FACEBOOK sometimes has its uses. Flashed across my mobile phone on Thursday morning was the news that Newington FC’s chairman Colum Burns was stepping down from his role.
To the casual observer, this may sound like run-of-the-mill news: ‘Local football team sees long-serving member retire’.
And, of course, that’s true. But, in north Belfast circles, the news had a decidedly bigger impact.
You’d like to think there is a Colum Burns in every sports club – but few have volunteered for as long as he has and navigated so many difficult periods since co-founding the club back in 1979, originally christened Jubilee Olympic.
Austere days when ‘the Troubles’ raged and playing football on muddy park pitches every Saturday afternoon.
Back in those days you were surrounded by street footballers. Jubilee Olympic first played in the Dunmurry and District League – now known as the Belfast & District League.
I don’t remember Burnsy playing anywhere else other than centre back.
He wasn’t your ball-playing type of defender, and he wasn’t that quick. His greatest assets were he knew what he could do and what he couldn’t do on a football pitch.
He was one of those players many a striker thought they would get the better of over 90 minutes but few of them did because he was such a tough competitor.
He loved being depicted as an unfashionable centre back. For him, there was a dogged glory in that.
Jubilee Olympic later became Newington Football Club and in the 90s they’d assembled a brilliant team, winning league after league title, Junior Cups and Junior Shields.
Like many ambitious junior clubs, Newington had the desire to play at a higher level. When Burnsy’s playing days were coming to an end he’d no intentions of disappearing from view.
Newington was his baby, his hobby, his cherished club – and was a place that housed and nourished life-long friendships. He was the club’s DNA.
For over 40 years, he’s always been present. And there were times it wasn’t always a happy-go-lucky journey.
Through lean times, he organised many a committee meeting and feared for the club’s future. He’s organised a million fundraisers during that time too.
And when there was the fraught difficulty around teams from nationalist areas playing against RUC teams and the pressure to not participate against them, while the club ran the risk of losing their hard-earned place in the Amateur League, he was the consummate diplomat.
He had the people skills, wily intelligence, and a unique kind of leadership to always find a way and to keep the show on the road when Newington Football Club looked a lost cause.
Today, the club is playing in the Championship – one rung below the Irish Premiership. It’s been some journey. Gambles were taken along the way. Some paid off. Some didn’t.
I remember in the early 'Noughties, the club’s pitch at Muckamore Park had somehow passed the criteria to gain entry to the Amateur League’s Premier Section.
The big sticking point was that the pitch needed a fence around the playing area. The club always survived on a hand-to-mouth basis so finding the coin for a fence was a daunting task.
But somebody from somewhere got their hands on fencing and one sunny Saturday afternoon everyone off-loaded the steel frames and heavy rubber bases from Hamo’s van and erected the fence. I don’t know if Burnsy was there that day. He must’ve been because he was always there.
Terry Pateman, Mr Amateur League back then, arrived a couple of weeks later with a team of inspectors and, against all odds, he gave the fence the green light.
I always doubted the rickety fence’s durability, but I’d like to think Mr Pateman ignored some of its flaws and instead focused on the raging ambition within Newington’s ranks.
Through the good times and bad, Burnsy’s shoulder was perpetually at the wheel.
After yet another bleak annual report of the club’s finances, Burnsy’s anarchic wit – although not always welcome at the time – certainly broke the ice and sometimes was the best medicine.
For a good number of years, I was among the ageing five-a-siders who tried to recreate their youth every Wednesday and Friday night at the Valley Leisure Centre's 3G pitches.
I’ve never encountered a player who could use their backside as well as Burnsy used his. Approaching 60, slower than ever and whose second touch of the ball was often a tackle, he was still virtually impossible to get around.
A dodgy hip put paid to my five-a-side career some years ago – but Burnsy is still playing, still using his backside to great effect and outlasting the younger crew around him.
In life, people like Colum Burns are rare breeds. They are the ones who give so much and ask for so little in return.
Over the years, the club has scaled many mountains.
From becoming top dogs in junior football back in the 90s, to breaking into the Amateur League’s top division and dominating it, to beating Glentoran in the Irish Cup on that mad day nearly 12 years ago, to winning two unforgettable Steel & Sons Cups on Christmas Day, to now be punching their weight in the Championship (thanks to the club’s friends at Larne FC) has certainly been a road less travelled.
But all of this has only been made possible by the volunteering spirit of people like Colum Burns and refusing to give up when the club wavered at the cliff edge so many times.
All this is written to a friend of so many – and in the hope that his texts to me to buy another Last Man Standing will finally cease.
Somehow, I doubt it. See you on Saturday. Cheers, Burnsy.
