Man and Bhoy
Neil Lennon

To Alisha and Gallagher

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

CHAPTER ONE: A Troubled Footballer

CHAPTER TWO: A Lurgan Bhoy

CHAPTER THREE: First Steps on the Ladder

CHAPTER FOUR: Joining Dario’s Crewe

CHAPTER FIVE: Out of the Depths

CHAPTER SIX: Moving Up, Moving On

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Flying Foxes

CHAPTER EIGHT: Life is a Rollercoaster

CHAPTER NINE: A Treble in Paradise

CHAPTER TEN: I was in Seville

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Trouble in the Streets

CHAPTER TWELVE: Farewell to the Kings

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Captain’s Log

Career Statistics

Index

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

I first met Neil Lennon one lovely summer morning not far from his home town of Lurgan in County Armagh. I was on the first rungs of the management ladder, and he was playing for Crewe Alexandra, trying to rebuild a footballing career that had been threatened by a serious back injury sustained as a young kid at Manchester City. We exchanged pleasantries, I wished him good luck with his life, walked away, and thought little more of Neil Lennon and his problems.

I had absolutely no idea that not many years later, when I was managing Leicester City, my assistant manager John Robertson and I would drive up to Stockport, encamp ourselves in some rundown hovel and try to persuade the occupant of the said hovel to come and help us get promotion at Leicester rather than play for Premiership club Coventry City, where he was bound the following day. I think I remember seeing a couple of mice in the corner of the sitting room, both probably deafened by some early Oasis music and wistfully eyeing the last remnants of a tuna sandwich lying on the sofa. John and I refused to leave until the ginger-haired, stockily built young Irishman gave us his word that he would join us. Whether or not the mice finished off that sandwich I just don’t know, but the lad decided to come to Leicester and save my bacon.

For the next four years he bestrode Filbert Street like a colossus, winning tackles, playing the ball, bawling out instructions, cajoling and generally being brilliant. ‘Lenny’, as his team-mates named him, had an immediate and lasting impact, not only in the dressing room but also on the field of play where it really mattered. Every Leicester City fan will testify to his excellence. Certainly, the club itself would not have achieved the success that followed had Neil not been there.

I left Leicester in June 2000, because the call of Celtic was too great to withstand. I immediately put in a big money offer to my former club in an attempt to persuade Neil to join me at Celtic. For various reasons, he didn’t arrive until December that year, playing his first game for the Hoops one bitterly cold evening at Dundee. We scrambled a late winner, but the following day, some unimpressed reporter wanted to know what was all the fuss about Neil Lennon? I think five-and-a-half years on, he’s got the picture. Whatever Neil achieved at Leicester City, he surpassed at his beloved Celtic.

Controversy and Neil seem inextricably linked but I suppose given his background—similar to my own—potential bother in Glasgow is never a million miles away. Just occasionally Neil might not be the innocent party. Nights out with Paul Lambert, Chris Sutton, Alan Thompson, Johann Mjallby and Henrik Larsson did not always pass incident-free. The following day’s inquest would always start with, ‘Were you involved in any way, Lenny?’ ‘Absolutely not, gaffer!’ was usually followed by ‘Well, it wasn’t all my fault…’ It was very sad, however, that death threats prevented him playing more football for Northern Ireland, for whom he did so well.

And now we have had another great season for Neil Lennon, as captain no less. I am genuinely delighted for him, as he is an amazing character and a great, great player—that is stated with almost a decade of knowledge of the man. I also have great regard for his parents, Gerry and Ursula, and I’m sure, like most parents, that they are proud of their boy—almost all of the time!

He has been one of the best footballers I have known, let alone worked with. His ability is unquestioned, but he also possesses something quite rare in human beings—great courage. That is why I hold him in such high esteem.

We have both been part of Celtic Football Club for a brief but memorable time in the club’s long history, and we have worked together for a decent period of our lives. Which is why I can say that Neil Lennon is a pretty special man and bhoy.

I wish him all the best with this book and his life to come.

Martin O’Neill

CHAPTER ONE A Troubled Footballer

The telephone call which changed my life was not even made to me.

It was late in the afternoon of 21 August 2002, when ‘he’ called the BBC’s office at Ormeau Avenue in Belfast. He didn’t say his name—they never do—but left enough hints as to his background. His message was brief and to the point. As it was recounted to me, the call went something like this…

’This is the LVF. If Neil Lennon takes the field tonight he will get seriously hurt.’

LVF stands for Loyalist Volunteer Force, one of the more extreme terrorist groups in Northern Ireland at that time. They battled in their own way for what they perceived to be the Protestant and Unionist cause. I, on the other hand, was a Roman Catholic from Lurgan in County Armagh, and to them I was guilty of a terrible crime—I played for Glasgow Celtic, the club which, despite being non-sectarian since its foundation, is seen as a totem of Irish Catholic nationalism.

It didn’t matter to the caller that I had lived away from Northern Ireland for fourteen years. He didn’t know that my family was not associated in any way with political or sectarian groups. My three sisters and I had been brought up with ‘the Troubles’ all around, but hadn’t lost a relative. We were always lectured by our parents that we should avoid being caught up in the madness that had besmirched our country over four decades.

It only mattered to the caller that, for the first time, a Roman Catholic who also played for Celtic would captain Northern Ireland in Belfast that night. It was a ‘friendly’ match against Cyprus to prepare both sides for the forthcoming qualifying matches for the European Championships. There was nothing remotely friendly in what the caller said.

They say a week is a long time in politics. Well, let me tell you that two hours can be a lifetime in football, and eighteen months can seem an eternity. For the seeds of what happened that night in Belfast were laid on the evening of 28 February 2001, with an event that made headlines in newspapers in Britain, Ireland and further afield.

That was the first time I played for Northern Ireland after joining Celtic, in a friendly match against Norway at Windsor Park. Geography is vitally important in my country, so you should know that the crumbling old stadium is in the heart of East Belfast and is home to Linfield FC, a club traditionally supported by the Protestant and Unionist section of Northern Irish society who predominate in that area.

The events of that night didn’t come as a complete surprise to me. When I signed for Celtic a few months earlier I had known that it was highly probable that when I turned out for Northern Ireland I would get some stick and maybe a bit of hassle here and there. It had happened to Celtic players capped by Northern Ireland in the past, such as Anton Rogan and Allan McKnight. A captain of Celtic had actually led Northern Ireland in the past—the late Bertie Peacock, who played thirty-one times for his country and went on to manage the national side, in the fifties and sixties. But he was a Protestant in an era when there was rather more respect around.

I, on the other hand, was the antithesis of what some ‘fans’ stood for in a sectarian time. There had been warnings in various newspapers that my move to Celtic could earn me some serious grief when I played for Northern Ireland, so I wasn’t entirely taken aback, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer scale of what happened before and during that match against Norway.

A few days before the game, my mother and father at home in Lurgan were appalled to learn from journalists that the words ‘Neil Lennon RIP’ had been scrawled on a wall in the town of Lisburn. Someone was saying that I was going to be a dead man.

It was a terrible shock to my family who are quiet-living and fundamentally decent Christian people. My father Gerry had not been well and was to suffer a heart attack in August 2001. He, my mother Ursula and the rest of my family were deeply upset by what some moron undoubtedly thought was a sick joke—or maybe in light of subsequent events, he or she meant it as a shot across my bows, a warning of worse to come. And indeed worse, much worse, did come my way as I joined my colleagues of different religions and none at all to play for my country against Norway.

From the moment I went onto that pitch to play in the green and white colours of Northern Ireland I was the target of an unremitting chorus of boos, jeers, catcalls and insults. In a half-empty stadium, the noise seemed to amplify and at times it seemed as though it was the only sound to be heard.

I had anticipated the odd jibe from individuals in the crowd or on the streets, but nothing prepared me for the extent of the hatred I faced. Deep down, it was the sheer scale of things which upset me.

Prior to the game, the graffiti incident became known and there were some rumours about threats to me. The Irish FA and manager Sammy McIlroy appealed for me to be supported, but perhaps that backfired. I myself had spoken of the support and letters of encouragement I had received, but inside I had a justifiable dread of what might happen at Windsor Park. Later, people would try to play down what happened, saying that it was only a minority in the crowd who had hurled abuse. There wasn’t a massive crowd at the game, maybe 7,000 or so, and the minority might only have been 500 or 600, but to me the proportion booing me didn’t matter—one per cent would have been too much for me.

On the pitch I was only too aware of what was happening off it. Not only could I hear the booing and jeering, but I could also see people in the stands arguing and gesticulating at each other amidst the home support. I could see and hear sections of the Northern Ireland crowd having a go at their fellow supporters who were abusing me—I use the word abuse because that is what such conduct is—and after a while I could clearly see that nobody was paying much attention to proceedings on the pitch.

The focus was no longer on the team as we battled to contain a slick Norway side. Instead the crowd’s concentration—and mine too—was almost totally on events off the pitch. And all too obviously, those events were connected to my part in the game. Every time I went near the ball there would be a chorus of boos and jeers, and then a spattering of cheers from fans who were clearly disgusted at what was happening to me.

Now I have been booed and jeered many times—just about every time I play for Celtic away from home in Scotland, and yes, I’ll have more to say about that later in this book. I had heard anti-Catholic songs being sung at Windsor Park internationals before but like most Catholic players, played on and ignored them.

This was substantially different, however. The fact is you do not mind being booed by the opposition fans or even your own supporters if you are having a stinker. But this was something else again and was, I believe, completely premeditated by a part of a hard core of the support which could not stomach seeing a Catholic Celtic player turning out for ‘their’ country. I say it was premeditated and planned because it started with my very first kick of the ball, it emanated from particular groups within the crowd and continued all the way to half-time without letting up. Also, I had played thirty-five times for my country before that night and had a good relationship with most fans who knew I gave my all for Northern Ireland. So what had happened to make things so different? Answer: I now played for Celtic.

It was a totally surreal atmosphere inside Windsor Park that night. God only knows what the small number of Norwegian supporters made of it all. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer of Manchester United was playing for them that night. He was interviewed afterwards and was quite bewildered. He had no idea what it was all about and just couldn’t understand why one of Northern Ireland’s own players was being booed every time he touched the ball.

Whether the clubs can do anything about it or not, Celtic and Rangers have become identified with the two sides of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland. Here was I, in my thirty-sixth appearance for my country, never having been singled out before, being roundly abused simply because I was now a Celtic player. In the small minds of some people that fact was sufficient to make me an enemy, someone they could single out for sectarian abuse.

As I have said, I was aware that joining Celtic might give me problems of this nature. Indeed, I had spoken at length on the subject to my mentor and manager, Martin O’Neill, while we had been discussing my move from Leicester City to Celtic—and who better to talk things over with? He had been thefirst Catholic to captain Northern Ireland and had been proud to play for and lead his national side. We both knew that anyone signing for Celtic, or indeed Rangers, automatically became a hate figure to one faction or the other in a Northern Ireland divided by religion—it sounds like something out of ancient history, and that’s where it all stems from and should have stayed, but it is a modern-day fact.

Martin’s attitude was that I should come to Celtic and then we would deal with whatever problems arose. I was happy to go along with that advice, but truthfully, neither of us anticipated the escalation of problems or the lack of support I would get when things boiled over as they duly did in the Norway game.

As we approached half-time with Norway winning 3-0, it was clear that something would have to happen. All of the team had suffered as a result of the abuse—not surprisingly, their concentration was less than total. Opinions differ as to what exactly took place at half-time, but my recollection is that Sammy McIlroy came to me and said that he had spoken to Martin about taking me off at the interval before the game in any case. Given that I was relatively new at Celtic and should not be playing every minute of every game, that sounded plausible.

I have to say that in retrospect, I don’t think Sammy handled things very well that night. Martin O’Neill has no memory of such a conversation, and perhaps Sammy said this at the time to cover up the deep embarrassment which he and the Irish Football Association’s officials were undoubtedly feeling. I would have preferred him to be up front, to have said ‘we’re going to take you off for your own sake and we’ll deal with this afterwards’, but what was happening was completely new to him and being honest, I think he was overwhelmed by it all. My team-mates were also embarrassed and that was understandable—I don’t know how I would have reacted had it been someone else in the team getting the jeers. Some people later suggested that they should have shown solidarity and refused to come out for the second half, but I would not have wanted that, not least because it would have worsened the situation with the crowd. In addition, they were getting no lead from the manager or the Irish FA to do something of that nature.

After the match, Sammy tried to play things down and was so blas?in interviews that unfortunately he gave out the wrong message. It was as though he did not understand what lay at the heart of the whole situation. He indicated that everyone got booed at some time or another in their career—a remark that angered my family in particular, as they were the ones who had been forced to live with the appalling graffiti and who would now be the centre of unwanted attention back home in Lurgan.

I know what Martin O’Neill would have done—he would have addressed that section of the crowd who were abusing me and told them to cease their activities forthwith. And I suspect the majority of the crowd would have backed him, though realistically nothing was going to deter the bigoted boo boys.

But Martin wasn’t there. Instead, nothing happened at all. Neither Sammy nor anyone from the Irish FA confronted the issue at the time, and there were no warnings to the crowd that I heard, though to be fair the abuse was roundly condemned afterwards. So the minority got their wicked way. The football pitch can be a very lonely place, and I never felt so isolated in a match as I did on that night against Norway.

My substitution led to an even more bizarre event. I got dressed as quickly as possible and then did an interview outside the dressing room in which I gave my response to what had happened to the BBC.

This is what I told them: ‘A lot of people got behind me tonight and I was touched by that. There are minorities in all walks of life who make trouble for everyone else. But there are a lot more good people than bad in this country. I hope to be back but first I will talk things over with my club and family and take it from there.’ That really was the situation—I didn’t want to make a decision immediately.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary then stepped in. Some of the officers were worried about my safety, and I couldn’t very well go and sit in the dugout or the stand, could I? They insisted that I miss the rest of the game and go with them in an unmarked car. That’s how I found myself making a swift exit from Windsor Park and being whisked through the back streets of East Belfast in the back of a fairly beaten-up car that no one could have mistaken for a police vehicle. Here I was, minutes after playing for my country, getting a police escort through its largest city—it was beyond satire and in the realms of madness. I never did get to see what happened in the second half, though things must have improved as we only conceded one more goal and lost 4-0.

The police took me back to the hotel to fetch my stuff and I returned quickly to Glasgow where the following morning I went to Parkhead, home of Celtic, and discussed what had happened with Martin O’Neill. Some people in the media had already speculated that I might retire from international football, and for once they were close to the mark. I told Martin that I didn’t know what to do and really wasn’t sure that I should go back and play for Northern Ireland, and certainly not at Windsor Park. He had been as shocked as anyone and could see I was still upset, but his advice was that I should give it another go as I might regret it in the long term, and perhaps miss out on the chance to play in major finals such as the European Championships.

