Saturday and I much preferred to play rather than watch. However, I used to love listening to the stories of those who did go over to Parkhead, and I suppose I got a bit jealous of those who had seen my heroes.
My favourite player as a youngster was Kenny Dalglish. He had it all—great skill with either foot, amazing strength in the penalty box, and the vision to make telling passes or take up perfect positions. He had been largely unheralded outside Scotland before his record-breaking move to Liverpool, but it was no surprise to those of us who idolized him that he quickly made his mark in England and Europe, and went on to become a legend at Anfield. In modern times, Kenny is the king of Celtic players as far as I am concerned, and only Henrik Larsson ranks alongside him.
From the outset with Lurgan Celtic’s boys’ side and with St Peter’s primary’s team, I was a prolific goalscorer. I played on the right wing for the club but for the school I played at centre-forward and I really did score a barrowload. That may come as something of a shock to those Celtic fans who have seen me score precisely three times in the five-and-a-half seasons that I have been at Parkhead. But as a youngster I scored regularly, almost week in and week out, both for my schools teams and for my clubs, and while still at primary school, a headline appeared in my local newspaper ‘Lennon Hits Three’.
At the same time as I was starting out in football, I was also learning the ropes in Gaelic football. While there are similarities between the two sports, the latter involves handling and passing the ball from hand or foot. From the start I loved them both, but soccer—I’ll use that term to avoid confusion—was always my preferred version.
Junior soccer was given quite good coverage in the local press, and my family have newspaper clippings to prove that I was something of a goalscoring sensation. I particularly remember playing in five-a-side and indoor tournaments, and I think the first picture of me in a newspaper was when we won the Craigavon Festival Under-11 trophy. Also in that five was Gerry Taggart, who would become a lifelong friend and a very fine professional footballer. Gerry and I also played in the Lurgan Celtic team which was chosen to represent Armagh in the Ulster age group finals at the Community Games in Letterkenny, County Donegal. Gerry scored two as we won the final 6-1 against Monaghan, and I got a hat-trick inside fifteen minutes—a little different to my scoring ratio with Celtic of one goal every two seasons!
The national finals of the All-Ireland Community Games at Butlins’ Irish camp at Mosney was a very prestigious tournament, and Gerry Taggart and myself were both picked for the Lurgan area Under-12 side which represented Armagh in the games. Scouts from senior clubs in Britain watched the final in which we beat Galway on penalties thanks largely to goalkeeper Dee Horisk saving three of their spot kicks.
Butlins camp at Mosney would become a regular haunt for me. In September 1983, several of us who had won the soccer trophy returned to contest the Community Games Gaelic football final, which was played for the Charles Haughey Perpetual Cup. Gerry Taggart, Dee Horisk and I all played for the Craigavon select eleven which won this trophy competed for by sides from all over Ireland.
I loved our visits to Butlins, because apart from the football there were all sorts of fun and games for youngsters. There was an amusement park attached to the camp and when we weren’t playing matches, we could be found there having a whale of a time.
In my last year at St Peter’s, I was selected for the Mid-Ulster District Primary Schools Team to play in various tournaments. It was as a result of playing well for the Mid-Ulster side that I first came to the attention of the Northern Ireland schoolboy team selectors.
The official records showed that in my final year at primary school, I played all five games for Mid-Ulster against the likes of Belfast and East Antrim, scoring five of our fourteen goals as we finished second in the league. I nearly always played up front at that time, and it was the same in Gaelic football where I occupied one or other of the forward positions and liked nothing better than to score goals or points.
When I left primary school, I first attended St Paul’s junior high school, for boys aged from eleven to fourteen, and here again football was my main preoccupation. I was just eleven and in my first year when I was selected to play for the school Under-13 side. We were a very good side under the charge of teacher Mr Kevin O’Neill, and I remember we beat our great rivals Killicomaine School to win the local school league and cup double. Again, I scored a hat-trick in the cup final, and we got our team picture with both trophies in the Lurgan Mail—always a sure sign of success.
As well as playing for St Paul’s I was by then enjoying myself with Lurgan Celtic. Our Under-13 team went through the entire season unbeaten and won the Michael Casey Memorial Cup into the bargain. I also had my first taste of ‘foreign’ football when I went over to Scotland and played against Greenock Shamrocks and Greenock Boys Club. Shamrock at that time had one of the best young teams around and had strong links to Celtic. We beat them 3-2 and I remember the trip well as it was my first visit to Glasgow and I got to meet some of my relatives on my father’s side who lived in Scotland.
I was still playing Gaelic football for St Paul’s and the Clan Na Gael club at this time, winning the Armagh Under-13 championship with the school.
I soon took and passed the exams which meant I could continue on to senior high school, in my case St Michael’s Grammar School in Lurgan. One of the great things about St Michael’s was that it was co-educational. Since it was a Catholic school run by a strict nun, any sort of contact between boys and girls was frowned upon, but that didn’t stop your hormones rampaging. Like every other teenage boy, I was awkward around the opposite sex and it would take me ages to pluck up the courage to talk to a girl or ask her for a dance at the occasional ‘hops’ held at the school or the local social club. I’ll confess now to having had a big crush on a very pretty girl of Italian extraction, Anita Cafolla. I must have carried a torch for her for a year or two when I was fourteen or fifteen, but nothing ever came of it and we went our separate ways with me moving to Motherwell and later Manchester.
Like everyone, I had my favourite teachers at school and one of the teachers who had considerable influence on me was Seamus Heffron, who taught me French at St Michael’s. More importantly, he was in charge of the school Gaelic football team. He was the kind of teacher you need in any school, the sort who encouraged young people to do their best at work and play, and who put in many unpaid hours looking after the team. Seamus has subsequently followed my football career closely, coming over to see me play at Leicester and Celtic, and he is in regular touch with my family and myself.
When I first attended St Michael’s, it became clear that I faced something of a problem, one that almost got me expelled from the school and nearly ended my career in soccer almost before it started. St Michael’s was a highly traditional school and preferred the Gaelic version of football, which of course I loved, but not as much as soccer. Schoolmatches were played on a Saturday morning which sadly was also the same time that Lurgan United, the boys club for which I then played, held their games.
At that point in my life I came up against a person who was very determined to get her own way. Sister Mary St Anne was the nun in charge of St Michael’s, and she was determined to uphold the school’s traditions.
One of those traditions was the cane. Anyone above a certain age will remember that corporal punishment was once routine in schools, the teacher’s weapon of choice being the tawse or the cane. Sister St Anne was one of those strict no-nonsense nuns who did not mind dishing out sentences but would send for a male teacher to administer the actual punishment.
I was a typical schoolboy, I suppose, and got in my fair share of scrapes and pranks, such as playing truant or ‘bunking’ as we called it, so in my time at St Michael’s I was caned perhaps two or three times.
The occasion I remember most was a beautiful sunny day when the attractions of a double period of biology could not compare with the farm which adjoined the school. After lunch, three or four of us decided to scale the wall and make our escape from school. I’ll name no names—for reading this will be the first time my own mother will know what I did, and I wouldn’t like to get anyone else into the trouble I’m going to get!
We had climbed a tree and were sunning ourselves when one of the teachers spotted