returned but the episode shone a very negative light on the discrimination and bigotry in the new Northern state.

Sean speaks very warmly of another Creamery Manager, Frank Reid, whose son Donal won an All-Ireland with Donegal in 1992.

Well done to Sean on a great publication.

Past presidents and satire

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” — Theodore Roosevelt.

When the Smothers Brothers apologized to President Lyndon Johnson for their jokes about him, he replied, “It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists.”

Some more words to the wise

Morgan Freeman: “If teachers were paid more and politicians less, the world would be a smarter place with fewer stupid laws.”

John Cleese: “I don’t think that Trump supporters care about what the rest of the world thinks. That’s because they don’t know where the rest of the world is.”