The massive press speculation that I would quit international football continued for days and I decided to speak out. I said truthfully that I was considering standing down from the Northern Ireland squad but needed more time to think things through.

Meanwhile a huge furore had broken out over what had happened to me. The Irish FA’s community relations officer Michael Boyd said he would be calling for action: ‘The time has come for the IFA to send out a strong message that this sort of behaviour cannot be tolerated. Banning these people is what the majority of decent supporters want.’

He was promptly contradicted by a different IFA spokesman who was quoted as saying: ‘Obviously we are very disappointed by the reaction of a section of the crowd. But there is very little we can do about it.

’It is very difficult to counter a small element. We don’t even know who they are. It might have been Rangers supporters coming over for the match, because we’d read press reports before this match that Rangers supporters were planning to attend to give Neil Lennon a hard time.’

Talk about living in cloud cuckoo land…so hundreds of Rangers fans travelled from Scotland just to boo me? I’m not exactly the Rangers supporters’ favourite person but I don’t think hundreds of people would go that far just to jeer me.

There were all sorts of mixed messages coming from the Irish FA. Its president Jim Boyce condemned the abuse but said that the majority of the crowd were behind me. He told reporters: ‘I have no time for bigotry in any walk of life, let alone football. I have no time for sectarianism and I totally oppose it, as I’ve always done.

’You had a certain section of people with moronic brains who did boo. But the vast majority of people in the ground were supporting Neil Lennon and it’s important not to forget that.’

The press and politicians also weighed in, and I was touched by the many ordinary decent folk who did try to encourage me to play on. But this was not really helping me one bit. I lay awake at night wondering what to do. I spoke to friends and most importantly, to my family, and with their backing I eventually decided that I would carry on playing.

Sammy McIlroy was grateful for my decision and assured me I was very much an important part of his plans. My next game for Northern Ireland was against the Czech Republic. I was nervous beforehand and despite assurances from the Irish FA, who had appealed for decent fans to support me, I was worried about the ‘welcome’ I would receive. I need not have been so apprehensive. My name was cheered to the echo when it was announced and I was warmly applauded onto the field. I did not kid myself that this show of support was unanimous, but it was incredibly heartening that ordinary football fans were prepared to stand up and be counted on my behalf. Sammy McIlroy would later say that their response had ‘drilled it in’ that the supporters wanted me in the team.

My own feelings before the match were that I would give it one more go and my continued career for Northern Ireland would depend on the reaction at Windsor Park. There were people within the Irish FA who had wanted my participation to be seen as a statement that the boo boys would not be allowed to win, but I had not been taking that line in public—I just wanted to play football for my country and not be abused.

After another two World Cup qualifiers against Bulgaria, which we lost home and away, I missed three games but was picked to be part of the squad in matches running up to the European Championships. Even though my knee was bothering me, I came on as substitute against Poland in a friendly in Limassol in Cyprus which we lost 1-4. At the start of what would be a momentous season for Celtic and for me personally, Northern Ireland played Cyprus. In view of what transpired, it was interesting that the match was to be co-sponsored by Northern Ireland’s Community Relations Council. There were also to be banners saying ‘Give Sectarianism The Boot’. You may shortly appreciate the irony…

A few hours before the match it was announced that in my forty-first appearance for my country, I would captain the national side. Steve Lomas was injured and Michael Hughes was unavailable while Gerry Taggart, who would probably have been given the armband, was also out with a knee injury. With those players out, I was the most experienced player in the squad and pretty much the obvious choice to lead the side. By default, almost, the captain’s armband was passed to me, even though I felt I was not 100 per cent match fit as I had undergone a knee operation during the close season.

It was often forgotten in the aftermath of what transpired that I had actually captained Northern Ireland before. We played the Republic of Ireland in 1999 in a benefit match and at one point in the second half there was a raft of substitutions. The manager at the time, Lawrie McMenemy, was a good and decent man who did what he thought was right rather than convenient. Lawrie would later recall: ‘My over-riding memory was when I gave the armband to Neil after I brought off my skipper. He could barely keep his chest inside his shirt and was as proud as punch.’

I was indeed very proud, just as I was thrilled to bits when Lawrie made me captain from the start in an away match against Finland. But I was still at Leicester then. This time I was a Celtic player and that was to make all the difference.

When Sammy told me early in the week of the Cyprus match that I was going to be captain I was delighted. We were installed as usual in the Hilton hotel in Templepatrick and were doing our routine of training and discussing tactics, but it all took on a different dimension for me on the Monday when I was appointed captain.

Sammy went public with the news the night before the match and all the newspapers carried his statements explaining his reasons.

’He is my sixth captain,’ he was quoted as saying. ‘With no disrespect to Neil, being the sixth captain shows you the problems we have had. Hopefully, things will change. He is the second most-capped player in the current squad. Being in the engine room he can start us off with his passing and knowledge of the game.

’Neil is a leader; he has been captain for Celtic as well. It’s a good honour for him. I hope he enjoys it and that his performance rubs off on the rest of the lads.’

I certainly was honoured, and my family were also proud and delighted for me. At a press conference I emphasized that the unpleasant events of the Norway game were in the past and that I preferred to look forward. I said honestly that it had been difficult for me at the time, but I had put it all behind me, and added the thought that being named captain was a nice way to start the season.

The political situation in Northern Ireland had also changed. It was now more than four years on from the Good Friday Agreement, and I thought there was genuine goodwill on all sides. But one man in a phone box many miles away thought differently.

It all went pear shaped late in the afternoon. We were having our pre-match meal and I had just come down to the tables when Sammy took me to one side. He told me straightforwardly that there were two police officers from the newly named Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) outside wanting to talk to me.

I asked him what it was about, and he told me there had been a phone call and I would have to talk to the officers—one male and one female—about it. I knew immediately what the call was, and my heart sank into my boots. For in the run-up to the match I knew I was ‘fair game’ for any madman wanting to make a point and I had anticipated someone trying to get publicity for their ‘cause’, especially after it was announced that I would captain the side. But I had not thought it would go as far as someone threatening my life.

The two police officers—as is the accepted protocol in writing about Northern Ireland, they must remain anonymous—were very matter of fact. They said that there had been a telephone call to the BBC’s offices in Belfast by someone who claimed to represent the LVF. The threat was that if I played that night I would get hurt. Without it being needed to be said, we all knew that in all probability ‘hurt’ meant getting shot.

I asked the officers how genuine the threat was and they said that nine out of ten of these calls prior to sporting events were hoaxes.

They were firm, however, that they could not tell me what to do. That decision would have to be mine and they would react accordingly. I presumed that meant if I decided to play I would get armed police escorts to and from the game etc., but my immediate thought was how would anyone be able to stop someone getting to me in the many public areas I would enter that night, not least the Windsor Park pitch?

My first reaction, nevertheless, was that I should play on. The percentage bet was that the whole thing was a hoax and I would be safe. But a whole whirlwind of thoughts started coursing through my mind, the vast majority of which centred on my family and their safety. And finally it came down to this—how much of a bet do you take with your life?

This time Sammy McIlroy reacted well and sympathetically. He said that if the call had been about his son, he would want him to go home.

My mind was in turmoil at that second. I really didn’t know what to do and I knew I needed advice.

I used my mobile phone to call Celtic’s security adviser in Scotland—unfortunately, I knew him only too well as I had had reason to call him previously—and he was adamant that I should take no chances whatsoever and should get back to Glasgow as soon as possible.

I then called my parents. My father said that of course I could not play and he would come and get me. He rushed to the hotel and was angered that no one could tell him where I was. He eventually made his way to my room where I was just finishing packing. A few minutes later I was in his car and on my way home to Lurgan. We had a police escort at first but then some friends met us and we travelled in convoy for the rest of the journey. I have not been back to Windsor Park since…and Dad still has his unused complimentary tickets for the match in which I didn’t captain Northern Ireland.

Before I left the hotel, I told Sammy that I probably would not be returning to play for the national side ever again. He was entirely understanding but said he hoped I would change my mind. I then spoke to most of the rest of the squad. I learned later that one or two had wanted the Irish FA to pull the team out of the match, but I insisted before the match that they should go on and do their best. My thoughts genuinely were for the team as I knew they had a tough campaign ahead and needed the match practice.

It was agreed that the Irish FA would put out my press statement and that there would be a cover story that I was already on the way back to Glasgow. In reality, there was no way to catch a plane home at that time and I would have to spend a night in Lurgan.

My statement read: ‘After close consultation with the footballing authorities and the Police Service of Northern Ireland I will not be participating in this evening’s international game.

’I am very disappointed that my desire to play for my country, on my first opportunity to captain my team at home, has been taken away from me.’

In the car on the way to Lurgan, my father and I talked things over. He was very angry, of course, as was I, but funnily enough I was a bit more philosophical.

In a sense there was an inevitability about these events. For better or worse, I had become a controversial figure, both in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. I was a symbol for one side, the epitome of what was wanted in a Celtic man dedicated to the club he loved, whereas for the other side I was something to despise. I could see that the two sides would never meet on common ground, and that there would always be extremists who simply could not tolerate my presence in a Northern Ireland jersey.

My main thoughts were for my family. It was hard enough for them when I joined Celtic, and the graffiti before the Norway game had been an awful experience for them. My father told me that ‘a cold chill’ had gripped him when he first saw the pictures. So I just could not in all conscience put them through that strain again.

And I had my daughter to think of. We had managed to shield Alisha—at home in England and just ten years old—from the dreadful facts of her father’s life in a divided city and country. How was I now going to explain to her that her daddy’s life was under threat because he played football for a certain team?

All these things and more raced through my mind as we hurried back to Lurgan. In retrospect it was then that I finally decided I would not play for Northern Ireland again. Frankly, given my thoughts for my family, the decision was pretty easy for me.

The proof of the effects such happenings can have on family members met me at the door of our house in Lurgan. My mother was very upset, and in turn that affected me. After a brief reunion with the other members of my family, who all backed my decision, it was agreed that I should get away from the house. We knew it would only be a short time before the news broke and then a media scrum would descend on us. As long as I wasn’t there, the journalists, photographers and camera crews would go away.

My family were able to say truthfully to callers that I was not at home, for I was in fact at the house of my best friend, Gary McCavigan. We have been mates since schooldays and now, when I needed him most, Gary was there for me, and his presence would lead to the only light-hearted note in this whole symphony of sadness.

As the evening wore on, Gary and I talked and talked but eventually we decided to try to get some sleep. Gary’s wife and daughter took one bedroom and we were in the other bedroom. It may not surprise you to learn that I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. Every time a car went by the house I was startled, and I kept imagining that people were out there trying to find me.

And maybe one of them had a gun…but it wasn’t that fear which stopped my brain from switching off—no, it was Gary’s snoring that kept me awake!

In the wee small hours, the ludicrous nature of the situation really struck me and I had a laugh to myself—what else could I do?

The next morning my dad called to say that a journalist who was known and respected by the family, Adrian Logan of Ulster Television, had made contact. I spoke to him and he pointed out that I would get no peace until I had given an interview and made some sort of statement. I could see that was true. He offered to make the proceedings available to other television stations and on that basis I agreed to do a short interview.

The gist of it was my feeling that football had been irrelevant the previous night. I said: ‘My parents were pretty distraught really. I’ve got a ten-year-old daughter who knows nothing about this at the minute and we’re going to try to keep her away from it as much as we can. Obviously, I can’t put them through this every time, so I’ve thought long and hard about it and I’ve decided that I probably won’t be going back to play for Northern Ireland.

’It’s a decision that I’ve thought about previously and this time I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably for the best for everybody.

’My manager, Sammy McIlroy, was magnificent with me throughout it. He said if it was his son in the same position, he’d do exactly the same thing and he backed me on that and I can’t thank him enough for that, because obviously it was difficult for him, but this can’t go on.’

With that I jumped in the car and headed for Scotland. It was a relief to get back to Glasgow and the catcalls I get there on a daily basis.

That night Celtic’s security team put me up in a hotel as they feared that I would get no peace at home. I sat there alone in that hotel room making calls to my family and friends and watching the television. I was utterly amazed when the news programmes were completely dominated by what had happened to me. When you have reached a certain level in football, having to watch yourself on television is one of the more unnerving experiences that you go through. I had never quite got used to seeing myself play, never mind being interviewed off the pitch, but here I was now featuring in the headlines and in the main bulletins. It was almost as if I was watching a different person—who was this Neil Lennon they kept referring to along with the words ‘death threats’? How could a mere footballer gain such attention? But of course, it wasn’t my footballing prowess that was the issue.

As I lay there contemplating my future I couldn’t help but think of quitting the game altogether. Only my desire to succeed at Celtic kept me from walking away.

Even so, I had lost something very special. No one except another footballer can really know about the long hard hours of work that go into reaching the top level that is international football. All the other sacrifices such as special diets and the rigours of self-discipline through the years all count towards your achievements, and here was I with the pinnacle of my career to date snatched away from me by a man with a telephone. It seemed for a while that all the hard work had not been worth the candle.

The following day the LVF announced they had nothing to do with the call. That actually made me feel a lot better—it now appeared that it really was a hoax, and the caller would also not want to make enemies of those lads.

But I had made up my mind and before Celtic’s weekend match against Partick Thistle I told a press conference of my final and irrevocable decision to quit playing international football.

‘It’s’ not a snap decision,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought long and hard about it. It would have been nice in a way to turn things right round from that experience in the Norway game, but it has reared its ugly head again. I can’t keep putting the people I love most through the wringer yet again. They suffer most.

’Genuine Northern Ireland fans have sent me many letters of support during this whole period. I really feel sorry for everyone associated with the Northern Ireland team but I have to move on from this situation.

’It’s not only my parents and the rest of my family. I have to think about Sammy McIlroy and the team as well. It’s not right that the focus should be taken away from them for all the wrong reasons. It’s also disruptive to what Sammy is trying to do. Just hours before the game he was forced to change his whole plan because of this.

’So I feel it’s best for everybody that I make this decision now. The game will go on, it will continue and I hope the lads go on and do really well. But enough is enough. This can’t go on. The buck stops with me, and I want to nip it in the bud.’

I then played against Partick at Firhill in something of a strange dream. At the start I was applauded by both sets of supporters—I will always be grateful to the Thistle fans for that gesture. But my mind wasn’t really on the game.

I received messages of support from across the world, some of it from most surprising places. There was a letter from leading Unionist politician David Irvine expressing his abhorrence of what had happened and Unionist party leader David Trimble stated his concerns.

