Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MAXIE SWAI Dyed-in Glenma would l his club the mix
CALUM BIRNEY is Glentoran to the bone.
Of that there can be no doubt. Reared on the Castlereagh Road not far from the Oval, the 25-year-old has been associated with the club officially since he was 16, and unofficially for much longer having stood on the terraces as a boyhood fan.
He’s one of their own, like the current men in charge Gary Smyth and Paul Leeman, and so feels the slings and arrows of their turbulent recent past more acutely than most.
Heck, he can barely bring himself to even mention the word Linfield.
As he recalls his early days growing up, he laughs as he contemptuously utters the words “the dark side”, referring to his brief spell across the city at Linfield’s under-16s.
Unsurprisingly, for someone so wedded to all things Glentoran, it was a horrible experience, with Birney claiming the Blues were so preoccupied with winning, even at that age, that they forgot who they were dealing with – impressionable teenagers, not yet men.
If nothing else, Birney’s fierce loyalty proves the old enmity between Belfast’s traditional Big Two is alive and well, and that no matter how far either falls from grace, it will always be the Irish League’s most ferocious rivalry.
Of course Glentoran have been a pale shadow of what went before for a decade now and Birney knows it.
It’s through no fault of the current crop that the club racked up debts topping £1.7million which brought them to the brink of ruin, to the point where one of their biggest creditors even locked the gates of the Oval.
And to avoid the financial hangmen who were waiting to pull the plug, chairman Stephen Henderson and the Glentoran board had to cut their cloth accordingly.
Steering the ship through raging waters often meant jettisoning some of the club’s best players – a tactic which never plays out well on the terraces – with the added insult that the buying club was often Linfield.
It’s been a chastening period for the proud east Belfast institution, humiliating at times too, and Birney admits he’s been scarred by much of it.
But, out of the blue, the news last week that the club was almost debtfree was a seismic development for those, like Birney, who hold the club in their hearts.
There have been many false dawns before, of course, but this one feels like the real deal, and few would relish a Glens resurgence quite like Birney.
“For me personally, and being a fan of the club more so than anything, it’s very positive,” he said, referring to the boardroom update.
“It was an article I paid particular interest too whereas maybe some of the other players wouldn’t have such, but being about the future of Glentoran, we seem to be in very good hands and hopefully we can get more investment on the playing side and start making our way up the table because that’s what we need to be doing. It’s not going to be an over- 12.02.2019 thing, it’s going to be a process, but with the debt getting wiped out, and with a new management team in place, it’s really now the playing side that needs to improve and hopefully we can get some investment in.
“But there is definitely quality in the team at the minute too, and what we have there should be further up the table, but for one reason or other we find ourselves further down than we should be.
“But there’s a good feeling since Smicker [Smyth] and Leeper [Leeman] have taken over.
“That’s no disrespect to Ronnie [Mcfall], I just feel Ronnie didn’t need the situation that panned out, it was caused by the players and he didn’t need it at his age.”
Indeed for Birney, one of the most unedifying and recurring features of his nine years at the club has been the unceremonious and ugly manner in which the end tends to come around for managers of Glentoran.
The Oval has been a graveyard for reputations, from the up-and-coming to the hugely experienced, with Mcfall the latest ushered down the plank – the fifth such casualty since Scott Young handed the then 18-yearold Birney his first pro deal in 2012.
With the exception of Alan Kernaghan, whom he clashed with, Birney got on great with them all and admits it was tough watching good men being hounded from the jobs they loved.
“Scott Young was the first manager I had here but I actually made my debut under Eddie [Patterson],” explained Birney.
“I had a good relationship with Eddie and we still keep in touch, he made us a team who were very difficult to beat, and while we weren’t the most attacking team, we were cernight tainly hard to beat, defensively sound and set up well.
“And after Alan, Gary [Haveron] came in, again a coach who I have a lot of respect for.
“I haven’t a bad word to say about him, he’s one of the good guys in football, he wore his heart on his sleeve, he did all he could, he was very good to me and I was sad for him the way it ended.
“But he’s still young in terms of management and I know he’s enjoying himself now in his role down at Larne and it’s good he hasn’t been put off because it did turn quite sour towards the end.
“And then Ronnie came in. He was a lot different to anything I had worked under, very old school which I liked, he was very straight, you knew where you stood with him.
“Ronnie has this hard exterior, but when you get knowing him and get working with him, he’s a real good guy too.
“I had a really good relationship with him and I was almost glad to see him walk away from it in the sense that a man his age didn’t need that stress and the abuse from the terraces.
“And now it’s Smicker and Leeper who have Glentoran in their blood, they know the game inside out and know the club inside out. They are a real good fit and hopefully they can bring the glory days back.”
An articulate and searingly honest interviewee, and as someone who carefully considers his answers, the use of the phrase “glory days” is no mere sound bite here.
It’s clear Birney pines after the good times and like the men in charge has the club in his blood.
He’ll never criticise the fans for