Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Northern Irish footballer who captained Ireland and played for Tottenham Hotspur.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
The book
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:08How early did your interest in football start, you remember?
my mother tells a story of how when I was two years of age she beat me rather soundly for something and banished me to my little room. And not hearing a sound she was very uh worried about this. She thought perhaps she'd caned me too much and she crept up the stairs to find out and apparently I was perched on the windowsill watching a football match beyond.
Presenter asks
0:37What was the first team you played for [as a boy]?
the first official team I played for was an organized team was the 19th Belfast Wolf Club team.
Presenter asks
3:56Is the player consulted about whether he wants to go to the other club that's bid for him?
Sometimes it's a mixture of both. Very often a club will come to another club and want one of the players and say, now look, we'll give you twenty or thirty thousand pounds for this player and the club maybe a little badly off will agree to it. Then they will ask the player does he want to go.
J. P. Donleavy
The luxury
Presenter asks
How long do you have to sign for with a club?
when you sign a for a club you are tied to that club until that club no longer wants you or until they agree to release you in some other way. You're entirely at the mercy of the club. I've had great pains. I've been fighting about this contract a long time. I don't like it. But it exists and it's what there is and possession is nine points of the law and there it shall remain until there's a great crusade to change it.
Presenter asks
6:28Why is it we don't show up very well overseas? I mean these islands, the mother country of soccer and so on, and we get beaten by the most surprising country.
I think we're very presumptuous in this country. We think we should win everything all the time. Uh this is a an area of great competition and uh you see in nineteen fifty four the Hungarians were ruling the roost… 1958, Brazil won the World Cup. It's very difficult for us because our domestic competition doesn't quite suit international competition. And there's many of these players in other countries are far better players than us. Uh they're more suited to the game. Uh this is a very complex question which would take days to answer.
Presenter asks
7:05Are you interested in managing a team yourself? When your playing days are over, a long time to come, would you like to do that?
I think it's inherent in everyone who loves the game to want to be able to manage a team and produce a team that's better than everybody else's. And I might some day be driven to manage in a team. But as conditions are now, I want to avoid it, because the things I want to do, I want to do big. That doesn't mean I'm able to do them big, but I'd like the opportunity to do them big. I'd like to have the best team in the world. You can't do that in England because there's too many restrictive rules and practices, like limit on the player's wages. If I'm going to get the best player in the world, I've got to pay him the highest money. That's the way I look at it. It's difficult to build big personalities under the present system.
“my mother tells a story of how when I was two years of age she beat me rather soundly for something and banished me to my little room. And not hearing a sound she was very uh worried about this. She thought perhaps she'd caned me too much and she crept up the stairs to find out and apparently I was perched on the windowsill watching a football match beyond.”
“I've had great pains. I've been fighting about this contract a long time. I don't like it. But it exists and it's what there is and possession is nine points of the law and there it shall remain until there's a great crusade to change it.”
“We're the greatest moral victors in the world. When we get defeated it's a moral victory for us, so we're trying to change it into one. This was one of the black spots when we sort of defeated ourselves by winning.”
“I'd like to have the best team in the world. You can't do that in England because there's too many restrictive rules and practices, like limit on the player's wages.”