Wolves

From The Sash I Never Wore to the Boys From Brazil – the Derek Dougan story

Posted on by gerrytastic

By Fergus Dowd

Between 1864 and 1961 seventeen men were hung in Crumlin Road jail, the first four executions were carried out in a specially-built gallows in the front courtyard. On September 17th 1972 Private Frank Bell from the Wirrall, aged 18, was wounded by a single sniper shot on patrol in Ballymurphy a district of West Belfast, three days later he passed away in the Royal Victoria Hopital he was the 100th British soldier to die in the war in Ireland. In the spring of 1973 Liam Holden, also 18, became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang for the killing of Private Bell, ‘”You will suffer death in the manner authorised by law” were the judges words. Handcuffed to a prison officer Holden was escorted along the underground tunnel that led to Crumlin Road jail on the opposite side of the road. There he was taken straight to C wing – to the condemned man’s cell. A fortnight previous William Whitelaw, the first Secretary of State of Northern Ireland, had pardoned Albert Browne a UDA member from hanging following the shooting of an RUC officer in October 1972. Liam Holden didn’t hang his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and shortly after capital punishment was abolished in Northern Ireland bringing it in line with the rest of the United Kingdom – Holden would have his murder conviction quashed four decades later by the court of appeal in Belfast.

That same spring 1973 a tall sparse figure stood at the door of a London hotel room heart beating, palms sweating, full of nervous tension as he knocked on the door. Alexander Derek Dougan from the staunchly Protestant heartland of Newtownards in East Belfast, was born at 41 Susan Street in the shadow of Harland and Wolf where his father worked as a boilermaker; he was capped 43 times and captain of his country Northern Ireland.

He had been the youngest member of the 1958 World Cup squad and was presented with a gold watch as Ulstermen descended on Sweden for the teams first finals. The Doog though stood for more than simple ball-kicking, he was the proud owner of human sentience, a majestic temper, venomous tongue and a fearless spirit – that same year of ’73 he had instigated the PFA awards. Dougan had never respected convention, he was Britain’s first football mod skinhead; he had walked into a Blackburn hairdressers in 1959 and had his head fully shaved. As Dougan entered the hotel room in England’s capital his body language was palpable history in the making was in the air, across the room sat two men Harry Cavan IFA President and Secretary Billy Drennan. Dougan took a seat and outlined to the blazers about two phone calls and the idea of an All-Ireland XI to face world champions Brazil in Dublin… speaking about leadership, healing divisions and building bridges he was faced with deathly silence…

Harry Cavan informed Dougan tersely that he would put the matter to the IFA. Billy Drennan, much more enthusiastic, told his captain that he would keep him posted about developments. Neither would ever speak to Dougan again.

The Northern Ireland team were gathered in London en route to play Cyprus for a World Cup qualifier;

Dougan was plying his trade with Wolverhampton Wanderers in the top division in England – John Giles and Liam Touhy felt he was the man to help knit things together between Northern and Southern players. Giles still then the general of Don Revie’s midfield at Leeds United was soon to take over as manager of the Republic of Ireland – he would pick up his phone in Yorkshire and speak candidly and passionately about the idea to Dougan. The second phone call came from Giles brother-in-law Louis Kilcoyne who had lobbied Jao Havelange, Brazil’s FA President, a man ambitously interested in unseating England’s Stanley Rous as head of FIFA. With elections coming in 1974 Kilcoyne felt he could deliver an FAI vote for Havelange,if he could deliver the lustre of Jairzinho and Rivelino to Lansdowne Road. That spring 1973 while Liam Holden faced the uncertainty of the gallows in Crumlin Road jail the boys from Brazil were on a 1973 European tour helping them acclimatise for the 1974 World Cup which was to be held in Germany. Havalange had agreed to the game but Brazil had two requests: firstly the game had to be played for charity and the secondly the team had to be 32-county in make up, this is why Dougan was contacted.

On the 3rd of July 1973 nine days before the local Newtownards District LOL marched on the streets of East Belfast Alexander Derek Dougan set foot on the hallowed turf of Lansdowne Road in front of 35,000 spectators. As the two teams emerged alongside the Doog was Allan Hunter, Martin O’Neill and Pat Jennings on the bench sat future Northern Ireland manager Bryan Hamilton and Brian Clough’s future right hand man at Notts Forest Liam O’Kane all had travelled south. That day the St. Patrick’s brass and reed band would strike up a nation once again.

