My own priceless sports memories

Sir — My own memory was stirred upon reading Enda McEvoy’s letter (‘Priceless sports memories’, Sunday Independent, December 2).

On a February evening in 1958, as I and two fellow students were walking around the grounds of the Pallottine Fathers College in Thurles, Fr Gormley approached and speaking directly to me said that the aeroplane bringing home the Manchester United team from an away game in the European Cup, had crashed at Munich Airport and that there were fatalities.

When I arrived home in Enniscrone that Easter. I proposed that Enniscrone United FC, a team a few other students and I had established two years previously to play summer football, organise a tournament in honour of the dead Manchester footballers.

In June, while passing through Limerick, I purchased a silver trophy and had the jeweller inscribe on it “Manchester United Memorial Cup Competition 1958”.

When the competition was announced later that month, villages and towns around Connaught formed soccer teams to participate in the tournament.

Castlebar Celtic defeated Enniscrone United 7-3 in one semi-final. The final was a dramatic affair between Celtic and Quay Hearts, of Westport. The Castelbar team were wining 3-1 at half-time, but Hearts held the trophy in their hands when I blew the final whistle for full-time, defeating their local rivals 4-3. Local GP Dr Christy O’Connor presented the trophy.

The final memories I have associated with Manchester United are of meeting manager Matt Busby and three of the players in the Russell Square Hotel where they were staying before a game against Chelsea; I was by then a Pallottine Father whose church was a short walk from the hotel... and in more recent times meeting Sir Alex Ferguson in Enniscrone. We were born two streets from each other in the Glasgow shipbuilding district of Govan. Martin Gordon, Blackrock,

Cork