Michael Boyd of the Irish FA’s Community Relations Department wrote to say: ‘The IFA’s Community Relations Department is 100 per cent behind you at what must be a very difficult period of your career. In partnership with the supporters we are working hard to eradicate sectarianism from the game in Northern Ireland. Much progress has been made in this area in recent years and that is why it is so disappointing what happened at the Cyprus game. We are all totally gutted and frustrated that the actions of a very small minority have taken away from all the very positive work being carried out by our supporters to make the game more inclusive.’

John McMillan, chairman of the Rangers Supporters Association, told the press that what had happened was ‘absolutely disgusting’. He added: ‘These are not football fans. I don’t care who is involved or which side the threats come from, it is terrible for any person to be treated in that way. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like when you’re not in Neil Lennon’s position, but I would probably feel the same way as he does. I would hope for his own sake that he does continue in international football, but I can understand you have to think about your own safety and that of your family.’ Thanks for that, John—I believe that to be an eloquent expression of the feelings of most ordinary decent fans, whatever their club.

Even the British Government got involved. Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan said: ‘The sectarian threats against Neil Lennon are deplorable. Sectarianism and paramilitarism should not intrude into the sporting arena.’

Around the world, it seemed that every major newspaper and broadcaster carried the story—it even made headlines in the USA where soccer is rarely regarded as newsworthy. I suppose that for a short period I was one of the most famous players on the planet, though not for a reason I would ever have wanted.

Some pundits would later say that I had been ill-advised to call for the football teams of Northern Ireland and the Republic to be united, but not for the first or last time, they were misquoting or misunderstanding what I had said in an interview some weeks before the match. I had said that a team drawn from all of Ireland’s thirty-two counties would do better than the two separate teams. In saying that I was only recognizing that in rugby union, all Ireland played as one and did so very successfully. But at no point did I say the two countries should unite, in football or politically. In fact, I was only stating the same position as the late George Best, the greatest of all Northern Irish players. But then he didn’t play for Celtic.

In the aftermath, much was made of the fact that the call was apparently a hoax. Two detectives from the PSNI came to Glasgow to interview me and said it was probably a hoax, but they had taken it seriously enough to trace the call and found it came from a phone box in Rathcoole in north Belfast. But how does anyone actually know that it was a hoax? How can anyone prove 100 per cent that the caller was not some deranged lunatic with a gun? In Northern Ireland and elsewhere I had seen players assaulted on the pitch by fans—what if one of them had a gun and wanted to make a name for himself?

One English journalist wrote I was a ‘big girl’s blouse’ for not risking death. Funnily enough, he never had the courage to say that to my face…

Maybe I could have gone out and played but what kind of focus would I have had? How could anyone perform to their best in such a situation? The fact is that I did not play that night and have never played for Northern Ireland since, and therefore the caller did not need to carry out the threat, so we will never know for certain whether or not it was a hoax. That reasoning seems to have been lost on the alleged intellect of people like that English journo.

What might have been the most upsetting speculation was that pulling out of the game served some sort of hidden agenda on my part. But I did not let that nonsense upset me because you cannot reason with idiocy like that. It’s the sort of biased reasoning which has seen me burned in effigy on the tops of bonfires across Northern Ireland on 12 July, the great Unionist and Protestant day of celebration—I must be rivalling Guy Fawkes for being ‘toasted’.

After that weekend, things did die down a little, and I was left to pick up the pieces. I took a long time to recover fully and it did affect my form for Celtic. But in the long run it may have been a blessing as quitting the international game may have prolonged my club career. I long ago concluded that I was correct to make my decision to quit, even though I have had tinges of regret—though I have never missed the exhausting trips to out-of-the-way places like Moldova.

It had been an awful experience, not least because it was my first real contact with the people and issues of ‘the Troubles’. I had never made public my political views or my religious leanings, but here was I, a footballer, being treated as some sort of public hate figure, not because I was making statements but because I was a Catholic who wore the green and white hoops of Celtic.

What message did it send to young Catholics in Northern Ireland that they could be singled out for such treatment if they ever played for Celtic? A lot of Catholics will not attend matches at Windsor Park—after what happened to me, can you blame them?

The plan for a new national stadium, principally for football, to be built elsewhere in Northern Ireland could be a good start in uniting the country behind its sportspeople, as used to happen with our football team and individuals like Olympic champion Mary Peters and world champion boxer Barry McGuigan. I think that a new stadium will be a big step forward for sport in Northern Ireland.

In the meantime there is undoubtedly a cancer in the society of Northern Ireland and it will take a long time to excise. But that cancer should not be allowed to infect sport.

You can argue that the Old Firm have profited from being on the two sides of the sectarian divide, and I would not disagree. But events have often been way beyond their control and what happened to me was a wholly different matter—the incidents took place in the international arena while I was playing for my country; they were seen by the whole world as disgraceful; and they damaged me as a person.

I have to confess I was scarred by those events. I will admit now that I really and truly was in fear for my life at times. No one can undergo such an experience and not be affected. And yes, it made me bitter against the ‘other side’ for a time, something I had never been before. But I have accepted things and in time I have lost that bitterness. I believe it all made me a stronger person in the long run.

I had to be strong, for it was not to be the last time I would be assailed and indeed assaulted because I played for Celtic.

CHAPTER TWO A Lurgan Bhoy

There is a noise that occasionally haunts me. It is the noise of the Troubles in the 1970s and 1980s, the time when I was growing up in a country that was trying to tear itself apart. The particular sounds I recall are those of whistles blowing, women wailing and metal clashing. It was the noise that signified death, and is one of the strongest memories from my childhood.

I was born in Carlton Home, Portadown, Northern Ireland, on 25 June 1971, the second child of Gerry and Ursula Lennon, née Moore, of Lurgan in County Armagh. I was christened Neil, but it might well have been Cornelius as I was called after my grandfather on my mother’s side who owned a grocer’s shop in the town. His ‘Sunday name’ was Cornelius but he was always known as Nealie Moore, so that’s how I got my name. I took after him in other ways as he was a talented footballer of the Gaelic variety. My middle name is Francis, after my paternal grandfather.

My elder sister Orla and I were later joined by my sisters Aileen and Jane to complete what has always been a very close and loving family.

Situated in the Craigavon district, roughly halfway between the town of that name and Lisburn, Lurgan at that time had a population in excess of 22,000. A market town that was once a leading player in the linen industry, in the 1970s Lurgan had mainly light engineering, textile and agricultural industries.

The town was founded by the Brownlow family and properly planned and laid out in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The biggest building in the area is Brownlow House, otherwise known as Lurgan Castle. To the north of Lurgan lies Lough Neagh, by area the largest expanse of fresh water in the British Isles. To the south east can be seen the famed Mountains of Mourne, and everywhere south run the roads to the Republic of Ireland. It is a beautiful part of the world, and I remain a frequent visitor despite having lived on mainland Britain for nearly twenty years.

Like many towns in Northern Ireland, Lurgan’s population consisted of two distinct sectors, defined by religious and political leanings. No individual should be stereotyped, but across Northern Ireland generally at that time it is safe to say that on one side were Protestants who wanted the country to stay part of the United Kingdom, the Unionists or Loyalists, and on the other side were Roman Catholics who wanted Northern Ireland to be part of a united Ireland, the Republicans or Nationalists. The island of Ireland had experienced civil wars before and in the late 1960s, pressure for social change somehow transformed into the violent era called the Troubles which lasted for more than three decades. Yet thanks to my wonderful parents, I was largely insulated from the horrendous consequences of what was almost another civil war.

Both my parents were warm and sociable people with a wide circle of friends and I am sure that it is from them that I get my love of sharing a good time with family and companions. My mother says I was a brilliant baby who slept and ate well, and was no trouble at all—nice to know I haven’t changed…

As any man who has been brought up in a household with three sisters will tell you, they spoil you and drive you daft in equal proportions. For instance, I don’t think I’ve ever won an argument with Orla in my life. But then she is a superb debater and orator, and in 1985 she reached the Northern Ireland final of the All-Ireland Public Speaking Championships. When she was fifteen she went on a trip to Bangladesh for three weeks as a prize for winning a speaking contest at school. Orla’s feats were reported in all the local newspapers and for a time she got bigger headlines than her wee brother. She later became a very fine teacher and is now married with two boys.

Like many people in Ireland, my dad went over to England to find work in the 1960s. He had a job at the Bedford truck factory in Luton but he came back to Lurgan—just as well he did, for that was when he and my mum encountered each other. The story is always told in our family that my mum met my dad at a dance in the town, and on that very first night she went home and told my grandparents that she had met the man she was going to marry. I am not sure whether or not that was my father’s reaction, but knowing my mum’s quiet determination, he was a lost cause to bachelorhood from that night on.

Dad worked as a foreman in an electronics factory but had to take premature retirement because he developed a debilitating illness which often leaves him very tired, but by and large he has not allowed it to affect him too much.

My earliest memories are of our house in Edward Street in the middle of Lurgan where we first lived. There was just Orla and me at the time. Between our house and my grandfather’s shop across the road, there was a long line of concrete barrels all joined together with metal piping. They were there to stop people parking their cars in the centre of town. In the 1970s, car bombs were a regular feature of life in towns across Northern Ireland, and the barriers were then supposed to prevent the bombers from getting access to the main shopping areas in Lurgan.

The security paraphernalia made life difficult at times, but I suppose that was the price we had to pay in order to live some kind of normal life in relative safety. As a child you do not realize the seriousness of events going on around you, and it is only in recent years, after what has happened to me, that I realize what a strain it must have been for my parents to raise children at such a time and in such a place.

We were constantly being evacuated from the house because of bomb scares which were usually, but not always, hoaxes. I remember one Friday afternoon very vividly. That was the day my mother always made her special stew which I loved and which was a real highlight of the week for me. I was starving that day and could barely wait to start. My sister Orla was carrying the pot from the oven to the dinner table when a huge explosion shook the house. A bomb had gone off somewhere in the town and the noise was absolutely deafening. Orla got a terrible fright, dropped the pot and burst out crying. My mother went over to comfort her but I was more upset that she had spilled the stew all over the floor and gave her pelters!

The local council had plans to develop the area around our house—they finally did it twenty-odd years later, as you can tell by the name Millennium Way—and in 1976 we were moved to a new house at Richmount Gardens on Taghnevan estate on the edge of town. Jane had been born the year before and my youngest sister Aileen arrived in 1978. There were now four Lennon children—I don’t know how my mother coped with all of us, but she did so magnificently.

Apart from the occasional inconveniences of life in Ulster at that time in the 1970s, I have to say I had a very happy childhood.

Fortunately for us, no members of my family were killed or injured in the Troubles, but one of my former schoolmates was not so lucky. Dennis Carville was one of the many people who died because they just happened to be of the wrong religion in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was on 6 October 1990 that he was murdered. By then I was living in Stockport in England. I learned of the tragedy shortly after it happened and immediately recalled from schooldays a decent lad, an ordinary boy who would never have got mixed up in sectarian politics or fighting.

He was in his car with his girlfriend at a nature reserve, Oxford Island, at the south end of Lough Neagh. They had gone for some peace and quiet to a lover’s lane which was well known as such in Lurgan. A fortnight previously, a part-time soldier from the Ulster Defence Regiment, Colin McCullough, had been killed by the IRA as he sat in a car with his girlfriend at the same place.

As Dennis sat there, a paramilitary from one of the Loyalist groups came up and knocked on the window. Dressed as a soldier, he asked to see Dennis’s driving licence and as soon as he had established that Dennis was a Catholic, the gunman shot him dead in cold blood at a range of only inches. A Loyalist extremist group later let it be known that they had killed my Catholic former schoolmate in revenge for the murder of the Protestant UDR man.

It was one of many tit-for-tat killings during the Troubles, and it could have been any one of us Catholic boys from Lurgan who got the bullet that killed Dennis. He was just nineteen when he died, exactly the same age as myself at the time.

It was the banshee howl of the Troubles that I remember most.

Taghnevan was an almost totally Catholic/Republican/ nationalist estate—for the uninitiated, I should explain that many towns in Northern Ireland have their own system of virtual apartheid, with people from the Protestant/Unionist/ Loyalist tradition and the Catholics/Republicans/Nationalists both occupying their own enclaves and largely keeping themselves to themselves. It came as a shock to me when I moved to mainland Britain to discover that people of different faiths and cultures all lived together, cheek by jowl in the same streets and apartment blocks.

The worst period for tension and violence was undoubtedly the time of the hunger strikes in the early 1980s. The country was on the edge of all-out civil war during that long campaign by the Republican prisoners, led by Bobby Sands who, despite being in prison, had been elected an MP shortly before he died from the effects of self-starvation.

You could always tell when a hunger striker had died. As soon as news of the death broke, no matter whether it was in the dead of night or during the day, people would come out of the houses and would start to bang metal bin lids, either thrashing two together or thumping them off the pavement. Whistles would be blown at the highest possible volume, and men and women would shout the news. The noise would spread through the estate and sometimes there would be women wailing and frightened children screaming. I was only nine or ten at the time, but I can remember that cacophony as if it was yesterday. On one occasion a hunger striker died at about 4 a.m. and the noise of the bin lids and the shouts of protest reverberated around the estate in an unearthly manner. It was as if the banshee of ancient Irish folklore had suddenly come to life in Lurgan. I was truly frightened as I lay in my bed wondering how long the noise would go on for and what would happen the next day—in many places across Northern Ireland there would be riots and shootings. I knew why the noisy protest was taking place, of course, but I had no real concept of the underlying problems which had caused the Troubles to start in the first place.

My parents always did their best to shield us from the Troubles but there were occasions when the grim realities of that time just could not be avoided, as when the hunger strikers died. Mostly, however, we just tried to get on with our lives as normally as possible, which I suspect was the attitude of the vast majority of people in Lurgan and elsewhere in Northern Ireland.

The price of safety was constant vigilance. My mother and father would watch out like hawks for any problems in the streets around our house and at the first sign of any trouble we would be hauled indoors. ‘Trouble’ usually consisted of gangs of boys taunting the security services or throwing stones at police vehicles. The girls kept out of the road but it was accepted practice for boys of my age and older teenagers to take part in this frequent ritual. I have to confess I got caught up in a couple of episodes of stone-throwing largely because it was second nature to several friends of mine. Peer pressure can be a terrible thing at that age, and it was only later when I had moved to England that I realized that the police had actually been there to protect us. Of course I would later require their services on a couple of occasions in Belfast, as I have already described.

You could try to avoid the Troubles, as we did as a family, but you could never ignore them. One of my uncles on my father’s side had been born long before the Beatles came on the scene or else my grandparents might have called him something other than John. He was stopped by the police one night and of course they asked him for his name. ‘John Lennon,’ was his truthful reply. ‘Aye,’ said the cop, ‘and I’m John Wayne,’ before throwing him in the back of the police vehicle.

