Details
Date: 1964 & 1965
Ref: Celtic players play in disguise for charity tournament in Ireland!
Location: Moville, Inishowen
Soccer superstars in disguise thrill in Moville
Published: 08:19 Saturday 06 October 2012
Source: https://www.derryjournal.com/lifestyle/nostalgia/soccer-superstars-in-disguise-thrill-in-moville-1-4339200
It’s like something straight out of the ‘jumpers for goalposts’ era of football and nearly unfathomable now. Imagine the top names of the footballing world, say Gerrard, Giggs or Rooney, disguising themselves in false beards and turning out in a summer tournament for amateurs. Well, back in the early sixties, in the idyllic Inishowen surrounds of Moville, that’s exactly what happened.
One such team was the hitherto consigned to history, Carfin Emeralds.
The Emeralds came from Scotland, then leading the way in European football – Glasgow Celtic would be crowned European Champions by 1967 (it is said up to as many of nine Celtic first teamers turned out for the Emeralds.)
The brains behind the Emeralds was Moville native, Monsignor Jack Gillen, who by the early 1960’s was ministering in Scotland.
Monsignor Gillen had the brainwave of sending over a team of professionals who might sweep all before them but who would certainly swell the numbers flocking through the gates at the Bay Field.
But how could these footballers get around the fact that, contractually, they were prohibited from playing in such ‘junior’ competitions where any injuries sustained could damage their future careers and certainly jeopardise their relationships with the clubs who had them under contract and paid their wages?
Who thought of it then? The only solution? To come to play in the Bay Field in Moville in disguise! What kind of disguise? Masks, false beards and make up!
The Carfin Emeralds made their Kennedy Cup bow in 1963, but it was the following year 1964, that they really captured the imagination.
In the first round they faced Derry’s own Tonnage Dockers, the men from Down the Quay, managed by Sammy Wilson and Jack (Jeek) Doherty.
After this first match rumours flew fast and furious all over town: ‘Who are these guys?’ “ Whoever they are, they’re not as hot as they were cracked up to be!’ “Was that really the young Jimmy Johnstone on the wing” “Was that Pat Crerand in the middle?” “Naw not with passing like that” “Maybe he’s been on the stout since he got here?”
1-1 the result in the first drawn game and the ‘mystery’ team were maybe no great shakes? The replay told a different story .
Twenty minutes into the game Carfin were three up. Dockers now needed a miracle “Mc Clean tried desperately to get the Dockers attack moving but it was Emeralds who scored again,” records the Journal of the day.
And so it was: “Emeralds sparkled at Moville” the Journal headline summarising the replay, 7-3 the result and the biggest crowd of the season witnessed the demolition of Dockers.
No names to identify the Emeralds were printed in the local reports. Their anonymity a thing to spur speculation wherever football fans gathered.
The quarter final draw to be played in early September that year-pitched Carfin Emeralds against Rosemount.
The Derry Journal reporter described that quarter final as ‘one of the best games seen at the Bay Field since the inception of the Kennedy cup’s big money prize’.
Emeralds held on for a 3-2 victory but Rosemount could have dented Emeralds reputation with a storming second half comeback after being three down at the interval.
Some of the shroud of mystery seems to be unravelling from around the Carfin Emeralds team by this stage in the competition for at least two of their players- Mochan and Haughey their goalkeeper- are named by the intrepid Derry Journal reporter of the day.
Emeralds faced Foyle Rovers in the second semi-final.
Admission was 2/6. with buses leaving Great James Street at 1.30 p.m. to be in time for the 3pm (sharp) kick-off.
That encounter too was a close affair decided by a solitary second half goal scored brilliantly by the aforementioned Mochan.
But now the Journal is naming the Emeralds goalkeeper as Haffey,- any relation of the famous Celtic keeper of that name?- and while the Rosemount line-out is reported, man after man, there is no team sheet for Carfin.