Brazil would win out 4-3 but the Irish would hold their heads high coming back from a 4-1 deficit to narrowly lose out – Dougan would net the third with Dublin Northsiders Terry Conroy and Mick Martin also scoring. Mick Martin was the son of the great Con Martin a brilliant sportsman who had won a Leinster Senior Championship medal back in 1942 given his preference for soccer he would not receive his medal until 1972. Mick’s father was involved in the last team to be made up of Northerners and Southerners a World Cup qualifier against Wales in Wrexham for the IFA’s Ireland team, five months earlier he had scored for the FAI’s Ireland team – the year was 1950 and as attitudes hardened and FIFA’s new criteria kicked in there would be no more dual Irish internationals. Four years earlier Cornelius Joseph Martin had moved from Drumcondra to Dougan’s local club Glentoran the pride of East Belfast; CJ Martin would find digs in Ballysillan near the top of the Shankill mixing daily with both Protestant and Catholic.

Brazil v Ireland 1973

On that day in July as the game was beamed out live in Irish homes; the team that took on the best team in the world was called “Shamrock Rovers XI” there was no mention of ‘Ireland’ or ‘All-Ireland’. Harry Cavan had been busy behind the scenes speaking with Stanley Rous making sure there would be no ‘Ireland’ in the title. That evening after the game Dougan, Hunter and Craig all northern Protestants drank in Dublin’s fair city with Mick Martin, Don Givens and Terry Conroy all southern Catholics. The idea had been a great success and Dougan wrote afterwards: ‘They didn’t say it couldn’t be done, they said it shouldn’t be done. It was done and afterwards they couldn’t find any fault with it, so they said nothing.’

Ireland side of 1973 in their “Shamrock Rovers XI” jerseys

Within three months of the match taking place the two associations sat across from each other in Belfast the meeting was described as ‘lengthy and amicable’; another meeting was held in 1974. Four years later both associations went further issuing a joint statement following discussions in Dundalk about ‘the possibility of an All-Ireland Football Federation which would be responsible for football on the island’. However, the European Championships draw for 1980 would be the ruination of all the progress made the two Ireland’s would be drawn in Group One alongside England. In North London at Highbury stadium after the groups were made six Irishmen messers Brady, Jennings, Rice, O’Leary, Stapleton and Nelson sat down and faced up to a sickening and depressing reality.

For the vision he showed Derek Dougan would never play for Northern Ireland again, Cavan advised then manager Terry Neill not to pick him. There would be no second gold watch for being capped 50 times to go with the one received in 1958.

In 1997 after a near fatal heart attack Dougan ran for parliament in his local East Belfast ward running on a ticket which proposed integrated education, a referendum on the province’s political future, and peace through appreciation of difference. Among the bureaucracy and the blazers Alexander Derek Dougan nearly broke the mould.

Taking a Lax attitude- George & the magic magnetic board

Posted on by gerrytastic

The dim light of the training lamps strung along the old main stand illuminated the thin strip of touchline as the players sprinted by, full tilt. They were trying to impress the coach with their pace and athleticism before turning into the darkness of the shed end. The floodlights that would come to define Dalymount and become a landmark in the Dublin skyline wouldn’t be installed for another year and the majority of the pitch was in complete darkness. As the players, all amateurs, reached the Connaught Street side some of the more experienced ones stopped. Now subsumed into the darkness the only light was the faint amber glow of embers as they lit up their cigarettes. Their plan was to wait until the rest of the team had made their next lap of the pitch and save their energies for another sprint past their coach. The man that they hoped to impress, who unlike his charges was a professional football man, was a middle-aged Yorkshireman in thick glasses by the name of George Lax.

George had first encountered Bohemians as they encountered a period of comparative decline. In the opening decades of the League of Ireland Bohemian F.C. enjoyed more than their fair share of successes. Foremost among these triumphs was the “clean sweep” of the 1927-28 season when the Bohs won every competition available to them. Three further league titles, an FAI cup and an array of other trophies made their way to Dalymount of the following ten years but by the end of the 30’s things were beginning to change.