A real character, my uncle John sadly died three years ago. But then all the Lennons were characters. My father’s brother Francie went to a big Gaelic football match at Croke Park in Dublin, and that was the last my grandfather Frank and grandmother Jane saw of him for ten years. He joined the Irish Navy and in 1953, was the wireless operator who intercepted the first distress signal from the Stranraer-Larne ferry Princess Victoria which sank in the Irish Sea during a massive storm, with the loss of more than 130 lives. He later went to England and joined the RAF, ending up in Hull.

I have vivid memories of many of the major events of the Troubles when I was growing up, such as the murder of Airey Neave MP, the bombing which killed Earl Mountbatten, and the explosions which killed eighteen soldiers at Warren-point. That last incident took place on a bank holiday at a place just down the road from Lurgan, so the whole area was very tense for some time afterwards with police and soldiers everywhere.

As I grew older, I became more aware of the history and tragedies which had led to the Troubles, but I did not let things influence me and was never tempted to get involved in politics. To be truthful, I was just too busy playing football and Gaelic football to get sucked into what was going on around me.

As for religion, I was raised a Catholic. I was baptized in St Peter’s Church in Lurgan and made my first Holy Communion and received confirmation in St Paul’s Church which served Taghnevan. The influence of my parents was strong—we were taught to live as Christians and show a good example, rather than flaunt our religion ostentatiously.

The people of Lurgan lived for their sport. Football, or rather soccer, was followed avidly in the town, but there was also a great deal of interest in horse racing and boxing, and in the Nationalist areas of the town, Gaelic football was played with a passion. There were about ten Gaelic football clubs and school teams in the town at one time or another. Hurling was nowhere near as popular as football of either variety, and there were quite a few of us who played both Gaelic football and soccer, though in some parts of Ireland that was very much frowned upon—soccer was seen as an alien English game by Irish cultural traditionalists.

Practically since I had learned to walk I had kicked a football around, playing with my mates in the streets or local parks and playgrounds. But it was thanks to the schools and local boys’ clubs that I got to play ‘proper’ organized matches on real pitches.

I attended St Joseph’s Primary School in Lurgan, known as the infant school, for the first three years of my education, followed by St Peter’s for primary four to seven. The two schools were beside each other and were later amalgamated into St Thomas’s.

After St Peter’s I attended St Paul’s junior high school, where I sat and passed the exams which enabled me to go on to St Michael’s Grammar School, which was the senior high school for the Catholic youth of Lurgan.

I think I was a good pupil and tried hard to learn, but in all my schools my main interest was football. We played bounce games in the playground with piles of jerseys for goalposts, after school was finished we would go home for our dinner and then go back out to play more football in the local parks, as long as there was light to play by.

I soon realized that I loved football and was not too bad at it at all. There were other young boys around the town who were pretty good, too, one of them being Gerry Taggart, who you will read more about later.

The only thing that caused more excitement in school than football was a playground scrap. There would be a big circle of us, maybe three or four deep, around the two combatants, and we would egg on the fighters, especially if one of them was a mate. Nobody ever got really badly hurt in those schoolboy battles, and invariably the teachers would arrive to break them up and we would soon get back to playing football.

Despite the Troubles and economic recession, Lurgan’s people were very resilient and there was a great determination on the part of many men and women that the children of the town should lead as normal lives as possible.

When I look back and think of all the sacrifices that people made just so we could get a game of football I am in awe of their commitment to the sport. Getting us kit and a place to play, transporting us all over the county and beyond, coaching us, keeping us safe and arranging for some of us to be looked at by senior teams—and all this against a background of the Troubles. Later in life I was able to repay some of my debt to those people in Lurgan by donating some money for training younger children to play football. But it was small change compared to what I and many other players owed for the start we were given.

I will be eternally grateful to Dessie Meginnis in particular. He was the local ‘Mr Football’ and took me under his wing from the very start when I joined Lurgan Celtic Boys Club at the age of ten. Dessie was the Pied Piper of Lurgan—wherever you saw him he had a bag of footballs and a bunch of kids following him. He had the nickname ‘bunker’, but I never found out why.

His enthusiasm for football was infectious, and no one knew more about the schoolboy scene in Northern Ireland than Dessie, who also had good links with Celtic in Glasgow. It’s amazing to think that he started the careers of Gerry Taggart and myself on more or less the same day in the same boys’ team, and we both went on to play for Northern Ireland. Dessie not only taught you good habits on the field but he also encouraged you to behave well off it. He would say things like ‘be first on the training ground and the last off it’, and give you a friendly word of encouragement when you needed it. I still call or go to see him for advice to this day.

My dad always supported me in my football ambitions but he tended to stay in the background. Mum and he provided me with my early boots and strips, as I used to beg them for football equipment each Christmas, but Dad rarely came to watch me play, though there was a good reason for that. He had gone to see me a couple times but did not like the comments and the actions of parents on the sidelines. Dad was worried that if he came to a match and somebody criticized me, he would lose his temper and smack them, so he chose to stay away. He was quite right, too, because some of the insults were terrible, and the worst offenders were often women who clearly did not realize the pressure they were putting on young children.

As well as playing the game, we Lurgan boys were also passionate about the teams we supported. Most people I know become football supporters at a young age when they choose their team to follow by some strange process that sometimes defies scientific analysis.

Throughout Ireland, British football is the game of choice for fans. The fortunes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and the other big English clubs are followed closely by tens of thousands of people, many of whom rarely see their heroes in the flesh. In Northern Ireland, for not always the best of reasons, the two clubs with the biggest support are Celtic and Rangers. Dozens of buses leave Belfast, Derry and elsewhere for Scotland every weekend of the season, with people travelling on segregated buses and ferries. The colours of the two teams are seen everywhere, though they are never side by side. That’s just a fact of life in Northern Ireland.

The dedication of those fans to the Old Firm clubs is unbelievable. It is almost like a pilgrimage for them. Those who come over from Donegal, for instance, have to get up at four in the morning and then after the match they have to leave straight away in order to be on time for the boat home.

For as long as I can remember, my team was Celtic. My dad supported them, most of the rest of the family were fans, and they were very important to us and to many people in our community, as shown by the fact that one of the biggest clubs in the town was called Lurgan Celtic. It just seemed natural to follow Celtic, even if they played many miles away in Scotland, and as a fan, I dreamed of one day playing for them.

Live football was a rare thing on television when I was a boy. We did not have satellite television in those days, and you only got to see European games now and again, but we would avidly watch any scraps of highlights shown.

I actually saw Celtic in the flesh, so to speak, on two occasions as a young boy. They played a friendly match in Dundalk which is not far south of Lurgan, and my dad took me to see them. The second time was as a special treat as I went with Lurgan Celtic Boys Club to see them play Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup semi-final of 1983 when I was not quite twelve years old. It was a tremendous experience, and I was amazed at the sheer number of people all around me. The noise and the colours made it a real adventure, but the ending wasn’t so great—the Hoops were beaten 1-0 by Alex Ferguson’s fine side who were then at their peak and went on to win the cup.

I could have gone to more games as there were buses and cars which left from Lurgan and my dad occasionally went to Glasgow where he had friends and relatives. But by the age of ten I was playing every Saturday and I much preferred to play rather than watch. However, I used to love listening to the stories of those who did go over to Parkhead, and I suppose I got a bit jealous of those who had seen my heroes.

My favourite player as a youngster was Kenny Dalglish. He had it all—great skill with either foot, amazing strength in the penalty box, and the vision to make telling passes or take up perfect positions. He had been largely unheralded outside Scotland before his record-breaking move to Liverpool, but it was no surprise to those of us who idolized him that he quickly made his mark in England and Europe, and went on to become a legend at Anfield. In modern times, Kenny is the king of Celtic players as far as I am concerned, and only Henrik Larsson ranks alongside him.

From the outset with Lurgan Celtic’s boys’ side and with St Peter’s primary’s team, I was a prolific goalscorer. I played on the right wing for the club but for the school I played at centre-forward and I really did score a barrowload. That may come as something of a shock to those Celtic fans who have seen me score precisely three times in the five-and-a-half seasons that I have been at Parkhead. But as a youngster I scored regularly, almost week in and week out, both for my schools teams and for my clubs, and while still at primary school, a headline appeared in my local newspaper ‘Lennon Hits Three’.

At the same time as I was starting out in football, I was also learning the ropes in Gaelic football. While there are similarities between the two sports, the latter involves handling and passing the ball from hand or foot. From the start I loved them both, but soccer—I’ll use that term to avoid confusion—was always my preferred version.

Junior soccer was given quite good coverage in the local press, and my family have newspaper clippings to prove that I was something of a goalscoring sensation. I particularly remember playing in five-a-side and indoor tournaments, and I think the first picture of me in a newspaper was when we won the Craigavon Festival Under-11 trophy. Also in that five was Gerry Taggart, who would become a lifelong friend and a very fine professional footballer. Gerry and I also played in the Lurgan Celtic team which was chosen to represent Armagh in the Ulster age group finals at the Community Games in Letterkenny, County Donegal. Gerry scored two as we won the final 6-1 against Monaghan, and I got a hat-trick inside fifteen minutes—a little different to my scoring ratio with Celtic of one goal every two seasons!

The national finals of the All-Ireland Community Games at Butlins’ Irish camp at Mosney was a very prestigious tournament, and Gerry Taggart and myself were both picked for the Lurgan area Under-12 side which represented Armagh in the games. Scouts from senior clubs in Britain watched the final in which we beat Galway on penalties thanks largely to goalkeeper Dee Horisk saving three of their spot kicks.

Butlins camp at Mosney would become a regular haunt for me. In September 1983, several of us who had won the soccer trophy returned to contest the Community Games Gaelic football final, which was played for the Charles Haughey Perpetual Cup. Gerry Taggart, Dee Horisk and I all played for the Craigavon select eleven which won this trophy competed for by sides from all over Ireland.

I loved our visits to Butlins, because apart from the football there were all sorts of fun and games for youngsters. There was an amusement park attached to the camp and when we weren’t playing matches, we could be found there having a whale of a time.

In my last year at St Peter’s, I was selected for the Mid-Ulster District Primary Schools Team to play in various tournaments. It was as a result of playing well for the Mid-Ulster side that I first came to the attention of the Northern Ireland schoolboy team selectors.

The official records showed that in my final year at primary school, I played all five games for Mid-Ulster against the likes of Belfast and East Antrim, scoring five of our fourteen goals as we finished second in the league. I nearly always played up front at that time, and it was the same in Gaelic football where I occupied one or other of the forward positions and liked nothing better than to score goals or points.

When I left primary school, I first attended St Paul’s junior high school, for boys aged from eleven to fourteen, and here again football was my main preoccupation. I was just eleven and in my first year when I was selected to play for the school Under-13 side. We were a very good side under the charge of teacher Mr Kevin O’Neill, and I remember we beat our great rivals Killicomaine School to win the local school league and cup double. Again, I scored a hat-trick in the cup final, and we got our team picture with both trophies in the Lurgan Mail—always a sure sign of success.

As well as playing for St Paul’s I was by then enjoying myself with Lurgan Celtic. Our Under-13 team went through the entire season unbeaten and won the Michael Casey Memorial Cup into the bargain. I also had my first taste of ‘foreign’ football when I went over to Scotland and played against Greenock Shamrocks and Greenock Boys Club. Shamrock at that time had one of the best young teams around and had strong links to Celtic. We beat them 3-2 and I remember the trip well as it was my first visit to Glasgow and I got to meet some of my relatives on my father’s side who lived in Scotland.

I was still playing Gaelic football for St Paul’s and the Clan Na Gael club at this time, winning the Armagh Under-13 championship with the school.

I soon took and passed the exams which meant I could continue on to senior high school, in my case St Michael’s Grammar School in Lurgan. One of the great things about St Michael’s was that it was co-educational. Since it was a Catholic school run by a strict nun, any sort of contact between boys and girls was frowned upon, but that didn’t stop your hormones rampaging. Like every other teenage boy, I was awkward around the opposite sex and it would take me ages to pluck up the courage to talk to a girl or ask her for a dance at the occasional ‘hops’ held at the school or the local social club. I’ll confess now to having had a big crush on a very pretty girl of Italian extraction, Anita Cafolla. I must have carried a torch for her for a year or two when I was fourteen or fifteen, but nothing ever came of it and we went our separate ways with me moving to Motherwell and later Manchester.

Like everyone, I had my favourite teachers at school and one of the teachers who had considerable influence on me was Seamus Heffron, who taught me French at St Michael’s. More importantly, he was in charge of the school Gaelic football team. He was the kind of teacher you need in any school, the sort who encouraged young people to do their best at work and play, and who put in many unpaid hours looking after the team. Seamus has subsequently followed my football career closely, coming over to see me play at Leicester and Celtic, and he is in regular touch with my family and myself.

When I first attended St Michael’s, it became clear that I faced something of a problem, one that almost got me expelled from the school and nearly ended my career in soccer almost before it started. St Michael’s was a highly traditional school and preferred the Gaelic version of football, which of course I loved, but not as much as soccer. Schoolmatches were played on a Saturday morning which sadly was also the same time that Lurgan United, the boys club for which I then played, held their games.

At that point in my life I came up against a person who was very determined to get her own way. Sister Mary St Anne was the nun in charge of St Michael’s, and she was determined to uphold the school’s traditions.

One of those traditions was the cane. Anyone above a certain age will remember that corporal punishment was once routine in schools, the teacher’s weapon of choice being the tawse or the cane. Sister St Anne was one of those strict no-nonsense nuns who did not mind dishing out sentences but would send for a male teacher to administer the actual punishment.

I was a typical schoolboy, I suppose, and got in my fair share of scrapes and pranks, such as playing truant or ‘bunking’ as we called it, so in my time at St Michael’s I was caned perhaps two or three times.

The occasion I remember most was a beautiful sunny day when the attractions of a double period of biology could not compare with the farm which adjoined the school. After lunch, three or four of us decided to scale the wall and make our escape from school. I’ll name no names—for reading this will be the first time my own mother will know what I did, and I wouldn’t like to get anyone else into the trouble I’m going to get!

We had climbed a tree and were sunning ourselves when one of the teachers spotted us and came running over. We jumped down from the tree and unfortunately for one of the lads, he landed in a giant cowpat. Even worse for us was the fact that our escape route was sealed off by three other teachers. We were all hauled off to be caned, with the smell of cow dung accompanying us everywhere we went until my poor unfortunate classmate was sent home.