This Carfin Emeralds semi-final victory meant they would now be playing Manchester Athletic in the final scheduled for October 11th “a Scottish – English cross- channel affair”.
The back page advert for the final includes the information that Tamnaherin Children’s Accordion Band would be ‘in attendance’.
Admission remained at 2/6. The Derry Journal coverage of the final includes several photographs, one of which is captioned “Members of the Carfin Emeralds team, most of whom wore false beards side-whiskers and make-up are introduced to Rev. H Gallagher C.C. Moville before the kick-off..”
The Emeralds completed a convincing victory, Derry born goalkeeper Joe Cassidy, ‘custodian’ for the Manchester team picking the ball out of his net seven times. For this match more Emerald players named are ‘ Rainey, Mitchell, Ward and Howley’ with “Coyle” now their goalkeeper.
And so the 1964 Kennedy Cup left for Scotland, and the north west footballing fraternity were left wondering just who were the mystery superstars in disguise.
That’s not a scar but the glue stitches from the false beard the player was wearing!
From When Saturday Comes (2013)
The strange case of the Carfin Emeralds
The strange case of the Carfin Emeralds
https://tirnaog09.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-strange-case-of-carfin-emeralds.html
Jack Gillen was born in May 1916 in Moville, Donegal but like many folk from that fine county life was to bring him over the Irish Sea to Scotland. For many it was the allure of work in the mines, factories or fields which drew them, but for Jack it was to work as a Priest among the Catholics of Scotland. It was said that the loves of Jack’s life were his faith, his family, his Parish in Glenboig and Celtic football club. Football played a major part in his life and he organised teams in just about every parish he worked in and would regale folk of the tale of the all-conquering Glenboig St Joseph’s team who had swept all before them in 1947. It transpired one of their players had been economical with the truth about his age and when the football authorities found out they stripped the team of their Scottish cup and banned them from competing in the Lanarkshire Cup Final just a few days later.
Like many an Irishman spending time working outside his native land, he kept in touch and visited as often as his duties allowed. His brother owned a hotel in Moville and by the mid-sixties had organised an annual football tournament for Junior clubs (non-Professional) which was to be called the Kennedy Cup. It was thought that a summer football tournament might attract more tourists to Donegal. The prize money built up as the years progressed until by 1964 the amount on offer was £2000. (£38,000 in today’s money) This of course sparked great interest in the tournament with teams entering from all over Ireland and the UK. It also meant that the Junior clubs involved were not above using ‘ringers’ to improve their squads and as it was played in the summer there were professional players around willing to earn a bit extra by turning out for club’s involved in the Kennedy cup.
Father Gillen was of course well aware of the prize money available to the winners of the Kennedy cup and got thinking of how it might be of great use in his working class parish back in Scotland. A seed was germinating in his brain and he had a host of connections throughout the church in central Scotland who might know of some decent Junior players who might be put together to form a decent team. The decision about what to call the team was perhaps swayed by Father Jack’s knowledge of the area around his church. His parish; St Teresa’s in Newarthill, was but a short walk from the grotto to Our Lady at Carfin built almost 100 years ago by unemployed miners and builders. So it was that the Carfin Emeralds was born and entered into the Kennedy cup in 1963. They did well but didn’t win the cup that year. Perhaps a higher grade of player was required to make them successful the following year?
The Emeralds of 1964 was to be strengthened by professional players who had been approached by Father Gillen’s contacts in various churches across Lanarkshire and Glasgow. There was however the problem of professionals being forbidden by their clubs from taking part in amateur football matches in the off season as the risk of injury was obvious. We can imagine the priest’s eyebrows rising when he saw the list of players willing to help him out and play for the Carfin Emeralds in Ireland. Some of the names on the list played for his beloved Celtic.
