“The last time I saw him was back in 1968, I was there in Old Trafford and he was like a butterfly going down the wing. That was the last time I saw him,” Christy Moore dedicates 'Butterfly' to George Best.
BEFORE he left the building site on Friday afternoon to catch the last flight home, Raymond Fitzpatrick had a bad feeling.
His Friday evenings always went like clockwork. He would finish work on the site in Bedford, west London around 4pm, hop on the train to Luton Airport and arrive back in Belfast International Airport.
He would be home with his wife Catriona and his 22-month-old Olivia late on Friday night and play for Lurgan Celtic the following afternoon before returning to London late on Sunday night.
A bricklayer by trade, Fitzpatrick was forced to move to London for work last summer. Rather than lose their top goalscorer, Lurgan Celtic offered to pay part of his plane fare home each week.
But on this particular Friday - the night before Celtic’s Irish Cup quarter-final with Portadown earlier this month - things didn’t go like clockwork: “I usually work up to 4 o’clock on Friday and get the train around 5.15pm,” says Fitzpatrick, “but the train had to stop because there was another train broken down on the line.
“We sat for 10 or 15 minutes until it got moved off our line. So by the time I got to the airport, it was 6.40pm and the screens for Easyjet were all blank. I’ve been travelling back and forward for the last year, so I knew where to go. But that Friday, I was running around the airport like a mad man. Just as I found the gate, the plane was pulling out. It was panic stations then because there were no seats available for the Saturday morning flight.”
As Fitzpatrick made his way back to his London digs, there was a real chance he would miss Lurgan Celtic’s big cup game. Thankfully, a seat on the first flight out of Luton on the Saturday morning became available.
With little sleep, Fitzpatrick got back home on the morning of the game, played against the Ports and scored the winning penalty in stoppage-time to book the club’s first-ever Irish Cup semi-final berth.
In stroking home the penalty, Fitzpatrick also ended Ronnie McFall’s 29-year reign at Shamrock Park: “It was the worst preparation I’ve ever had for a match,” Fitzpatrick says.
“But it worked out alright. I didn’t feel too bad. Maybe the adrenaline and excitement of playing the game got me through. But it wasn’t ideal.”
Celtic boss Collie Malone’s pre-match confidence was entirely justified. The Lurgan Hoops led 2-0, but 10-man Portadown somehow clawed their way back into the game in the latter stages of the second-half.
“We were cruising at 2-0 and we deserved to be two up,and then Portadown got a wee bit of luck and got back into the game,” he says.
“When they equalised, it pushed us on more and we looked the more likely to score. And we got the penalty right at the end.”
Fitzpatrick adds: “I was confident we would have beaten them in extra-time because they were down to 10-men for a long time.
“I maybe wouldn’t have made it through extra-time as my calves were locking up with every run I made. It was probably the whole preparation that took its toll.”
Fitzpatrick, a talented GAA player with Shane O’Neill’s, Camlough, recalls he “didn’t feel nervous” before side-footing that historic spot-kick to the net. In times of stress, the 32-year-old has his own unique coping mechanism.
He listens to Butterfly, a soulful ballad covered by Christy Moore. It has a calming effect on the 6ft 2in striker. A friend he met on the sites in London, Paddy O’Kane, introduced him to the song one night.
“I just took a liking to the song when Paddy first played it in the bar,” says Manchester United fan Fitzpatrick.
“It chills me out. When I missed the plane that night, I listened to the song about 10 times on repeat. And I was listening to it in the changing rooms just before the Portadown game.
“In the live concert version, Christy Moore dedicates it to George Best. He talks about the last time he seen George Best, he was flying down the wing at Old Trafford. It would give you goosebumps… Paddy now calls me 'Butterfly'.”
As a teenager, Fitzpatrick started out playing for junior club Bessbrook United. He played one season for Newry City before an even shorter spell with Loughgall United. He’s spent the last decade playing for Lurgan Celtic and has been their top scorer on umpteen occasions.
Due to the club’s generosity and his desire to continue to wear the Celtic jersey, working in London hasn’t brought a close to his playing career just yet. The move to England, he says, was difficult to get used to, especially with a wife and young child at home.
“Work at home was a struggle all the time and I got fed up. I came home one night and told my wife: ‘I’m going to England to work'. I’d a few friends over in England and I asked them could they get me a start. I’ll do it for five or six years and make as much money as I can.”
Fitzpatrick leaves his digs every morning at 6.30 and returns at 6.30pm: “It’s tough work. We’re building the footings [foundations] all the time. The locals don’t want to do that sort of work; they say: ‘Let the Irish boys do that'.
“It keeps you in good shape. There’s a man working along with me - I met him through the Gaelic club - and he lost three stone in the first six months. You’re bending up and down and working all day at it.
“There’s a gym down the road from me in Bedford and I’d do a brave bit of road-running. The woman in the digs would make us dinner at 7pm. If you wait for your dinner, there’s no training happening, so a few nights a week I cancel my dinner and I go straight to the gym.”
Fitzpatrick adds: “There are loads of Irish over in London. I was talking to one of the security guards in the airport one week and he was saying: ‘There mustn’t be a man left in Ireland - the amount of people that go through Belfast International Airport [to England] would scare you'. You’d see the same people on the same flights.”
Fitzpatrick can’t wait for Celtic’s face-off with Linfield on Saturday afternoon: “On our day, we can give anybody a game,” he says.
Fitzpatrick won't be taking any chances this weekend. You can bet he'll be first at the departure gate.