The caning ceremony was bizarre. You would go into Sister’s room, and there would be no sign of the cane at first. The weird thing was that she kept the cane hidden in a box behind a picture in her room. The box would be produced with great ceremony and the assistant headmaster or other teacher would take out the cane. On each occasion the sentence was the same—three strokes of the cane on each hand, which you placed one on top of the other to receive the stroke. I suppose the cane was supposed to be an encouragement of sorts, but if so, then it did not achieve its purpose as your hands were so traumatized that you couldn’t lift a pen or do any serious work for the rest of the day.

Tradition meant everything to Sister St Anne. As far as she was concerned, it was to be Gaelic football or no football at all. I, on the other hand, just could not envisage life without soccer. I was about fourteen, I was already in the school Gaelic football team, and was also playing for the local Clan Na Gael club. But I was doing so well with Lurgan United soccer club that my name was already in the books of several scouts from senior clubs across the water in Scotland and England. So I knew by then that I had a chance of playing football for a living and, more and more, that was what I wanted to do. But Sister St Anne decreed that I would play for the school Gaelic football team and that meant giving up Saturday morning soccer. Or so she thought.

The penalty for disobeying the order was simple—I would be expelled from St Michael’s. I was in tears at the thought—I had worked hard to pass the exams to get into St Michael’s and now I faced expulsion for playing football.

The annoying thing was that all these orders were relayed in public at school assembly. My sister Orla was in the sixth year and she confronted Sister about this before telling my parents.

My father was very angry when he and mother went to the school office. He pointed out that I had made a commitment to the soccer club and somehow he worked out a compromise with Sister. At that time it was close to the end of the soccer season, so I was able to carry on playing but had to switch to Gaelic as soon as the season ended, and in the meantime I played only in the important school matches.

I would not have liked to have left St Michael’s under a cloud. I loved my time there, and the standard of education was very high and academic achievement was not just demanded but expected. I was no swot, but there were some subjects which I did enjoy, mainly languages such as English literature and English language, Spanish, French and Irish Gaelic—I got ‘O’ levels in all of those. I passed seven ‘O’ levels in all, the others being religious studies and chemistry. I could have done better, but by then my mind was on other things, namely where I would start my football career.

The only other profession I considered was that of veterinary surgeon because I always loved animals. I still do, and have shares in several racehorses.

We always had cats or dogs in our house, and we also had a canary for years—one who never stopped singing! He was called Sweep, and the cat was not too impressed with his constant noise.

Perhaps if I had passed my biology ‘O’ level I might have carried on to study veterinary science, but I failed and that was the end of any thoughts of becoming a vet. To be honest, by that time I was already set on a career in football.

By the time I was fourteen I was on the fringes of the Northern Ireland schoolboy team. It was a very exciting period for me which also saw me widen my horizons a little.

For some reason of which I’m not aware, Lurgan Celtic had dropped their boys’ team but the people who ran it went off and formed Lurgan United which I joined, because it was really Lurgan Celtic by another name. At that time we had a rare crop of players and we were frequently watched by scouts from dozens of clubs in Britain, and also representatives of other more senior boys’ clubs in the area.

One of the best boys’ clubs in Armagh, indeed the whole of Northern Ireland, was Lisburn side Hillsborough. Its officials and players were all from the ‘other side’ of the divide, so when Gerry Taggart and I were asked to join them, I was a bit sceptical. I had plenty of friends who were Protestant and Unionist, but joining Hillsborough from Lurgan Celtic was something of a bridge crossing, as we would be the only two Catholics in the club. I need not have worried a jot. We were welcomed with open arms and in the five years I played for Hillsborough, nary a cross word was spoken about the religious and political problems in my town and country.

One of the players was Noel Baillie, and he and I went right through the ranks at Hillsborough together before he went on to play for Linfield, the Belfast club traditionally associated with the Protestant and Unionist sector of the city’s population. Strange to think that the two of us, one who played more than 600 games for and also captained the ‘Rangers’ of Belfast and myself, who captains Glasgow Celtic, were once both wee boys in the same team.

Those were busy days for me, especially at weekends. I would play soccer twice a day on the Saturday, for Lurgan United in the morning and Hillsborough in the afternoon, and then turn out for my Gaelic football club on the Sunday. I was at the age when you felt you could play all day, every day. No one had heard of the phrase ‘teenage burnout’ in those days. I would pay for the excessive football a few years later, as you will learn in a later chapter.

My Gaelic football career was going very well, too. I seemed to have the natural ball-playing skills needed for both versions of football, and my ability to hit a long shot came in handy in Gaelic in particular. Playing for St Michael’s and Clan Na Gael, in total before I left school, I won Armagh county league championship medals at Under-13, Under-14 and Under—15 levels; two more Under-16 league medals and two minor league medals; plus an All-Ireland Community Games medal and a winner’s medal in the prestigious Herald Cup tournament.

The pinnacle of my school Gaelic football career came in an All-Ireland final. St Michael’s won through to the Under-161/2 Colleges B Championship which was played at mighty Croke Park in Dublin, the home of Gaelic football. It was a huge day for everyone at the school, but we were not fancied to beat the big strong team from Clane Community School in Kildare.

We were much more skilful, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed the game if not the match report in the local Lurgan paper—it mentioned something about me being ‘exciting to watch’ but spoiled things by adding ‘the red-haired youngster…spoils his performances occasionally with his fiery temper’. The anti-ginger brigade in the media had it in for me from the start, it seems…

We won a close match by a goal and three points (1-3) to four points (0-4), and instantly became heroes to the rest of the school. In that year I also played for Clan Na Gael’s Under-16 team which won the North Armagh championship, as our club performed the remarkable feat of winning the league at every age level.

Despite my Gaelic football success, soccer was more and more the main focus of my life. As I approached my final year in school, I was already set on a path to try to become a professional footballer, and senior clubs from Scotland and England were taking a great interest in me, including one rather surprising club indeed.

CHAPTER THREE First Steps on the Ladder

As I progressed through the ranks of school football and played for both Lurgan United and Hillsborough Boys Club, several senior teams in Scotland and England had begun to take a look at me with an eye to securing my signature in the future.

One club in Glasgow in particular seemed to begin taking a genuine interest. That club was not Celtic, but Rangers.

That is correct. Your eyes do not deceive you. I am relating the story here not to make any great fuss, but because it really did happen and in fact was reported in the local Lurgan paper at the time, though not with any great prominence. The first sign of interest from Rangers came after I played for the Northern Ireland Under-14 select against the Scottish Schools team in Stranraer. We won the match quite convincingly and I played particularly well that day. It was after that match that I came into contact with Harry Dunn, the well-known scout who would eventually help me to get a start in professional football.

He told me that Motherwell FC might be interested in giving me a trial, but a couple of weeks later he called the house to say that Rangers were also interested and would like to invite me to visit Ibrox Park for the day.

My dad was stupefied. But shortly afterwards we received a letter from Jock Wallace, the then manager of Rangers, confirming their interest in my future. You can read that letter and see the picture of me at Ibrox in the illustration section—proof positive that Rangers were following my progress as a fledgling footballer.

It was one of the few times in my life that I saw my father look absolutely stunned as he read the message on that Ibrox-headed notepaper. He just could not believe it at first, but when he realized it was serious he expressed his grave reservations about me ever signing for Rangers, not least because it could place my personal safety, and that of the rest of the family, at risk from the actions of extremists—given what happened to me when I was chosen to captain Northern Ireland, his fears were sadly justified.

Despite my father’s concerns I also consulted Dessie Meginnis and it was decided all round that I should go over to Glasgow to see what Rangers had to offer.

The visit took place after an international youth tournament at Ayr where I was lucky enough to be named best player in the Under-14 section. The Lurgan Mail reported that ‘Neill (sic) Lennon has attracted the interest of Birmingham City, Glasgow Celtic and Rangers.’ Later on it was reported that ‘13-year-old Neil Lennon accepted an invitation from a top Scottish Premier League side to view their set-up. Neil, who was accompanied by his father, enjoyed the experience and may well be invited back at a later date for a trial. The club asked that their name should not be disclosed at this stage.’

That is probably a reference to the fact that the whole situation of Rangers taking an interest in a Catholic schoolboy was very delicate, to say the least. At that time, because of their culture as the club of the Protestant and Unionist tradition, Rangers did not sign Catholics. The club had stated several years earlier that it would sign a Catholic if he was good enough, but funnily enough by the early 1980s, Rangers still hadn’t signed anyone of my religion. The first boy to sign for them who was reported to be a Catholic was John Spencer later in that decade.

It was obviously going to be problematic for me to sign for them and perhaps that’s why everything was kept pretty hush-hush, but I have never doubted that their interest in me was genuine, not least because Jock Wallace told my father face to face—and as people who knew him will recall, Jock didn’t do whispers…he could be heard out on the pitch!

With my father along to watch over me—and make sure I didn’t sign anything—I enjoyed my trip to Ibrox, in company with three other boys from the Northern Ireland Under-14 side. We were accompanying the Under-15 side which went to Glasgow to play a Rangers’ youth side, and after the game we four were given our own guided tour of Ibrox, including the dressing rooms and the trophy room, which was empty as usual—only kidding!

Ibrox was very impressive, particularly the marble halls, and Jimmy Nicholl, the Northern Ireland international who then played for Rangers, looked after us well. My dad had a conversation with Jock Wallace in which the Rangers manager said that he had known about me for some time. The subject of my religion was mentioned and my dad recalls that Wallace knew it would be a problem. Even so I was only thirteen and the time for deciding my future was a long way away, though even by then I was pretty certain that I wanted to be a professional footballer.

Over the next few months, Harry Dunn also assured me that Rangers were keeping an eye on me. The interest from Rangers was intriguing, but never came to anything. I reckon I would have been about fifteen or so when Graeme Souness took over and started the revolution which brought Rangers their first high-profile Catholic signing of the modern era, Maurice Johnston, and Catholics have played a considerable part in their subsequent success. Could I have been the one to break the mould before John Spencer and Mo Johnston? I don’t know, because the question never arose. Still, it’s certainly something to ponder.

With nothing concrete coming from Rangers or any other club, I began to wonder if anyone would sign me up, but I need not have worried. The occasion which really brought me to the attention of scouts was the Milk Cup in Coleraine in 1985. Although I had only just turned fourteen, Dessie Meginnis asked me to captain a ‘Craigavon United’ select side which contained several older players.

The Milk Cup was a huge tournament for youngsters, and the best teams from all over Northern Ireland as well as visitors from as far away as Italy and San Francisco participated in a week-long competition with the final being watched by 10,000 people.

We played as Craigavon United but in reality it was the Lurgan Celtic team of two years earlier. Given our loyalty to the club in the east end of Glasgow it was somewhat pleasing that our best performance came against Rangers in the final. We had done well to get that far, but Rangers were hot favourites. Ironically, their side was managed by none other than Harry Dunn. His boys had wiped the floor with everyone, scoring fifty-five goals and losing none in romping to the final, and had the likes of John Spencer and Gary McSwegan playing for them. They were a very good side, but we gave them a huge fright, only losing to them on penalties after drawing 1-1 at full-time. At the end of the tournament, players were selected to contest a Northern Ireland versus the Rest of the World match. With Dessie Meginnis as manager, I was chosen as captain of our side which won 1-0.

There was high praise at home for this bunch of youngsters from Lurgan who were representing Craigavon. When I got back to my house it seemed as though the telephone did not stop ringing. Scouts from Manchester City, Oxford and Motherwell all called my dad, but the interest which excited me most was that of John Kelman, chief scout for Celtic, who knew Dessie Meginnis. Kelman told my father that Celtic would like me to come over for a trial at some point in the future. I was ecstatic that I was even being thought of in connection with Celtic. When I was first told, I bounced about the house like some crazy fool, jumping up and down and doing somersaults.

I was now on the fringe of the Northern Ireland schoolboy team, so it was a very exciting time for me. Football was almost taking over my life, but then I suffered my first major setback. I had been selected in the initial squad of eighteen players of ages fourteen and fifteen who would train together to prepare for schoolboy internationals. That training period lasted about six or seven months, at the end of which the squad was reduced to sixteen. I was one of the players cut at that point, and I felt as if the roof had fallen in on me. I had put a lot of effort into my training for the national squad, and I was gutted to be left out. I kept thinking of the other players going off to feature in matches at big stadiums in Scotland and England while I was stuck back in Lurgan. I seriously began to doubt whether I would make it into the ranks of professional football.

Looking back on that period, I was probably carrying a bit too much puppy fat—like any teenager, I was quite conscious of it. I decided that I needed to get fitter and then perhaps my turn would come. Motherwell and Manchester City were still interested in signing me, after all, though I had heard nothing more from Celtic and a trial for Oxford United had produced nothing solid.

Everyone at Hillsborough Boys Club was really good to me at that time, encouraging me to carry on. I went back to play a full season for them, which proved to be highly successful. In 1986, when I was fifteen, Craigavon United returned to the Milk Cup but I was too old to play for the junior side which won the tournament that year.

As I studied for my ‘O’ levels, Harry Dunn assured me that there was still very strong interest in me from Motherwell. Indeed there was—one of the directors of the club, Malky McNeill, came over to see my parents and me, and he took us for dinner to a very nice restaurant at the Chimney Corner, an upmarket hotel on the outskirts of Belfast. I will never forget that meal, because not only did it lead to me starting my professional career with Motherwell, it was also the first time I had seen someone cracking open a bottle of champagne. Malky stuck a silver coin into the cork and handed it to me saying ‘you keep that for luck’. I remember that the bill came to ?8, which was an absolute fortune to my parents in those days.

After that dinner, I was made a formal written offer by Motherwell of a two-year apprenticeship plus a year’s professional contract.

At around the same time, Manchester City’s scout Peter Neill, who had seen me play in the Milk Cup in his home town of Coleraine, invited myself and Gerry Taggart to take part in trials for the Maine Road club. The trials went very well and City let me know through Peter that they wanted me to sign for them.

So I now had two offers on the table. After much discussion with Dessie, Harry and my parents, it was decided that I would sign for Motherwell. The main reason I signed for Motherwell in preference to Manchester City was that we thought I would have a better chance of progressing more quickly at a smaller club where I might get more opportunities to break into the first team.

I was hugely excited at the prospect of playing full-time professional football, even as an apprentice, and couldn’t wait to finish school and get over to Scotland.

But joining the Steelmen, as Motherwell were nicknamed because of the forges around the town, turned out to be the wrong choice for me. In fact, I would go as far as to say that my move to Scotland and Motherwell was a complete disaster.

Motherwell were then in the Scottish Premier League, and the previous year the club had celebrated its centenary. They played at Fir Park, so called because it was once the corner of Lord Dalziel’s country estate in which fir trees grew.

