Derry different ball game to greed of out-of-touch dozen
IT’S HARD to remember a week when footballing passions burned quite so intensely. Sunday’s announcement of a shiny new European Super League sent the game into meltdown with condemnation for the proposals coming from fans, pros, pundits and politicians.
As we now know, this innovative plan to ‘save football’ held strong for all of a day and a half before the majority of this pioneering band of brothers realised just who buttered their bread and backtracked amid a flurry of mealy mouthed apologies.
Having proved themselves to be so out of touch with the industry which serves them so richly, the owners of the 12 clubs involved would do well to watch a rather special and heart-warming documentary, Different League (BBC iPlayer) – which, given the circumstances, may well have passed them by when it first graced our screens on Monday night – to see just what passion and saving football is truly all about.
Different League tells the tale of Derry City Football Club which, owing to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, found itself exiled for 13 years before rising to win a historic domestic treble and take on Benfica in the European Cup – now the Champions League and suddenly everyone’s favourite competition.
Derry’s rebirth was down to two former Northern Ireland internationals Tony O’Doherty (right) and Terry Harkin plus former players Eddie Mahon and Eamonn McLaughlin, the so-called Gang of Four, who in 1985 after more than a decade in the wilderness overcame barriers and crossed borders to bring football back to the Brandywell Stadium. The story of how this quartet breathed life into their hometown club and watched it rise to compete with European football’s elite is a remarkable one.
However, their journey was not without its problems both familiar and frightening. They had to cross the border into the Republic to find a league that would let them play, managerial infighting threatened to unravel their fine work and following a bomb threat their big European night was only saved after a certain Martin McGuinness, the former IRA commander, went into the local cemetery which overlooked the ground and threw a ‘substantial device’ which had been found down a manhole. As a local journalist remarks: ‘It’s fair to say he had more experience in such matters.’ For anyone that loves football, Different League is a delight. Unfortunately, Real Madrid president Mr Perez and his fellow Super League conspirators just won’t get it.