ON Wednesday morning my cousin Gerard Mulhern posted a couple of photographs on his Twitter page entitled ‘Down Memory Lane’.
One was of the old boys of Ashton Gate (pictured), a north Belfast junior football team, and the other of the old boys of Cromac Albion.
Ashton Gate was formed by my late father, Gerry Crossan, in the early 1980s. When Ashton Gate had outgrown the Dunmurry & District League – now known as the Belfast & District League – they amalgamated with Amateur League club Cromac Albion in 1985.
My father managed both teams.
The photograph on this page was taken in September 2010 in memory of him. He battled cancer for 20 months before passing away on May 27 2010.
In the last year of his life he met Max Watson, a palliative care doctor of the NI Hospice. Upon writing these words and describing Max Watson as merely a palliative care doctor doesn’t come close to doing him justice.
Max was a giant of a man. Calm, gentle, always smiling and a wonderful sense of humour.
Max Watson was humanity itself.
During those many trips to the NI Hospice on the Somerton Road, Max and my father became firm friends. Even though the two of them knew exactly what the deal was and how it would end, Max somehow always represented light.
A dose of Max was good for the soul, good for my father’s soul.
This photograph was taken at Donegal Celtic Football Club on a lovely Sunday afternoon. Ashton Gate Old Boys versus Cromac Albion Old Boys even though many of them were team-mates at one time or another.
The sun shone brightly and a few dozen middle-aged men tried to turn back the clock and re-live their Saturday afternoon youth.
The years had been kinder to some more than others.
Family and friends descended on O’Donnell’s GAC that evening for a NI Hospice fundraiser.
It was weird playing in that game almost 11 years ago – years that have gone by in a blink of an eye. It was weird because in many ways I was playing alongside many of my childhood heroes.
While kids idolise Ronaldo and Messi, I got to see mine at the side of a park pitch every Saturday afternoon. Win, lose or draw, watching Ashton Gate and Cromac Albion was the most perfect childhood because you lived every minute of every game.
There was Frankie Campbell. Frankie played Gaelic football for Pearse's in north Belfast.
You could tell because he marked a player in soccer like a full-back or a corner-back would in Gaelic football. Frankie never got flustered and was never beaten.
There was none craftier in the box than Gerry Donnelly. The late Pat Maguire was perpetual motion in midfield, an utterly fearless competitor.
There was Brian 'Red' Donnelly who'd a heart the size of St James's and excelled when Cromac won back-to-back Amateur League titles in the late 80s.
He called himself 'Big Red' even though he stood at barely 5ft 9in.
You had Francie Murphy, the sweetest left peg you could find and John McAuley who was a hugely gifted, intelligent winger.
In later times, big Tommy Brady was a colossus at the back for Cromac. The names trip off the tongue: Colm Quinn, Oliver McAuley, Gerry Brown, Frank O'Kane, Sean O'Kane, Eamonn Hawkins, Pat Brannigan, Paul Bradley, Raymie Bonner, big Gerry McConville and Mickey Dornan.
I still remember Gerry McConville’s face at the final whistle on the day Cromac pulled off one of the greatest upsets in Irish Cup history by beating Ards 1-0 at Castlereagh Park.
My younger self is sixth from the left in the back row. Two places to my left in the photograph is John ‘Jant’ Lindsay whose ashes were buried in Milltown Cemetery on Wednesday afternoon. One of life’s good people who was taken far too soon.
To my immediate right is Noel Ferran.
I remember going along to Mourneview Park with my father to watch Noel play for Glenavon. I don’t know how much time passed but it didn’t seem that long before he was wearing the number nine blood-red jersey of Ashton Gate.
I idolised Noel more than any other player probably because there was nobody who came close to him on a football field.
He had everything. He was the definition of class.
A striker who could play absolutely anywhere on the pitch, Noel played with such flair and possessed the kind of balance and awareness that no coach or manager could ever teach.
He’d kill a ball in an instant at any speed or angle it came at him and could rise like a salmon, scoring some wonderful headed goals.
He could play any way you wanted too.
In the mind’s eye, I can see Noel dancing past the Killyleagh left back up at Cross & Passion school on the Glen Road and can still hear the slap of the netting when Sean O’Kane volleyed the ball home in the closing stages to win the league title for Cromac Albion in 1986.
Back then, all these men were just regular working-class Joes, ducking and diving their way through difficult times.
But, through a child’s eyes, they occupied a loftier status.
It’s hard to believe some of these memories are almost 40 years old.
Before the pandemic struck, you’d breeze into The Rock Bar on the Falls Road on any given Saturday afternoon and you’d find ‘Big Red’, Frankie, Noel, ‘Mac’ and other members of the two former clubs.
Looking older at a glance, but still pristinely bound by a thousand past glories and failures.
If you sit in their company long enough, they morph back to their mid-20s again.
When they were kings.
And when eternal youth was a given.