So it was that in the summer of 1964 one of the stranger episodes in the history of Celtic took place when some of their star players took to Bay Field Park in Moville, wearing a variety of disguises. It is said some wore false beards, wigs and even make up to allay suspicion but Donegal being Donegal there were Celtic supporters in the crowd who would have looked on knowingly. That little winger jinking past defenders looked familiar? In their first game against the Tonnage Dockers, a tough tackling team from Derry they drew 1-1 but the replay saw the Emeralds win 7-3 as they got more used to the conditions. None of the Emeralds’ players were mentioned in press reports of the games as the tournament unfolded by rumours were spreading and the crowds increasing.
A team called the Rosemounts were defeated next as the Emeralds swept into the semi-final where Foyle Rovers awaited. It was a tight game decided by a goal scored by Neil Mochan, by then playing for Raith Rovers and still a very fit and capable player. The Derry Journal had by now recognised some of the players and Haughney, Mochan and Haffey were mentioned by name. As The Carfin Emeralds Lined up to face Manchester Athletic in the final before a large and excitable crowd a photographer caught the moment the Emeralds were being introduced to local dignitaries. When the picture was printed in the paper it was captioned with the words…
“Members of the Carfin Emeralds team, most of whom wore false beards side-whiskers and make-up are introduced to Rev. H Gallagher C.C. Moville before the kick-off.”
The final itself was a triumph for the Scottish side who crashed seven goals past the Manchester side to win the cup. So it was that Father Gillen’s team won the cup and the prize money which was put to good use in his parish and beyond. The team lines of the Carfin Emeralds were conveniently ‘lost’ back in the mid-1960s and we may never be sure exactly which Celtic players took part in the tournament. We might guess the reaction of Jock Stein had he found out that some of his players were injury by playing in the Kennedy cup.
As for Father Jack, he served several Parishes in Scotland, his last being St Columbkille’s in Rutherglen, before retiring to his beloved Donegal in 1992. He passed away in 1995 and perhaps only he knew the full extent of his use of Celtic players in his team. He may have bent the rules a little but it was for a good cause. Footballers were more closely involved in their local communities than perhaps they are today. In those times if a local Priest asked a player to help out in a charity match or suchlike few would refuse.
It would be hard to imagine a modern day Carfin Emeralds taking the Field with Tierney or McGregor in their ranks. Perhaps the 1960s were more innocent times.
The Legend of Jinky, the Moville Master of Disguise
Did Celtic starlet Jimmy Johnstone play incognito in Irish tournament to raise church funds?
The first Covid lockdown had not long begun when I met a neighbour in the field by my house. We were, as per the government guidance, standing the requisite distance apart as I was engaged in one of the strangest conversations – at least from a journalistic perspective – I’d ever had.
Lockdown had its consolations for us writers. Interviewees, evidently bored out of their minds, would answer the phone and still be chatting hours later – a rare but welcome phenomenon for journalists attempting to gather as many specifics as possible for whichever story they happened to be working on. That spring day, my neighbour told me in some detail a tale so extraordinary that I initially felt certain it could only be an urban myth. I spent a week researching it for a piece in The Herald, speaking to witnesses and those who had had the story passed down to them.
The County Donegal town of Moville used to hold a summer football tournament called the Kennedy Cup with a £2,000 prize fund. Teams would travel from across Ireland and further afield to compete in it, usually loaded with professional and semi-professional players. One such team, the Carfin Emeralds, won the tournament in 1964 and legend has it that as many as nine Celtic first-team players were in their ranks. The suggestion was not as ludicrous as it sounds today: Paddy Crerand, the Scotland and Manchester United midfielder who won the European Cup in 1968, played in the Kennedy Cup in the early ’60s, as did Johnny Crossan, the Northern Ireland and Manchester City midfielder. In the summer of 1961, the Celtic players Mike Jackson and Billy McNeill competed in a tournament in Spain without the permission of their club or the Scottish Football Association. They were photographed walking down the steps of a plane after their flight back to Glasgow, landing themselves in hot water with both Celtic and the governing body, and were each later fined £50.
