Jim’s been on the ball with Wicklow for 47 years
DAVID MEDCALF CLIMBED THE STAIRS AT PRINCE OF WALES TERRACE TO THE BOARD ROOM OF THE WICKLOW LEAGUE FOR A CHAT WITH ADMINISTRATOR JIM MCLAUGHLIN
AS THE COUNTY’S only League of Ireland outfit goes through financial trauma, amateur soccer away from the elite grade remains the bedrock of the sport.
Bray Wanderers may be the headline act but the game is much bigger than one club, one venue and one set of supporters. No one knows that better than Jim McLaughlin, who has been tending the footballing grassroots for decades. A former chairman of the Wicklow League, he recently stepped down from active service, though he remains on as president., retaining a lively interest in the running of the game which has been much more than a mere pastime to him since 1970.
Jim McLaughlin – now there is a name to conjure with, a name which was never far from the back page over many a year. Fans will recall the manager of that name whose impressive exploits began with his native Derry City before he moved on to further success with Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk. President Jim refers with a laugh to Manager Jim as the real Jim McLaughlin and then reveals that the pair have a great deal in common. Both hail from the area around the Bogside in Derry on the banks of Lough Foyle and both attended the same schools in the 1940s and ’50s.
The two lads with the same name even shared a desk for a while in St Columb’s Boys primary, which must have been fun for the teachers. Their lives branched out in different directions as Manager Jim turned to be a handy left winger while President Jim was cursed with two left feet. The latter kicked some undistinguished ball with his local GAA club, the Derry Ogs, though soccer was always the main sport in the city. The Brandywell ground was the focus of most attention as the home of the Candystripes, Derry City.
Perched above the venue was St Columb’s College and the boarders there used to look down on proceedings from a height. Among the young lads who watched games from this vantage point was another Northerner who proved influential in the world of soccer. Yes, current Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill attended the school where Gaelic was the official sporting pre-occupation.
Jim attended technical college, gaining the qualifications which helped to open up a career as a telecommunications engineer, working at telephone exchanges across Northern Ireland.
His attention turned south after he and a group of lads took a short break in the popular resort of Bray in the early 1960s. It was in the Arcadia ballroom there that he met a young woman called Barbara Bishop who became his girlfriend and later his wife.
She died four years ago, leaving Jim with many happy memories of their time together and four lovely sons.
Courtship was made complicated by the long distance nature of the romance, he in Derry and she in Bray. Barbara moved to his home town in 1964 after they married and the eldest of their children was born in Altnagelvin Hospital.However, Jim recognised that his southern bride was not at home in a place where even the public parks were closed on Sundays. He gave up his good job with the giant Siemens company and the McLaughlins went to live with the in-laws with no definite career plans.
He tried his luck with the Standard Telephones who were based at Crown Alley in the centre of Dublin.
He was interviewed on the spot and asked to report for duty the following day. The young Ulsterman was hired to travel around the Republic putting in the new STD (the initials stand for subscriber trunk dialling) technology.
Living in Bray inevitably drew the dapper Derryman into soccer, though back then it was a very different sport to the current version. Barbara’s father Charlie Bishop was one of the founding members of the Wicklow League, an organisation which was going through a rough patch at the time.
Asked to help out, Jim agreed to lend a hand for a little while and it turned out that the little while extended to 47 years as an administrator. When he first became involved (‘you couldn’t say no’), the league was involved not only in running their own competitions. They were also responsible for a side called Wicklow County – later Bray Unknowns – which competed in the
League of Ireland at the Carlisle Grounds in Bray.
The new recruit was installed as secretary of an organisation that boasted just 18 local teams, with bigger clubs such as Wicklow Town having A and B sides. Soccer had not yet achieved the universal popularity it enjoys today and facilities were generally primitive. Players togged out in the ditches more often than not, except for games at the People’s Park in Bray where Charlie Byrne had a big shed nearby.
Promoting the game through the ‘Wicklow People’ helped spread the word and Jim was always conscious of the need for publicity. The big factor assisting the expansion of soccer was probably multi-channel television which brought ‘Match of the Day’ into Wicklow homes.
The league became increasingly well run and well sponsored too: Jim especially recalls doing a deal for support with butcher Jim Cullen in the Sunnybank Inn.
At the height of its popularity, there were 80 adult teams in various divisions on the books in the 1990s though this was not sustained. Ambitious clubs in Arklow, Enniskerry and Wicklow have tended to shift allegiance to Dublin based leagues.
In more recent times the expansion has been in schoolboys’ soccer and women’s soccer.
Keeping tabs on all the different competitions on the country scene, ensuring they ran without a hitch, is a considerable undertaking. The nerve centre of the operation is the board room at the top of Number 6, Prince of Wales Terrace, overlooking the Carlisle Grounds. Monday night at Number 6 is discipline night, dealing with the offenders from the day before.
‘I wouldn’t have done it for 47 years if I didn’t enjoy it,’ muses the retiring stalwart of his time juggling fixtures lists, cup draws and suspensions. ‘I have met loads of friends here and abroad.’
Over close to half a century, Jim McLaughlin – who now has a cup named after him - watched innumerable games. He recalls especially the exploits of goalkeeper Alan Kelly who graduated from Bray Wanderers to professional isoccer n the England with Preston North End.
He was also lucky enough to catch a little of the start of the career of Paul McShane, another international, now with Reading who began with Greystones schoolboys.
MENTION of the defender from Kilpedder prompts the recollection that McShane was in the Ireland under 16 squad which visited Holland. Also present was Jim McLaughlin, enjoying one of the many expeditions he took part in as representative of Wicklow at the Football Association of Ireland: ‘We had a rota and every so often you would get a trip and go with the squad,’ he recalls.
Most notably of all, he was in Japan at the World Cup in 2002 for the tournament where Roy Keane’s withdrawal from Mick McCarthy’s squad made headlines around the globe.
Jim is too much of a diplomat to take sides in the never-ending debate on the rights and wrongs of Keane’s actions.
He arrived in the Far East after the skipper had resigned and remembers worried FAI officials Mylo Cochrane and Brendan Menton asking anxiously how events were being received by the fans back home.
He still wonders whether a full squad might have gone on to win the cup or whether reality was that the players who stayed in the Far East upped their game to cover for his absence. After all the kerfuffle in Saipan, he still has the impression that the always controversial Leesider is a gentleman. The verdict is based on personal experience after Roy invited him on one occasion to join the players – an increasingly unusual rubbing of shoulders – in an airport lounge.
Being what Keane calls a ‘blazer’ has certainly given Jim the opportunity to garner first hand acquaintance of a series of managers. Jack Charlton, Mick McCarthy, Giovanni Trapattoni: Jim has met them all.
His last venture abroad with the FAI was the ill-fated short hop from Dublin to Glasgow for the European championship qualifier against Scotland. On the way out he reminded current manager Martin O’Neill of schooldays spent watching matches in the Brandywell. And coming home he observed how down-hearted O’Neill was after the defeat at Hampden Park by the Scots.
‘I never saw anyone as down. Martin took that result very badly.’ Fortunately, grim night in Glasgow proved a turning point for the better.
As he moves on, Jim identifies a particular highlight of his time with the Wicklow League - the Oscar Traynor victory of 1986 under the canny captaincy of Harry Murphy, with Tommy Earls as manager: ‘It was a fantastic achievement for us, beating all the big Dublin leagues along the way and then playing Galway in the final.’
Such memories are made to be cherished.