In the 1987/88 season the manager was Tommy McLean, the former Rangers and Scotland player, and his assistant was Tom Forsyth, also a former Rangers player. That season the club had a staff of thirty-three full-time footballers, and they had a lot of players who were either already well known in Scottish football or who would become so, such as former Celtic player Tom McAdam, ex-Rangers man Robert Russell and a certain Tom Boyd whose name will reappear later in this book.

In July 1987, having just turned sixteen, I packed my bags and left home for a new life as an apprentice footballer with Motherwell. It was the first extended period I would spend away from my family, and I have to say that I did not enjoy it one bit.

It was certainly a huge shock to me to have to move into digs. My very first lodgings were with the grandmother of one of the Motherwell players, Chris McCart. Some thirteen years later when I signed for Celtic, one of the first people to greet me was the selfsame Chris, who by then was on Celtic’s staff as a youth coach. Football can be a small world at times.

It can also be tough and uncompromising, especially for young apprentices. Among the boys who joined at the same time as me was Scott Leitch, who later captained Motherwell and is now the manager of Ross County. Scott was slightly older than me—in fact, every signed player at the club was older than me.

Our day consisted of an early rise in order to take the public transport I needed to get to Fir Park. We had to be there before the senior players as we apprentices had to clean their boots and make sure the kit was laid out and the place was tidy before training began. We were nominally under the supervision of chief scout and youth development officer Bobby Jenks, but from the start we were coached and trained by Tommy McLean and his coaching staff.

I was surprised to be thrown in at the deep end by being made to train with the first-team players and the rest of the senior squad. I was still a raw boy, and not physically up to the task of training like a full-time professional footballer. We would be taken to Strathclyde Park near Hamilton and made to run up steep slopes, then there would be all sorts of running and exercises that really were more suited to adults than a teenager. I was constantly getting it in the neck for my lack of fitness and I had to admit that I was struggling as I was overweight and had never experienced anything like the intensity of this training. After the senior players went off for the afternoon we apprentices would have to go back to Fir Park and do more cleaning and tidying of the stadium in preparation for the forthcoming season. Was it any wonder that I went back to my digs exhausted most nights?

I loved playing most of all and when I finally got the chance to play in a few warm-up games, I thought that I performed quite well. I definitely held my own among my age group, and went with Motherwell’s Under-16 side to play in the Milk Cup at Coleraine where I had happy memories. We did well in our first game, beating Newcastle United’s boys 5-2, before losing to Liverpool in the semi-final, the Reds eventually going on to win the tournament. Once again I was selected to play in the closing match, this time for the Rest of the World which beat a Northern Ireland select eleven 2-1. I must have set some sort of Milk Cup record having played for the Northern Irish select at Under-14 level and then for the Rest of the World at a higher age group—and I was on the winning side both times.

Back at Fir Park, there was just a chance that I might have made it into the reserves. The training was murder, however, and though I was determined to stick it out, I picked up a thigh injury and that set me back several weeks.

I was also suffering badly from homesickness. It did not help matters that for various reasons, I was shunted about from landlady to landlady, and I was in three different digs in three months.

The fact that I was the only Irish apprentice brought me some unwelcome attention. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was picked on and singled out to be the butt of a few jokes, usually involving ‘Irishness’, a subject beloved of the politically incorrect comedians of the time. I remember that my being a Catholic from Northern Ireland was also the subject of some remarks. On one occasion a senior player grabbed the broom I was using and showed me how to sweep up. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s bit more Protestant-like.’ I had never heard that phrase before and though I now know it’s a common expression in the west of Scotland to describe things being neat and tidy, back then at the age of sixteen, I didn’t know how to deal with this kind of banter.

I was very unhappy and couldn’t see me getting anywhere fast, and on a pittance for a wage I couldn’t exactly live the high life. Like quite a few clubs, Motherwell had taken advantage of the Government’s funding of youth training and my wage was set at the Youth Training Scheme allowance of £28.50, although the club, to be fair, paid for my lodgings.

The last straw came when I was moved into my third digs with an old lady who was perfectly civil but bordering on the stone deaf. We had nothing in common and conversation was minimal. My life consisted of cleaning boots, training, more cleaning, then going home to eat my dinner, watch some telly and go to bed. I was fed up and miserable, and something had to give.

Part of the contract I had signed entitled me to a couple of holidays during the season and by the beginning of September I decided to use up one of my breaks to go home to Lurgan. I had a long chat with my dad, during which I told him how nightmarish things had become. I told him that my brief flirtation with professional football, Scottish style, was over and that I wanted to come home and start my studies again.

My dad then had a long telephone conversation with Tommy McLean during which he told the manager in no uncertain terms that he was not happy with the way I was being treated. Tommy made it clear that he very much wanted me to stay and that things would improve, but my mind was made up and that was the end of my time with Motherwell. I don’t blame anyone for what happened and I’ve never held it against the club that I had a poor start to my career. It was just one of those things that happens in football, and at least I had shown enough potential for Tommy McLean to want to keep me on.

I returned a wiser lad to Lurgan and home, and also to St Michael’s School. I had only missed a few weeks of term, and I was sure I could catch up and eventually sit my ‘A’ levels. Despite my harsh experience at Motherwell, I also wanted to continue playing football.

Nothing better illustrates the topsy-turvy nature of football than what happened to me next. Within days of my arrival home I was invited to train with Glenavon, the local side who played in the Irish League. Their manager Terry Nicholson had heard of my return and moved quickly to sign me on professional terms, albeit for only a few quid a week. There were the usual complications over the cancellation of my registration with Motherwell, but the Scottish Football Association finally cleared me to play.

Glenavon played at Mourneview Park in Lurgan and it was there that I trained and played with the reserves. As part-timers, we trained on Tuesday and Thursday nights and the park was close enough to my home for me to jog there and back. I played a couple of reserve matches and scored twice, but as a sixteen-year-old schoolboy it looked as though I might stay in the reserves for a while. Glenavon’s first team had made a dreadful start to the season, however, so Terry Nicholson decided to give me a chance in the senior side.

I made my debut as a senior professional footballer for Glenavon on Saturday 26 September 1987, in an Irish League match against Cliftonville at Mourneview Park.

I played in midfield and did particularly well in the first half, hitting the bar with a long-range effort after seventeen minutes. I was enjoying myself being back at home and playing football, and the training at Motherwell had certainly made me fitter. In the seventy-seventh minute I went forward, picked up a pass from substitute Billy Drake, beat one defender and sent goalkeeper Bobby Carlisle the wrong way as I shot home with my left foot. Cue a great roar from the home fans and a jig of delight from me.

It proved to be the only goal of the game. I had scored on my debut and into the bargain I had ended an eight-game losing streak for Glenavon. I think I was a bit of a hero in Lurgan that night…and all the miseries of Motherwell had vanished.

The Lurgan Mail duly reported: ‘A debut goal is something worth celebrating and Neil certainly savoured the euphoria of it all. It was a score which may go down in history, marking the birth of a star.’ Just shows you, the press can get things right at times!

I was amazed at the reaction to my debut. I was congratulated by people I had never met, I had my picture taken in my school uniform by the local paper, and because it was an Irish League match, the national newspapers covered the game. I was even given a special mention in Ireland’s Sunday World column about football in the north.

I couldn’t wait to play again and the following weekend I did it again, scoring the first goal in Glenavon’s 3-1 win over Bangor in the TNT Gold Cup. I might have played a third game, but of all things I went down with ’flu.

By then, however, I had received the call which would put my soccer career back on track. I had turned down Manchester City for Motherwell, but they were a forgiving lot at Maine Road and within weeks of my arriving home the club contacted my dad through Peter Neill and said they would still like to take me. I needed no second invitation. In late October 1987, I put pen to paper and signed for City.

My friend Gerry Taggart had been signed as an apprentice that summer and was already over in Manchester, so this time, at least, I would not be the only Irish boy in the squad. I had to say goodbye to Glenavon but I would never forget the start they gave me as a senior player, and probably because of that experience and my feelings that things couldn’t go as badly as they had done at Motherwell, I packed my bags with a lighter heart.

City’s scout Peter Neill accompanied me on the trip to Manchester, which included ten hours on a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool—not fun, I can tell you—followed by a bus journey to Manchester. We arrived at my digs where the landlady warned me I had an early rise as I was wanted at Maine Road at 8.30 a.m. the following morning.

The guest house was just fifteen minutes’ walk away from the stadium in Rusholme. As I set out for the ground my first thought was that I had somehow woken up in the wrong country. I had seen maybe only a few brown—or black-skinned people in my life, and here was I now in the Asian quarter of Manchester. I think I probably stared goggle-eyed at women in saris and men in turbans with big long beards—sights I had only seen on television before. As I walked along the road to Moss Side, which is the Afro-Caribbean area of the city, I really did begin to wonder where the white people had gone. It shows you how naĭve I was when I arrived in Manchester, and it was to be the first of many culture shocks that I would experience over the next few weeks and months. It was a whole new world to me, yet I never found it intimidating. On the contrary, it was exciting to find new cultures on my doorstep, and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Manchester.

I was back on the apprenticeship treadmill, having signed a two-year contract. Once again I was on the government’s Youth Training Scheme stipend of ?8.50 per week, but City did pay us an extra ?0 for travel expenses. I was also determined not to repeat the Motherwell debacle, and the main difference in my environment this time around was that within a few days of arriving at Maine Road, I was put into digs with an incredible, wonderful family called the Ducketts.

They lived in a rambling three-storey Victorian house in Stockport. Len and Jackie Duckett were the mother and father in charge of the household which included their two grown-up married daughters, a younger son and a grandson. Everyone in that house brought their own distinctive personality to a warm and supportive environment in which I was immediately made to feel at home. They were all hard-grafting people who contributed to the household income, and while you had to toe the line and respect their house rules, there was always plenty of humour and laughter around.

Len Duckett became almost like a second father to me, looking after me and making sure I knew my way about Manchester. I still talk to him to this day, and indeed I regret not keeping in touch more regularly because the Ducketts really were very good to me over a number of years. At City and later at Crewe Alexandra I would sometimes move into a flat with other players, for instance, but the Ducketts would always take me back if I needed somewhere to stay.

What makes their kindness and support of me even more astonishing is that Len was a season-ticket holder at Manchester UNITED. But he would often come to watch this City boy play, even travelling to Ireland when I started playing for Northern Ireland’s youth side. They are still a warm and caring family, and I will always be grateful to the Ducketts for the start they gave me in England.

In my first year with them I had the whole of the top floor to myself, but after that they provided lodgings for three more players, namely Michael Hughes from Larne, later a Northern Ireland international who is still playing, Mike Sheron who went on to become a prolific scorer at several clubs, and John Wills. We four had a great time together, and all played in the FA Youth Cup Final of 1989. Regular as clockwork, we would catch the bus to Maine Road each morning, and, unlike Motherwell, training was something I looked forward to.

Billy McNeill had left the manager’s job to return to Celtic in September 1986, and that had triggered something of a slide at City. During the summer before I arrived at Maine Road, Mel Machin had taken over after Scottish manager Jimmy Frizzell had taken over briefly and presided over the club’s relegation to Division Two. Jimmy was kicked upstairs to become general manager, while Mel’s job was simple—to get City back to the top flight as soon as possible.

It helped him that the club had a brilliant youth set-up producing some talented players, as evidenced by the fact that City had won the FA Youth Cup in the 1985/86 season. We apprentices were looked after by coaches Tony Book and Glyn Pardoe, and it is these two men that I credit for giving me the basis of my professional career.

Tony had captained the side in a vintage era for City in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the likes of Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Francis Lee were at their peak. He had also later managed the club. Glyn was an outstanding full-back who had been forced to retire prematurely. He had suffered some appalling injuries including a horrific broken leg in a tackle by George Best, but it was a knee injury that finally forced him to stop playing.

What these two City men did not know about football was not worth knowing. The quality of their coaching was superb. They concentrated always on teaching us the correct things to do on the pitch, such as passing the ball accurately time after time. As all good coaches should do, they tried to get us to develop good habits both on and off the pitch.

Our routine as apprentices consisted of making sure that the kit for the senior professionals was properly prepared for them. Each of us looked after two players, and at first mine were striker Trevor Morley and the big goalkeeper Eric Nixon. Trevor went on to play for several clubs and is now a scout, while Eric later became something of a living legend at Tranmere Rovers. He was a huge fellow, six feet four inches tall, who would happily give you a thump on the shoulder if his boots weren’t prepared exactly as he wanted them.

It was the sort of apprenticeship where, if you got sent for a pot of tea, then you went without argument and fetched it. Another of my jobs was to clean out the toilets and the baths. It may sound as if it was slave labour, but I didn’t mind as I knew I was getting a good grounding.

The coaching by Tony and Glyn more than made up for the more tedious aspects of the job. They always tried to keep things varied and interesting, though we concentrated a lot on retaining possession, playing hundreds of hours of the game called ‘keep ball’. We would also play small-sided games, while Tony would give me special coaching in the afternoon sometimes, working on my ability to trap and pass the ball. I think it’s fair to say that the sort of player I became was established under the tutelage of Tony and Glyn. Later, Dario Gradi and Martin O’Neill would add to my game but my basic grounding was at City.

There was one unexpected development for me right at the start of my time at Maine Road. I had spent most of my youth playing in the forward line or at half-back, but as soon as I got to City, they tried to turn me into a right-back. Is it any wonder that I struggled a bit at first in that position? The move came about because I was put in at right-back in one of the early trials that I played for City. I didn’t do too badly, and then the club became short of cover at right—and left-back so that was me stuck in defence for the next three years. Though I mostly played on the right, they also tried me at left-back and even centre-half. It wasn’t until I moved to Crewe Alexandra that I got back to playing in my favoured midfield position again.

Mel Machin took a real shine to me when I first started at City. Almost from the start of my time there, I was able to do what I loved best which was playing. Mel put me into the youth team but as the 1987/88 season wore on, I began to play a lot of matches in the reserves.

It was terrific experience for a youngster, as we would often be playing against top professionals. I recall one particular match against Liverpool reserves when their team featured the likes of Jan Molby, Kevin McDonald and Craig Johnston. I was credited with having kept Johnston quiet during the game, which we won 2-0.

The club was suffering an injury crisis in February and March 1988 and I found myself becoming a regular in the reserve team. We were due to play Hull City when Mel Machin told me that I was on standby to play for the first team. I was covering for Paul Lake but in the event he passed a late fitness test and my debut had to be postponed. There were some pundits who queried putting a teenager in the squad, but Mel said at the time that ‘if they are good enough, they are old enough’, and it was only a few weeks before I did indeed make the starting eleven.