The story of the 1962 Carfin Emeralds entrants was like an episode of Father Ted. An Irish priest – a certain Father Jack Gillen, formerly of Moville – needed funds to continue the building work on St Teresa’s Church in his parish of Newarthill in North Lanarkshire and alighted on the idea of putting together a football team to play in the lucrative summer tournament in his hometown. If they could pull off that feat, the prizemoney would go a long way to completing the new chapel.
Professionals were rumoured to be in the ’62 Emeralds team, including ex-Scotland internationals. It would certainly explain why, when the players took to the Bay Field football pitch in Moville for matches, most of them were wearing disguises – from masks and boot polish to glasses, wigs and false beards. The name Jimmy Johnstone cropped up more than once. The Jimmy Johnstone. Jinky, as he was affectionately known, who is immortalised in statue form outside Celtic Park alongside Brother Walfrid, Jock Stein and Billy McNeill. Was Celtic’s greatest-ever player really putting his body on the line for a ragtag team in Ireland just a few years before he won the European Cup against Inter Milan in Lisbon?
Most of this part of the story is documented in my Herald piece, Irish newspapers of the day, and a few articles on websites and in Celtic publications by people who, like me, had become captivated. Less well-known is the Scottish version of events, however. Enter Tommy McGinn, a bricklayer from Lanarkshire and a friend of Father Gillen’s who helped run Irish nights in Hamilton Town Hall and who was a pal of the Irish comedian Frank Carson. Tommy was the manager of the Carfin Emeralds. He died a few years ago but a telephone call to his brother Charlie revealed that Tommy and Father Gillen would tour Lanarkshire towns such as Croy, Viewpark and Uddingston, taking in football matches with a view to recruiting players. They were a prolific partnership, and Father Gillen would give the hard sell to entice the players. This included details about their cut of the Kennedy Cup jackpot and which bookmakers would be willing to take a bet on Carfin winning the trophy. Father Gillen’s family owned a hotel in Moville and so food, drink and accommodation would be provided; the players would only have to pay for their boat ticket. However, the players’ biggest concern was that they could play without being exposed.
“Father Gillen had to take a chance, he couldn’t insure them in any way,” said Charlie. “People said it was Father Gillen’s team but he took a back seat once it was up and running, he didn’t go over for the matches. My brother was the main man for recruiting the players. Father Gillen was the one reassuring them that it would be all right because it would be to raise funds for a church in Newarthill.
“A lot of the players said: ‘I’ll play, but I don’t want to get into any trouble with my team.” One of the parishioners, Christy McIvor, was in amateur dramatics, so he was the one who set them up with the beards and disguises. There were a lot of people watching and there were a lot of cameramen at the games, and people looking for information all over the place. The lads couldn’t afford to be found out.
“My brother would convince the players that they would be masked up and they would be all right with their clubs. Christy went over to the games in Moville to see that things were all right, to make sure they were all made up.”
Unfortunately, because it was patently obvious that most of the players were wearing disguises, onlookers and the local press endeavoured to establish their identities. It certainly made for great copy. The Aberdeen Evening Express reported on July 19, 1962: “The ‘mystery’ footballers from Lanarkshire, the Carfin Emeralds, flew out to-day from Renfrew Airport, Glasgow, for another series of games in northern Ireland. One of their officials explained before boarding the plane for Belfast: ‘There is nothing [to] hide about us. We have no professionals and none of our team is signed for any club. Apart from this week-end when they are on holiday, some of the lads have taken a few days off work to play in Ireland. They would get into trouble if their bosses found out.’”
Ten days later, a report appeared in The Belfast Telegraph about how angry Carfin Emeralds players had confronted their photographer when he had snapped them as they exited the tournament at the quarter-final stage:
A Carfin player who was being photographed punched the cameraman, another kicked him, and the contents of a mineral water bottle were thrown over him. The Pressman was able to get away only when a couple of other members of the Carfin side came to his assistance. This was an ugly scene which destroyed completely the gimmicky carnival atmosphere Carfin may have tried to create by appearing in masks, dark glasses and false beards.
