Veteran campaigner Eamonn McCann is known throughout the island of Ireland for his love of his home place in Derry City, but that city’s football team might have an even bigger place in his heart.
Speaking ahead of the Candystripes’ FAI Cup Final against Drogheda United on Sunday, the 81-year-old reflected on his memories of the club.
After 13 years of being refused readmission to the football league in Northern Ireland, Derry City eventually gained permission from the IFA and FIFA to join the League of Ireland in 1985.
Prior to the Troubles, the club had played in the Irish League from its formation in 1928, with some success, picking up a league title in the 1964/65 season.
However, when violence broke out across the region and the city came under siege it had a knock-on effect for the club. They were forced to play their home games in Coleraine after a group of masked youths stole the Ballymena United team bus and burnt it.
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Faced with dwindling crowds and refused the opportunity to return to the Brandywell the club folded in 1972. After over a decade without a senior team four former Derry footballers came together in 1984 with the aim of bringing football back to the city.
Tony O’Doherty, Terry Harkin, Eamonn McLaughlin and Eddie Mahon were dubbed the Gang of Four for their efforts, and arranged a meeting in Dublin which helped Derry City secure a position within the League of Ireland.
McCann spoke at that meeting – as did his lifelong friend and fellow Derry native, Nell McCafferty, the trailblazing journalist and activist who died in August this year, at the age of 80.
“I remember her saying, ‘The League of Ireland better let us in otherwise there’d be hell to pay’,” McCann told The Irish Mirror.
“How we were going to create this hell we were never sure. We were great ones for violence of the tongue.
“Some of my earliest memories are of playing football with Nell.
“Used to be 20-a-side, girls and boys. She was a dirty player.
“If you kicked her, she would shout, ‘You’re kicking a wee girl!’ And this might be after she kicked you three times. So there was no equality of the sexes there.”
McCann and McCafferty grew up not too far apart from one another in the walled city, and McCann delivered the eulogy at her funeral.
Nell McCafferty
“Nell and me had a very rocky relationship for many years,” he added.
“At times she wouldn’t talk to me and at times I wouldn’t talk to her… because she was giving me such grief.
“In the last period of her life I think we were fully reconciled then. Because of that, I was very upset when she died.
“I regret the fact that we spent so many years as… strangers or almost as strangers.
“But then in the last couple of years of her life when she got very ill and then, of course, had to go into a nursing home, we got back together, as it were, and were close friends until her death.
“And I’m very pleased about that.”.
Ahead of Sunday’s clash at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, McCann noted: “We’re living a fantasy when we watch a football match.
“If you look at when the team came back in 1985, it was a heavy time and Derry people felt quite isolated.
“I think when the team came back from the dead, it was felt by many people in Derry to be a harbinger of better times to come. Lead us into a bit of light again.
“What’s going to happen on Sunday? I hope fate won’t be so bad to Derry, we’ve suffered enough, we’ve suffered enough.
“So I would think it’s written in the stars that Derry City are going to win. The heavens await.”