On 30 April, we were going to St Andrews to play Birmingham City, and I was delighted to be told I was travelling with the first team. I just thought I was going along to make up the squad numbers, but then, half an hour before the game, Mel read out the team to start the match and I was named at right-back. I was completely taken by surprise, just amazed that only six months after leaving school, I was going to make my first-team debut for one of England’s best-known clubs. I also knew that I had been given a great chance by the manager to stake a claim for a place in the first-team squad for the next season as it was well known that veteran defender John Gidman would be leaving the club at the end of the season.

I did not find out until much later that I was the second-youngest player to be picked by Manchester City for a first-team debut in modern days, the youngest ever having been Glyn Pardoe.

Before the kick-off I was a nervous wreck, and shortly after the referee blew the whistle to start the match I was nearly a wreck of a different sort.

I remember running about the pitch and savouring the atmosphere. I was determined to enjoy myself, but Birmingham’s Scottish player Andy Kennedy had other ideas. About a minute into the game I took a pass and was moving down the right wing when Andy absolutely flattened me, taking my legs away and thumping me right over the touchline. It was late and dangerous and he was yellow-carded.

Our physio Roy Bailey and Mel Machin both came to attend to me and it took me a minute or two to get to my feet. Having been given a first-team opportunity, I was determined to carry on, even though I was still sore, and at least I showed I wasn’t going to be intimidated.

At that stage of the season we already knew City were not going to make the promotion play-offs, but Birmingham were deep in relegation trouble and perhaps that is why they tried to kick us off the field. I thought I had played reasonably well and was comfortable with the pace of the game, but five minutes into the second half, Ian Handysides came through and hit me just as hard as Andy Kennedy. He caught my ankle and it was very painful, I can tell you.

Handysides, too, was booked, which provoked the Birmingham fans into booing me. They appeared to think that the victim was guilty of getting their players booked, but then who says a football crowd is a thinking creature?

By now the physical punishment was taking its toll on me so Mel Machin brought me off the field after about sixty-four minutes. We went on to win 3-0, with two goals from Ian Brightwell and the third from Imre Varadi.

In the dressing room afterwards my ankle was swollen like a balloon, and indeed the injury prevented me from playing in any of the remaining matches of the season.

Despite the ‘treatment’, I had thoroughly enjoyed a great experience, and I remember calling home to Lurgan that evening where my dad couldn’t believe that he had missed my debut.

He never did get the chance to see me play for Manchester City’s first team, because that match at Birmingham turned out to be the one and only appearance that I made for the club at the top level.

Of course I had no idea that things would turn out the way they did, in fact I reasoned that having made my debut at the age of sixteen, I could look forward to an exciting time.

The sky was my limit, or so it seemed, because I was also back in the international frame. During that first season with Manchester City I was called up to play for the Northern Ireland youth side against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin, a match which ended in a no-scoring draw. It was further proof of how far I had come in a short time as it was only three years since I had been cut from the schoolboy squad. And there was more good news on that international front during the summer of 1988, when Billy Bingham, the manager of Northern Ireland, invited me to join the Under-23 squad and attend the Irish FA’s four-day coaching seminar at Stranmillis near Belfast.

Gerry Taggart was there, and he had also made his first-team debut for City, so it seemed that life was going to be pretty good for the two boys from Lurgan. It was certainly a quiet life—on YTS wages we were not exactly Jack the lads at that time, and indeed we rarely had a night out in my first two seasons at Maine Road, as we simply couldn’t afford it. The funny thing was that all my mates back home thought that Gerry and I must be loaded because we were playing for such a big team. If only they knew that we were dependent on the government for our YTS wages, and the occasional rock concert was a big event for us.

My second season at City turned out to be less than satisfactory, however. Mel Machin had added players to the squad, and I found myself further down the pecking order as the team made a strong bid for promotion to the First Division. Perhaps I tried too hard, but things just did not seem to work out for me, and I was stuck playing in the reserves and youth team. Looking back, I should have been less frustrated than I was, but I had had a taste of first-team action and I wanted more. When you’re seventeen and eighteen, you want to do everything in a hurry and rightly or wrongly, I felt that I was not making the progress I should have.

Playing for Manchester City at any level was no great hardship that season. The senior squad did indeed win promotion as we youngsters won the Lancashire Youth Cup and embarked on a tremendous run in the FA Youth Cup, winning at Mansfield, Bradford, Tottenham and Newcastle before facing Watford in the two-legged final.

With future England goalkeeper David James in goal, they restricted us to a 1-0 lead at Maine Road, and we eventually lost after extra-time in the return leg at Vicarage Road. It was a heartbreaker, especially as we had been so well supported by the City fans, 8,000 of whom had turned out to watch the first leg.

The end of the season did bring some good news, however. I had concluded my YTS apprenticeship and the club now exercised the option of giving me a one-year professional contract, which at least earned me a bit more money. Mel Machin had confidence in half a dozen of the Youth Cup finalists and gave us all professional contracts.

We also went on a wonderful summer trip to Italy, playing four games for City in a prestigious youth tournament in Bologna, in which we lost the final to Juventus. We then moved to Venice where Gerry Taggart, Michael Hughes and I played in the Northern Ireland Under-18 youth team which won a tournament that involved sides from Russia, Holland and Italy, who we beat in the final on penalties.

I celebrated my eighteenth birthday back home in Lurgan where I decided that I would make a special effort to stay fit by playing Gaelic football. And in my ‘other’ footballing life, things could not have gone much better for me. My old teacher Seamus Heffron had been appointed coach of the Armagh county junior side, and he invited me along to train with them. As always, I enjoyed my ‘Gaelic’ and thanks to Seamus, this Manchester City player got to play for his county side.

But all too soon it was time to return to City for my third season with the club and my first as a fully-fledged senior professional footballer. It would prove to be a season I would not forget, but not for the reasons I had hoped.

CHAPTER FOUR Joining Dario’s Crewe

It was not all work and no fun for me at that time. In a bar in Manchester I had met a lovely girl called Claire Whiteoak and I plucked up the courage to ask her out. A stunning blonde, she was slightly older than me and worked as a hairdresser. Soon we were ‘going steady’, as the phrase was in those days, and I met her folks and got on well with them. She was my first love and we were very serious about each other. All of a sudden I was a very happy young man with a terrific girlfriend and good prospects even if I wasn’t earning fantastic money. I was on about ?00 per week, but out of that I had to pay digs as these were no longer provided by the club. After tax and outlays, I had about £20-£30 per week to live on—it certainly wasn’t the high life at that time.

Manchester City were back in the top flight, however, and good earnings would surely come my way if I could break into the first-team reckoning and City could stay in Division One. From the youngest apprentice to the manager and chairman Peter Swales, there was huge anticipation for the season ahead. You couldn’t help but get caught up in it, especially as City had bounced straight back after relegation. Personally I felt that, at eighteen, this could be my time to seal my place in the first team.

Yet from the start of the 1989/90 season, things did not go according to plan. There were times when the first team played very good football, but in retrospect there were not enough quality players to sustain the effort over a whole season—you need strength in depth simply to survive in a top league, especially when you make a bad start to the season, as City did in 1989.

There were some very good days, however. We had won only one of our first seven matches before we faced our great Mancunian rivals at Maine Road on 23 September 1989—a date emblazoned on every City fan’s memory. United had paid millions for Gary Pallister and Paul Ince to strengthen a squad which already had the likes of Steve Bruce and Brian McClair, but they were not going well either and the pressure was growing on manager Alex Ferguson. The atmosphere was electric at Maine Road that day, and by the end it was the City support which was celebrating, a record victory over their deadliest rivals, a feat which I know lives on in the memory of City fans to this day.

I was not playing that afternoon but was in the stand to watch an unforgettable match as we ran riot, blitzing United with terrific attacking football. Two goals from David Oldfield and one each from Trevor Morley, Ian Bishop and Andy Hinchcliffe earned us a final result of 5-1. You had to feel sorry for Mark Hughes as he scored United’s only goal and it was one of the best I’ve ever seen, a hitch-kick into the top corner performed about five feet off the ground.

We all thought that such a sensational victory would spark a mini-revival but it was not to be. By December we were deep in relegation trouble and had lost heavily on occasions, Derby County beating us 6-0 away, Nottingham Forest winning 3-0 at Maine Road and Liverpool also hammering us at our place, 4-1.

Mel Machin then paid the price for the poor run when Peter Swales sacked him. Joe Royle, then manager of Oldham Athletic, was appointed in his place but changed his mind before Howard Kendall, who had managed Blackburn Rovers, Everton and Athletic Bilbao, took the job. Howard had but one aim, to keep City in the First Division, and that was going to be a tough task given our lowly position at the time.

Not surprisingly, he sent for some of his Everton ‘Old Boys’ to help out, including Peter Reid, Alan Harper and Mark Ward. Every manager needs people around him he knows and trusts, but new signings also mean that younger players get pushed to the back of the queue while other players are sold or swapped to make way for the newcomers. My mate from Lurgan, Gerry Taggart, for instance, had made ten starts for the first team but in January was sold to Barnsley for £75,000. It was a very good move for my friend as he made such an impact at Barnsley that within a few weeks he was called up to make his full international debut.

I knew I was going to miss Taggs and I also wondered what fate lay in store for me. For in truth, the reserves were not Howard’s priority, though I could soon see that he was a great coach, a very good man manager who knew how to build a team.

He didn’t seem to notice me so all I could do was keep plugging away in the reserves where I hardly missed a game. However, I was soon spending more time on the treatment table than I would have liked, due mostly to a succession of niggles which affected my groin area in particular. Still, I played every reserve match and thought I was doing well, and I was quite confident of having my contract extended at the end-of-season talks with players which every manager held in those days before Bosman pre-contracts and transfer windows.

Sometimes in the reserve matches you would find yourself playing against big-name players who were either coming back from injury or had been dropped to the reserves for some reason. I remember having a rare old tussle with Nigel Clough, for instance, and Viv Anderson was another famous player I faced on the pitch.

Playing Manchester United was always a bit special no matter what level it was. Reserve matches were played more often at Maine Road than Old Trafford, which was probably just as well for my landlord and friend Len Duckett. He would come along to support his City lodgers, such as Michael Hughes and myself, and when we played United he would use his season ticket and find himself shouting for us while sitting among his fellow United fans. They would tap him on the shoulder and ask him, ‘Why are you sitting here with us and shouting for them?’

Undaunted, Len would reply, ‘I’m a season-ticket holder but that’s my boys out there.’ That’s the type of character Len is—loyal to a fault.

We went out of the League Cup at the quarter-final stage, beaten 1-0 by Coventry City, and lost in the FA Cup to Millwall after three games. First Division survival was all that mattered and the club spent £1m on Niall Quinn to see if he could provide the goals that would save us from the drop.

He scored on his debut to earn a 1-1 draw with Chelsea and then we beat league leaders Aston Villa away which sparked a run of victories. Howard Kendall had managed to turn things around and by Easter Monday of 1990, City were safe from relegation. All that remained was for me to make it into the first team and get my contract extended.

I thought I might get a run out in the first team in the end-of-season games but that did not happen. All the contracts were sorted out on one day shortly after City had ensured First Division survival. I remember being in the dressing room waiting to be called up. Another young player, Ian Thomson, and myself were the first to be called out. I thought it was not a good sign that only two of us were given the call, and I was slightly apprehensive when I was the first to be summoned to the manager’s room, though I still did not feel too worried at that point. Although I had only played for the reserves, I had done consistently well so I did not think there would be a problem.

Howard had Peter Reid with him, as he was his assistant at the time. The manager got straight to the point. ‘This is the time of year when it is good news or bad news for players,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid that in your case it is bad news.’

He proceeded to talk to me for at least another five minutes, but I’m afraid I can barely remember a single word he said. My mind just could not take in the enormity of the fact that I was being sacked, though football calls it by the supposedly nicer name of ‘free transfer’.

There have been thousands of boys like me in that same position. I doubt if any one of us could really explain how it feels when you hear the dreaded verdict that someone thinks you are not good enough to make a career as a professional with his club. You really do feel as if it is the end of your world, and in a sense, it is. If you’re with a top-flight club as I was, then the only way to go is down, or even completely out of the game.

Maybe Howard Kendall and Peter Reid advised me to look for another club down the leagues. At least that’s what I assume they said, but I was so deeply in shock that I really cannot recall much of what they said. I do remember Howard finishing by saying that he would put my name on the flyer containing the names of players who would be out of contract that went round every club. He added that he did think I had a future in the game but it just wasn’t going to be with Manchester City at that point.

What really hurt was that the two members of the coaching staff who had worked most closely with me, Tony Book and Glyn Pardoe, thought otherwise, believing that I could have a future with City.

I was angry and bitter for some time afterwards. I felt I had done enough to justify being kept on, but I learned as I progressed in football that such oustings are often not the fault of the player and that managers can get it wrong, about youngsters in particular. I myself have often said that I am a late developer, so I want to make it clear that I do not hold any grudges against Howard or Manchester City in any way whatsoever. He had a decision to make and he took it with a view to what was best for the club at the time. He just concluded that either I was not going to make the grade at Maine Road or that I would not be suitable for the kind of team he was trying to create. I don’t blame him for that—even though he was wrong!

The worst thing was that I then had to go back to the dressing room and relay the verdict to my colleagues and peers. I just could not face them. I went into the toilet beside the manager’s office and immediately burst into copious tears. It must have taken me about five minutes to compose myself. Eventually I made my way into the dressing room but as soon as I had told them, I started crying again anyway.

My first thought was for Claire. Things were going so well between us, but here was I with no job, no prospects and probably no money in a few weeks’ time. It already looked to me as if I would have to go home to Lurgan and start all over again, so I just could not see a way ahead for us. It appeared that I would lose my career and my girlfriend in one go.

All the lads in that dressing room were sympathetic and gave me plenty of advice, most of which was not to panic and try to find another club as soon as possible. I think I have shown over the years that I’m a pretty resilient character, but back then as an eighteen year old it was difficult to bounce back. Eventually I told myself that I would show Howard Kendall that he had made a mistake and that I could make it as a professional.

Luckily for me, there were seven or eight reserve games left so I could put myself in the shop window. My contract did not expire until the end of June so I had about two months to find another club, and I soon became pretty determined to do so as I wanted to stay in England and hopefully play for a team near Manchester and Claire.

I also had another method of showing the football world that I was worth signing. At the beginning of April 1990, I had been picked for Northern Ireland’s Under-21 squad to play against Israel at Coleraine—the place where I had enjoyed such good times in the Milk Cup. Perhaps that was a good omen for me, because manager Billy Bingham put me straight into the team to play Israel.

