one of the lads, he landed in a giant cowpat. Even worse for us was the fact that our escape route was sealed off by three other teachers. We were all hauled off to be caned, with the smell of cow dung accompanying us everywhere we went until my poor unfortunate classmate was sent home.
The caning ceremony was bizarre. You would go into Sister’s room, and there would be no sign of the cane at first. The weird thing was that she kept the cane hidden in a box behind a picture in her room. The box would be produced with great ceremony and the assistant headmaster or other teacher would take out the cane. On each occasion the sentence was the same—three strokes of the cane on each hand, which you placed one on top of the other to receive the stroke. I suppose the cane was supposed to be an encouragement of sorts, but if so, then it did not achieve its purpose as your hands were so traumatized that you couldn’t lift a pen or do any serious work for the rest of the day.
Tradition meant everything to Sister St Anne. As far as she was concerned, it was to be Gaelic football or no football at all. I, on the other hand, just could not envisage life without soccer. I was about fourteen, I was already in the school Gaelic football team, and was also playing for the local Clan Na Gael club. But I was doing so well with Lurgan United soccer club that my name was already in the books of several scouts from senior clubs across the water in Scotland and England. So I knew by then that I had a chance of playing football for a living and, more and more, that was what I wanted to do. But Sister St Anne decreed that I would play for the school Gaelic football team and that meant giving up Saturday morning soccer. Or so she thought.
The penalty for disobeying the order was simple—I would be expelled from St Michael’s. I was in tears at the thought—I had worked hard to pass the exams to get into St Michael’s and now I faced expulsion for playing football.
The annoying thing was that all these orders were relayed in public at school assembly. My sister Orla was in the sixth year and she confronted Sister about this before telling my parents.
My father was very angry when he and mother went to the school office. He pointed out that I had made a commitment to the soccer club and somehow he worked out a compromise with Sister. At that time it was close to the end of the soccer season, so I was able to carry on playing but had to switch to Gaelic as soon as the season ended, and in the meantime I played only in the important school matches.
I would not have liked to have left St Michael’s under a cloud. I loved my time there, and the standard of education was very high and academic achievement was not just demanded but expected. I was no swot, but there were some subjects which I did enjoy, mainly languages such as English literature and English language, Spanish, French and Irish Gaelic—I got ‘O’ levels in all of those. I passed seven ‘O’ levels in all, the others being religious studies and chemistry. I could have done better, but by then my mind was on other things, namely where I would start my football career.
The only other profession I considered was that of veterinary surgeon because I always loved animals. I still do, and have shares in several racehorses.
We always had cats or dogs in our house, and we also had a canary for years—one who never stopped singing! He was called Sweep, and the cat was not too impressed with his constant noise.
Perhaps if I had passed my biology ‘O’ level I might have carried on to study veterinary science, but I failed and that was the end of any thoughts of becoming a vet. To be honest, by that time I was already set on a career in football.
By the time I was fourteen I was on the fringes of the Northern Ireland schoolboy team. It was a very exciting period for me which also saw me widen my horizons a little.
For some reason of which I’m not aware, Lurgan Celtic had dropped their boys’ team but the people who ran it went off and formed Lurgan United which I joined, because it was really Lurgan Celtic by another name. At that time we had a rare crop of players and we were frequently watched by scouts from dozens of clubs in Britain, and also representatives of other more senior boys’ clubs in the area.
One of the best boys’ clubs in Armagh, indeed the whole of Northern Ireland, was Lisburn side Hillsborough. Its officials and players were all from the ‘other side’ of the divide, so when Gerry Taggart and I were asked to join them, I was a bit sceptical. I had plenty of friends who were Protestant and Unionist, but joining Hillsborough from Lurgan Celtic was something of a bridge crossing, as we would be the only two Catholics in the club. I need not have worried a jot. We were welcomed with open arms and in the five years I played for Hillsborough, nary a cross word was spoken about the religious and political problems in my town and country.
One of the players was Noel Baillie, and he and I went right through the ranks at Hillsborough together before he went on to play for Linfield, the Belfast club traditionally associated with the Protestant and Unionist sector of the city’s population. Strange to think that the two of us, one who played more than 600 games for and also captained the ‘Rangers’ of Belfast and myself, who captains Glasgow Celtic, were once both wee boys in the same team.
Those were busy days for me, especially at weekends. I would play soccer twice a day on the Saturday, for Lurgan United in the morning and Hillsborough in the afternoon, and then turn out for my Gaelic football club on the Sunday. I was at the age when you felt you could play all day, every day. No one had heard of the phrase ‘teenage burnout’ in those days. I would pay for the excessive football a few years later, as you will learn in a later chapter.
My Gaelic football career was going very well, too. I seemed to have the natural ball-playing skills needed for both versions of football, and my ability to hit a long shot came in handy in Gaelic in particular. Playing for St Michael’s and Clan Na Gael, in total before I left school, I won Armagh county league championship medals at Under-13, Under-14 and Under—15 levels; two more Under-16 league medals and two minor league medals; plus an All-Ireland Community Games medal and a winner’s medal in the prestigious Herald Cup tournament.
The pinnacle of my school Gaelic football career came in an All-Ireland final. St Michael’s won through to the Under-161/2 Colleges B Championship which was played at mighty Croke Park in Dublin, the home of Gaelic football. It was a huge day for everyone at the school, but we were not fancied to beat the big strong team from Clane Community School in Kildare.
We were much more skilful, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed the game if not the match report in the local Lurgan paper—it mentioned something about me being ‘exciting to watch’ but spoiled things by adding ‘the red-haired youngster…spoils his performances occasionally with his fiery temper’. The anti-ginger brigade in the media had it in for me from the start, it seems…
We won a close match by a goal and three points (1-3) to four points (0-4), and instantly became heroes to the rest of the school. In that year I also played for Clan Na Gael’s Under-16 team which won the North Armagh championship, as our club performed the remarkable feat of winning the league at every age level.
Despite my Gaelic football success, soccer was more and more the main focus of my life. As I approached my final year in school, I was already set on a path to try to become a professional footballer, and senior clubs from Scotland and England were taking a great interest in me, including one rather surprising club indeed.
CHAPTER THREE First Steps on the Ladder
As I progressed through the ranks of school football and played for both Lurgan United and Hillsborough Boys Club, several senior teams in Scotland and England had begun to take a look at me with an eye to securing my signature in the future.
One club in Glasgow in particular seemed to begin taking a genuine interest. That club was not Celtic, but Rangers.
That is correct. Your eyes do not deceive you. I am relating the story here not to make any great fuss, but because it really did happen and in fact was reported in the local Lurgan paper at the time, though not with any great prominence. The first sign of interest from Rangers came after I played for the Northern Ireland Under-14 select against the Scottish Schools team in