A grey heavy pebble-dashed wall forms the backdrop to a photo which is sixty years old. The still shows happy young faces which beam contentedly out through the glass fronted wall-cabinet. Positioned centrally, seated and lightly holding a football is Colm Mulholland. To his immediate left, arms folded, the act of which displays impressive natural biceps, is Tommy Doherty. No need for weight training in 1954, then. The two Lavey and Derry team-mates almost overlap and are framed to the front by Mick O’Neill and goalkeeper James McCloy – holding the silverware of the year, proudly won.<\/p>\n
That was then, this is now.<\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”http:\/\/derrygaa.ie\/features\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/lavey-fifty-four.jpg” align=”left” captionposition=”left” lightbox=”off”]\n
Some things don\u2019t change though. Take, for example, the recent black card and changes to the playing rules of Gaelic football. Many have remarked how it was removing the \u2018manliness\u2019 from the game.<\/p>\n
Images from the 1958 All-Ireland final between Derry and Dublin prompt Tommy Doherty to remember the art of \u2018defending\u2019 the square. Pictured jostling with Dave Guiney – with the Dublin forward strewn over the Lavey man\u2019s back like a sack of potatoes – the act of \u2018holding back\u2019 was part and parcel of the game as Doherty explains:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tough around the goal mouth at that time. My job at the time was to protect the goal keeper. If a high ball is coming in, you\u2019d have men rushing in after it. If I didn\u2019t do my job, [Patsy] Gormley would have been buried into the back of the net, ball and all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it would have counted,\u201d exclaims Mulholland.<\/p>\n
Corner backs and full backs acted like American football style \u2018blockers\u2019 defending both their goal and goalkeeper entirely legally with third man tackles, the outcome of which were \u2018down to how to the referee saw it\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany a man had to be put hard on his back, but that was just the way it was then,\u201d says Doherty, defiantly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to believe therefore that the third man tackles Mulholland and Doherty describe were only officially outlawed at the 1983 GAA Congress which saw heated debate on the matter \u2013 and last year the offence upgraded to a \u2018black card\u2019 offence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is food for thought there,\u201d concludes Mulholland.<\/p>\n[aesop_chapter title=”Playing days” bgtype=”img” img=”http:\/\/derrygaa.ie\/features\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/colm-tommy.jpg”]\n
Tommy Doherty and Colm Mulholland\u2019s playing days were always closely linked. \u201cTommy was younger than me by around two weeks,\u201d says Colm, before following up with: \u201cAnd he still is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulholland\u2019s first memories of Gaelic games are of being called upon whilst on the sideline of a schools game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember them just calling for me to fill in for someone on the team. My memory of the entire game wouldn\u2019t be great but I can still remember that first call.\u201d<\/p>\n
Captain of one of the earliest Derry minor football teams in 1947, Colm Mulholland, like Doherty, went on to play for Lavey and Derry at all levels \u2013 minor, junior and senior – during careers which saw them grace many pitches the length and breadth of Ireland, and further afield.<\/p>\n
1958 saw the two men play for Derry in a promotional challenge game against Galway at Wembley.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stayed in a hotel near Wembley stadium. We drove right into the circle in front of the stadium. There was a latch on the door to get into the stadium. Anyway, I saw this and thought to myself \u2018I\u2019ll have to be the first Gaelic player through the door at Wembley\u2019. Jim McKeever would say he was the first man out onto the pitch – he was the captain – but I was first through the door,\u201d says Doherty.<\/p>\n
The 1950 All-Ireland Junior Final against Mayo, which featured a young Mick Loftus, saw Colm Mulholland partner the legendary Mickey McNaught in midfield \u2013 a man he describes as \u2018a tireless player and a real warrior of a man\u2019, to the approval of Tommy Doherty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were done out of that match and I\u2019ll tell you, we were done out of a lot of matches by referees in those days. It nearly made me turn against the whole thing to be honest,\u201d says Mulholland, honestly and candidly.<\/p>\n
\u201cAntrim were going well at that time,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey had the Rossa men who, I\u2019d say, almost pioneered the use of the hand pass \u2013 like modern games. They had some great players like Paddy O\u2019Hara. He was the Messi of football at that time, and small too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doherty also has memories of O\u2019Hara having marked him in a game in Glasgow:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a blade of grass on the pitch. It was like cinders, shorter than the usual pitch and within view of Ibrox Stadium. There were some boys got awful injuries on that pitch. I remember Seamus Keenan [father of current county chairman, John] getting buried onto a row of forms which were alongside the pitch. That injury actually kept him out of the All-Ireland Junior final shortly after. If he had been on, I\u2019d say we would have walked that final.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a minor, junior and then a senior Derry footballer, Doherty recalls a debut at Celtic Park whilst Mulholland\u2019s first game was at the County Grounds, Magherafelt. The conversation flows but there\u2019s an added poignancy when Mulholland declares: \u201cIn a way, it\u2019s nice to look back but there\u2019s also a sad tinge to it, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n[aesop_chapter title=”Characters” bgtype=”img” img=”http:\/\/derrygaa.ie\/features\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/1958.jpg”]\n