Officials of the Scottish team repeated that the players were amateurs who, on the occasion of their first trip to Moville, had taken a week-end off work and didn’t want their employers to know. Hence the refusal to give names. But this hostility to the Pressman seemed to indicate even stronger reasons for avoidance of publicity.
Only one of the Carfin players was undisguised; centre-half Frank Brennan, the ex-Scottish international. But as far as the Moville competition is concerned the Carfin Emeralds’ bubble is burst. In a tough, no-quarter given game, Albert Celtic, Belfast beat them 3-2.
Some of the Belfast players played with false beards and moustaches. But one of their officials supplied a team list to the Press and said — “They have only put on the disguise for laughs. The team is made up of amateur players who have nothing to hide. We have been playing in this competition for several years now.”
Of course, the reason for the disguises was not high-jinx but indeed to prevent the players from getting into trouble with their clubs. So was Jinky one of the 1962 mystery men? Back then, the winger was aged just 17 and plying his trade in the Celtic reserve team, and not the instantly familiar figure he would become. Therefore any attempt at disguise would only have been to prevent photographic evidence from getting back to Scotland and people who might have recognised him.
In an effort to shed more light on the puzzle, I spoke to a man who was making a film about the Kennedy Cup. Tom O’Flaherty had worked as an editor on a number of sports and music films including documentaries about Dennis Rodman, the Ireland rugby team, David Haye, Van Morrison, U2 and The Chieftains. Tom had in his possession Super8 camera footage of a man roughly fitting the description of Jinky. I say “roughly” because this individual looked stockier and taller than Johnstone. The players is wearing a mask to protect his identity and has a shock of ginger hair, but some have suggested that this was dyed. Tom was certain this was Jinky, but the footage is from the 1964 tournament and there are real doubts that Johnstone went to Moville that year. He certainly visited in the 1970s, as Tom testified: “I saw the presentation of the Eamon Gillen Memorial Trophy (which replaced the Kennedy Cup), and Billy McNeill, Bobby Lennox and Jinky Johnstone were over in the Bay Field presenting that trophy. I know that for a fact.”
But did Johnstone ever actually play for Carfin Emeralds? There was a rumour that the Derry City manager at the time pursued him all over Moville – from pub to pub – in an effort to sign him.
“No one ever got to the bottom of who played or didn’t play, but it was a great buzz at the time with these guys running out with their faces covered in boot polish. It was a bit of craic,” former City goalkeeper Eddie Mahon told me.
Eddie himself played in the Kennedy Cup, but he doubted whether the Johnstone story had any truth to it, even if he enjoyed keeping the myth alive. “People still talk about it and it loses nothing in the telling,” he added. “I personally would be sceptical if there were any big names. Jimmy Johnstone is the one that always crops up. That would have been maybe 1962. Maybe he was a kid coming through. It’s a bit like the Loch Ness monster – we’ll let the legend continue.”
If there was one man who could clear up the mystery, it was Charlie McGinn.
“A lot of people around Carfin and Newarthill said they knew this or knew that about it – but they didn’t,” he said. “Over the years, this one and that one were supposed to have played but it was mostly a secret because all of the lads were playing football and they didn’t want to get into trouble. Half the team would have been senior players and the rest was made up of good junior players ready to step into the senior ranks.
“Wee Jinky Johnstone? Aye, he played. It would have been the early ’60s. Wee Johnstone was just coming through with the Celtic reserves. That area – Viewpark and Uddingston – there was a lot of players from down there, junior players ready to get signed up for senior teams.”
So there you have it. A Kennedy Cup medal would evade Jinky in 1962 after that defeat by Albert Celtic. He would have to settle for a European Cup winner’s medal instead.