This was a memorable game for me as it marked my debut at that level, but I’m sure the other players who took part and the small number of spectators who attended will remember it for other reasons, as there was a blizzard in the second half. The match had to be abandoned two minutes from time as the floodlights failed—the second time that had happened in matches between the two countries, the first time being in Tel Aviv in a World Cup qualifier.

I have to say I was never totally impressed with Billy Bingham, not least because he had the annoying habit of calling me Noel, and my dad was amazed and angry that the manager of the national football team couldn’t even get my name right. He did it so often that even the football writers picked up the habit and one of the reports of that match against Israel refers to me as Noel Lennon. It was not as if they could confuse me with Noel Bailie, who was also in the team that night, as we look nothing like each other.

It was Noel who set up the move for our opening goal, scored by Iain Dowie of Luton Town. Banini should have scored for Israel after thirty-eight minutes but he dallied and I just managed to nick the ball off his toes. Israel did equalize after eighty-five minutes but Paul Gray of Luton, who had come on as a substitute, scored three minutes later. We were still celebrating when the floodlights failed, and since the game was a friendly the score stood in the record books.

I knew I had done well and a few weeks later I was delighted to be picked for a rather more prestigious game, this time at Under-23 level. Although the players of both sides often play alongside each other in England, games between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are always keenly contested and the match at Shamrock Park, Portadown, on 15 May was no exception.

By that time, I was feeling rather better about life as I was doing very well in the City reserves and had already received a couple of calls from scouts and one manager. The first person to take an active interest and come along to see me play was Des Bennett, a scout acting on behalf of Crewe Alexandra of the Third Division.

Des watched me play a couple of times and persuaded Crewe’s manager Dario Gradi to come along and see me. After he had watched me a couple of times, Dario called to say ‘We would like to take you aboard at the end of the season.’ No details were discussed but at least I had an offer.

Obviously I was still hoping for an offer from a bigger club, and the Under-23 game gave me an ideal opportunity to show what I could do. A couple of newspapers highlighted the fact that I was in the shop window and I told them that I felt I had been badly treated but was still ‘determined to make the grade’.

Gerry Taggart captained the side that night, having already made his debut at senior level, and my City colleague Michael Hughes also played. There were several managers from big clubs in the stadium that night, such as Chris Nicholl of Southampton, and I wasn’t the only one out to impress them.

In the first half in particular I played out of my skin, as did several others in our team, and we went in at half-time 2-0 up. The Republic fought back and equalized when John Sheridan tripped over me in the penalty box and the referee pointed to the spot—the match reports say I brought down John but of course we full-backs, as I was then, never see it like that. David Kelly of Leicester scored from the spot and also hit the winner ten minutes from time.

To lose 2-3 after being 2-0 up against our old rivals was hugely disappointing to put it mildly, but at least I had performed well overall. Back in Manchester, there was better news for me as John Rudge, the manager of Port Vale who were then in Division Two, called to say he was interested in signing me. He explained that he still had to sort out who was going and who was staying but he would get back to me once that process was completed.

Dario Gradi, meanwhile, had invited me down to Gresty Road, home of Crewe Alexandra. I did not know much about the town or the club, so I was in for something of a surprise. I knew the Alex, as locals called them, were nicknamed the Railwaymen because of the town’s huge train station and links with the rail industry, and I knew of Gradi’s growing reputation, but that was about the extent of my knowledge.

It was a complete culture shock when I arrived at the club. Maine Road was not the biggest and best stadium in the First Division, but it was a light year ahead of Gresty Road. I suppose it was very traditional in an old-fashioned Spartan way, but the facilities left a lot to be desired. The gym, for instance, was nothing more than a sweatbox with some weights—I was to get to know it all too well though, as you will discover.

Dario was impressive as he communicated his plans for the club, but when we began to talk money I was a bit disappointed. As a reserve player at City, I had earned £100 per week, so as a first-team player—even in the Third Division—I was expecting to earn double that. But Dario outlined the club’s budget and financial problems, and offered me a two-year deal worth £110 per week, plus bonuses.

I had been hoping for a bigger club and more money, but Dario proved very convincing and he did have a reputation for his work with young players. In particular, he was good at improving players freed from other clubs and selling them on, as he had done with David Platt, who he got for nothing from Manchester United and sold to Aston Villa for £200,000. Also, when I had played for City’s youth team against Crewe Alexandra, they had always impressed me as a team who were trying to play good football.

I had to make my mind up quickly as my contract was running out, so though I was bitterly disappointed at having to join a club two divisions lower, I only had one concrete offer on the table and it was a two-year deal, so I decided to sign. I suppose I could have waited to see whether an offer materialized from Port Vale or some other club, but Dario had done such a good job selling Crewe Alexandra to me that I plumped for them. At the time it seemed a disastrous backward step, but in hindsight it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I have long since learned in life that sometimes you have to take a step backwards to go forwards.

Dario did indeed live up to his reputation as a fantastic coach, particularly of youngsters like myself. At times he could be very straightforward, even curt, but at other times he would be funny and he was always very encouraging. He kept telling us to go out and play football and enjoy the game, and try to express ourselves on the pitch.

He was very ‘hands on’ or should that be ‘feet on’. I particularly remember that when we were practising set-pieces, if we did not get it correct and hit the wrong spot with the ball, he would march up and get hold of the ball, then deliver the free-kick perfectly to the exact place he wanted it.

He taught us a whole range of things which were new to the game in England. He had been very influenced by Ajax of Amsterdam and their training methods, and in a way it was he who brought the continental philosophy into the game in England, following their approach a few years before the big influx of players and managers from abroad in the 1990s. He emphasized movement on and off the ball and told us to try to copy the good European teams.

Goodness knows how he managed it, but he persuaded Red Star Belgrade to play Crewe in a friendly, and even though we lost 0-4, it was a really pleasurable experience to take part in a game with such skilful players. They scored four, but it could have been fourteen, and afterwards Dario told us that he would love us to play like them—we ended up getting relegated and Red Star won the European Cup that season, so that plan didn’t exactly work out.

Although much of the attention focused on Dario’s youthful brigade, the Crewe squad at the time were not just a bunch of raw youngsters. Kenny Swain was the assistant manager and he had won the European Cup with Aston Villa in 1982. He was still playing even though he was coming up for forty and was fantastically fit. Apart from being a really nice guy, he taught us a lot and for all his achievements in the game he was a modest man.

Steve Walters was another fine player. He had been Crewe’s youngest-ever first-team player and had captained the England youth team. He was a very talented boy but he didn’t make the impact expected of him later in his career.

One of the players who joined us for a season later in my time there was someone I knew quite a bit about. Jim Harvey hailed from Lurgan, and like myself he had started out with Glenavon FC, though he had played rather more than my two matches with our home-town side. He had gone on to have a long stint with Tranmere Rovers before moving to Crewe. He was in the later stages of his career, and went on to become assistant to Sammy McIlroy when he was manager of Northern Ireland, where I encountered him several years after I had left Crewe. Jim was manager of Morecambe of the Nationwide Conference League for a dozen years and twice took them to the brink of Football League qualification, but he was sacked in May 2006, to be replaced by none other than Sammy McIlroy.

Other players at the time included Rob Jones who went on to sign for Liverpool for £300,000 and then played for England, while Craig Hignett was a Scouser who was transferred to Middlesborough for £500,000. I recognized one player as soon as I walked in the door—Andy Gunn had played against me in the Manchester City v Watford Youth Cup Final.

It was a happy dressing room at the start of my time at Crewe and would generally stay that way for the rest of my time there. It took me a while to get to grips with the demands of playing for the first team even at that level, but Dario had confidence in me and picked me from the start of the season, which sadly began disastrously as we took just one point from our first six league games.

The first really big games I played for Crewe were against a club who were legends of world football. After knocking out Grimsby Town, we were drawn against Liverpool in the League Cup. We actually took the lead against them at Anfield, but that probably only served to annoy them and they came back to overwhelm us 5-1. The return leg was an all-ticket affair at Gresty Road, which at least showed that the stadium when full could generate plenty of atmosphere, but we were on the wrong end of a 1-4 drubbing. In fairness to us, that was the Liverpool team who were league champions and even to be on the same pitch as the likes of Ray Houghton, John Barnes and Ian Rush was a big thrill for all of us, especially since I was still only nineteen.

I had decided to stay in Stockport, and even though I wasn’t being charged the earth for my digs, money was very tight. Those were the days when a tenner could buy you five or six pints, which was just as well as that was usually how much I had left for a night out.

My favourite local pub was the Elizabethan in Heaton Moor Road, Stockport, and it was there that I met and drank with two friends, Chris Mooney and Scott Woodhall, who are still mates of mine to this day. There were a lot of talented people who drank in the Elizabethan at that time and formed a loose grouping of friends. There were actors such as Craig Cash who was in The Royle Family. He and a guy called Phil Mealey wrote a television sit-com called Early Doors which was based loosely on The Elizabethan where they both drank. Sally Lindsay, who played Shelley Unwin on Coronation Street, was another regular, and it was a place where a lot of musicians gathered, including two brothers called Gallagher. I was just getting seriously into music at that time so you will not be surprised to learn that I was a big fan of Mancunian music at the time of ‘Madchester’, when bands like the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays burst onto the scene.

Noel and Liam Gallagher were a class apart from the start. They were just putting their band together and it was great to watch them develop and became bigger than all of the other Manchester bands. I’m still a huge fan of Oasis today. From the first time that I went to see them I was blown away by their live performances, and I saw them quite a few times before and after they were famous.

One of their best-ever gigs was at Maine Road in Manchester in 1996. Everybody wanted to be at that concert and it was generally reckoned to have been a high point in the Manchester scene of the 1990s, but I don’t have the fondest memories of that day.

I had just signed for Leicester City and Steve Lomas, a great friend of mine who was captain of Manchester City, managed to get us backstage passes for the day. It would be fair to say that we had enjoyed a drink or five before the gig even started. I remember there was a long corridor backstage and as we went along it I spotted Liam and Noel and Liam’s wife Patsy Kensit, plus Stan Collymore and a few of the Liverpool players. As we went outside to stand beside the executive boxes, for some reason Steve Lomas and I started to have an argy-bargy. I cannot even remember who started it or why, but we were soon rolling about on the floor in front of all the VIPs, trying to punch each other but failing miserably because we were under the influence. The bouncers took a dim view of our scrapping, but for some reason it was me who got thrown out and not Steve. A few years later Oasis played a gig in Glasgow and we managed to get backstage to meet the band, the Gallaghers being great Celtic fans as well as Manchester City diehards. The first thing that Noel said when he saw me was ‘Right, you, no fighting tonight.’

Back in the early 1990s I was happy to be on the edge of what was a hard-drinking, drug-using scene, but I was a little like a spectator looking in. As I played football for a living, I could never get involved in that sort of heavy stuff, but I did enjoy the craic and the music.

The early 1990s were exciting times to be in the Manchester area and I was reluctant to leave when Crewe was only thirty-five miles down the road, but transport was a problem. Even though I had learned to drive and had a licence, I was so badly off that I couldn’t afford a car and at first I had to hitch lifts off other players to make the journey back and forth to Stockport. My young person’s bus pass came in very handy at that time.

Eventually I managed to scrimp and save enough to get myself some wheels. My first car will strike a chord with those who remember British Leyland and some of its more ‘charming’ products. The second-hand—or maybe about tenth-hand—Austin Montego that I bought during my first season at Crewe was at least an improvement on the bus.

One day Dario asked me to pop up to the train station in my car and pick up the scout who had spotted me in City’s reserves, Des Bennett. I parked my car at the top of the hill outside Crewe station, and went looking for Des. I couldn’t find him and when I went back to where I had parked it, my car was gone. My first thought was ‘who would nick an Austin Montego’ but as I looked around I spotted my car rolling down the hill. There were a lot of cars parked by the station that day, and my Montego hit four of them on the way down. I did the honest thing and left notes with my details on the windscreens, and the insurance company picked up the tab, but the Montego didn’t last long after that.

As I totted up the appearances for Crewe I knew I was doing well, and I was flattered to read in the newspapers that the great Brian Clough, legendary manager of Nottingham Forest, was apparently having me watched. But as would happen so often in my career, reports and rumours proved to be just that.

In late November, we were deep in the relegation zone and things were looking very glum when we went away to play Cambridge United who were then chasing promotion. I remember that game well because it marked my first goal for Crewe.

Kenny Swain was making his 100th appearance for Crewe that night, becoming only the second player after Peter Shilton to reach that mark with five separate clubs.

Dion Dublin, who would come to Celtic late in his long career and end up scoring in the Scottish League Cup Final, notched the opener for Cambridge after two minutes, but we equalized before Steve Claridge, later to be a colleague at Leicester, put United ahead on the stroke of half-time.

About a minute into the second half I got the ball and went on a run past three of their defenders before poking the ball past John Vaughan in the Cambridge goal. I was ecstatic and remember running over to the Crewe fans and jumping onto the barrier in my excitement. I would score three goals that season, which proves I could actually hit the net with somewhat more regularity than I have done with Celtic.

Our league form was dismal from then on, frankly, but we went on a fair old run in the FA Cup, beating Lincoln City, Atherstone United, Bristol Rovers and Rotherham before drawing West Ham in the fifth round. There were television cameras at the ground and I had told all the people in the Elizabethan to watch out for our game—it was slightly embarrassing when only thirty seconds of the match was shown.

I wish they had shown more because we played really well in that match. Dario had told us to go out and have a go at the First Division side, and we certainly did. United had my old Manchester City colleague Trevor Morley playing that day while Frank McAvennie was back with them and proving dangerous. But we not only held out, we attacked them and could have scored when Craig Hignett missed a relatively easy chance. It looked as if we would earn a money-spinning replay but with about twelve minutes left, Jimmy Quinn scored for them and we were out of the cup. I recall their fans as well as ours giving us an ovation as we trudged off Upton Park. We just could not replicate that form in the league, however, and despite a late surge when we won four out of our last five matches, the terrible start cost us dear and relegation became inevitable when Chester City beat us 3-1.

I enjoyed a bittersweet end to the season. Relegation was heartbreaking, though Dario had us all feeling pretty confident that we would get straight back up again. My own form had held up, Dario had made me captain for a few of the later matches, and there were reports that Nottingham Forest and Oxford United were watching me, but of course these came to nothing.

What really boosted me was that I was voted Player of the Year not once but three times. I was the Players’ Player, the Junior Player and the Supporters’ Player. I particularly relished the latter award because from the start the fans seemed to have taken to me, and I certainly appreciated their encouragement.

For good measure the club’s Vice Presidents’ Association also voted me as their Player of the Year which is how I got to meet the one and only Denis Law. He presented me with the trophy at a black-tie dinner just twenty-four hours after watching United beat Barcelona in the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final.

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