The 1958 Derry team contained many famous names: McKeever, Gormley, Breen, Stuart and the Gribbins, to name but a few. However, rather than reminisce blandly, Colm Mulholland and Tommy Doherty are keen to analyse. You can sense a little frustration:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say that there was far too much talk about characters on football teams in those days. There wasn\u2019t enough talk about \u2018upstairs here\u2019,\u201d says Mulholland pointing toward his right temple.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost games through just not have the right talk done,\u201d agrees Doherty. \u201cI hardly heard tactics talked in my life when I was playing. At that time, a committee just picked the team. You\u2019d have been told things like \u2018just keep the ball in front of you\u2019 \u2013 the last words I think we were told going out for the 1958 final.\u201d<\/p>\n
The men are describing tactical naivety in an age where the game of Gaelic football was played totally \u2018off the cuff\u2019. Innocent maybe, but not for the betterment of the sport according to both.<\/p>\n
Committees are, of course, nothing new to either man. Doherty having first \u2018come up to the club\u2019 in 1944, has not missed a club convention since \u2013 something of which he is rightly proud.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a young boy, you\u2019d have had the likes of Joe Hurley, Jack Convery and big Master Fay around the place. He was a great man. Great at selecting teams, he would have been cute and known all about the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMick Crilly was first class too. I remember one day Mick stood at the goalpost.<\/p>\n
Well, the posts weren\u2019t concreted in at that time. Mick put his shoulder to the post at one stage, moving it just enough to result in a ball going wide from the opposition which wouldn\u2019t otherwise have gone wide\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cA true story,\u201d laughs Doherty.<\/p>\n
With Master John Fay at the helm, Doherty, Mulholland and the rest of the smiling faces went on to become Derry senior county champions in 1954:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole team went to Dungiven chapel before the game. It was against Banagher. Each one of us lit a candle and when we were finished, we walked down from the chapel and across the road. There used to be a big row of trees up there. Well, that\u2019s where the county final was played and a boy Friel from Belfast was the referee,\u201d says Doherty.<\/p>\n
The team wore new jerseys for the occasion; nothing new in that you might think. However, in an era where \u2018you could hardly have got jerseys for a club\u2019 the story unfolds that these black and orange numbers were purchased in Dublin following an All-Ireland final. Customs being what they were in the 50\u2019s, the jerseys had to be smuggled into the north, worn by a few carefully selected women.<\/p>\n[aesop_chapter title=”Outside Football” subtitle=”It was a sight to behold” bgtype=”img” img=”http:\/\/derrygaa.ie\/features\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/fleadh.jpg”]\n
When the serious issues of Gaelic football are shelved, temporarily of course, Mulholland and Doherty swap a shared passion for individual pursuits.<\/p>\n
A honorary member and a past captain of the nearby Moyola Golf club, and one of the principal architects of the course which he believes is now among the best in the country, Colm Mulholland loves the sport which he believes has now gone \u2018sky high\u2019:<\/p>\n
\u201cGolf has been very good to me over the past years. It\u2019s a great game. Some people think it\u2019s maybe an auld women\u2019s game running after a wee ball but I think it\u2019s something else. I would advise anyone thinking of taking up the game to go and play it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A famous name in Derry football, but an equally famous name in traditional music circles in the county, Tommy Doherty developed a lifelong association with Comhaltas, becoming a renowned performer with the squeeze box. With movement in his arm now restricted, Doherty recalls some significant achievements in the discipline:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gathered up a team from around Portglenone with three or four of my own family. We won the Ulster championship in Donegal. We won a lot of big tournaments and it was a time I really enjoyed. It\u2019s pleasing to see that the whole thing has really taken off. I went up to the Fleadh in Derry there for a day last year. It was a sight to behold. Powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Equally impressive are the magnificant surroundings of the Lavey club and facilities, which both the men populate regularly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe man that owned this place was Jimmy Diamond, a brother of John Joe Diamond. I was asked at a meeting could I maybe get in touch with him. He was in England at the time so I wrote to him. He wrote back and said he\u2019d be back on holidays and we should arrange to meet. So myself and Brian Mulholland eventually rigged it up. I can\u2019t remember how it finished but they signed it over anyway. I think it was about twenty three hundred we paid \u2013 cheap at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Modestly, Doherty refuses to take much credit for the land deal which gave birth to the magnificant surroundings enjoyed by the local community, and beyond, today but eventually admits the letter had \u2018a big part in it\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have good men at the top and it\u2019s powerful what we have here now. I come here myself every Thursday to work with Tommy Stevenson, who\u2019s a marvellous type of character from Lurgan. There\u2019s about fifty people in the hall there and they\u2019re all a brave age of people, doing all sorts of exercises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Young at heart and sharp of mind, Tommy Doherty and Colm Mulholland are two of the finest gentlemen of Derry GAA. With stories told and games relived, they re-enter club life seamlessly.<\/p>\n
“McIver’s doing a great job,” says Colm lifting a nearby publication.<\/p>\n
“How many national draw tickets are sold now?” Tommy enquires of a club official.<\/p>\n
Two men always thinking ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Derry clashed with Dublin in the 1958 All-Ireland final, Lavey duo Tommy Doherty and Colm Mulholland were corner back and centre half back, respectively. A grey heavy pebble-dashed wall forms the backdrop to a photo which is sixty years old. The still shows happy young faces which beam contentedly out through the glass fronted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n