The end of the 30’s and into the 40’s other teams were coming to dominate the major prizes in Irish football, Shamrock Rovers, Shelbourne, Drumcondra, Dundalk and especially a rampant Cork United side were collecting league titles and cups. Bohs were increasingly being left behind. After winning the league title in 1935-36 Bohs could only finish 7th the following year, and 9th the year after.

The Gypsies policy on remaining an amateur club was beginning to affect their performances on the pitch. While the club, even by this stage had a long and proud history, one of the best stadiums in the league, and a strong record of bringing through talented players, unsurprisingly many of these same players would leave for other clubs prepared to pay them.

While amateur on the pitch the Bohs management committee looked to take a more professional approach to training and management of team affairs. To this end they brought in an English coach not long finished his playing days, George Lax, for the beginning of the 1938-39 season. Important to realise was that while Lax would be responsible for training, coaching and physio work with the players, the starting XI was still primarily decided by a selection committee and this would remain the case until the 1964 appointment of Seán Thomas as Bohs first manager in the modern understanding of the word.

Early days

George Lax was born in Dodworth, a coal mining village near Barnsley in South Yorkshire in 1905. Unsurprisingly young George began his professional life with Frickley Colliery near Wakefield having come from a mining family. The Colliery, one of the deepest coal mines in Britain had a strong sporting tradition, they had swimming baths, cricket clubs, athletics clubs and of course a football club, Frickley Colliery F.C. founded just after George was born. A teenage George lined out for the team at right-half and in his early 20’s was spotted by the legendary Wolves manager Major Frank Buckley and signed by them for the 1929-30 season.

Lax immediately became the sides’ regular right half as Wolves finished in the top half of the second division and continued a good run of form into the next year. His good fortune continued and during his spell at Wolves he also got married, tying the knot with his fiance Kathleen Hill in the Spring of 1932. However, a series of injuries including a badly broken jaw and later a broken ankle began to limit his first team opportunities at Molineux. This saw George move back to his birthplace to sign for Barnsley in 1932 after making 66 appearance for Wolves, although it would not be his last time working with Major Buckley. Further moves, first to Bournemouth and later to non-league sides like Evesham Town and Worcester City. As his playing career wound down he was beginning to get involved as a manager and coach alongside his playing duties.

In 1938 Lax was on the move again, this time having hung up his boots, he was off to Dublin to take over the management of Bohemian Football Club from the former Liverpool star and Irish international Billy Lacey. Lax had benefited greatly from working with Major Frank Buckley, a character with a fearsome reputation who had led the Footballers regiment during the First World War and had fought at the Battle of the Somme. Buckley’s teams were well known for their robust and very direct, physical football but this belied the fact that he was also somewhat of a pioneer and moderniser in other aspects of the game.

Buckley had placed great emphasis on fitness and diet (and allegedly the use of stimulants and animal gland injections) and contrary to popular wisdom at the time had encouraged players to do plenty of ball-work in training. He had also helped Wolves gain promotion to Division One and greatly improved their scouting network and youth system which would help lay foundations for the success enjoyed by Stan Cullis’ Wolves teams in the 1950’s. Lax borrowed heavily from Buckley’s methods and was also one of the first participants in the FA’s early coaching courses.  While Bohs amateur status might have seemed a throwback to a bygone age, even by the 30’s, in their choice of trainer they were selecting a man in his early thirties whose coaching methods were cutting edge for their time.

Among the modern elements of the game that Lax brought to Bohs was his “magnetic demonstration board”. While such coaching aids as a tactics board are hardly unusual today its use in the League of Ireland in the 1930’s seems to have raised more than a few eyebrows. He also brought with him a number of other tactical innovations such as “The Switch” which entailed the swapping of roles between the outside-right (usually Kevin O’Flanagan) and the team’s centre forward (Frank Fullen at the time). While this may not seem that groundbreaking to a modern football audience, the idea of swapping a centre-forward with a right-winger as part of a usually rigid W-M formation employed by the vast majority of British and Irish teams was revolutionary. It no doubt helped that O’Flanagan was an exceptional and versatile sportsmen and one of the best forwards in the country. These tactical innovations bore closer resemblance to the type of tactical experiments being tried out by coaches in Hungary or Austria.

George Lax board

It is worth remembering that it was only in 1953 when Hungary’s wandering centre-forward Nándor Hidegkuti helped dismantle the English national teams defense as they destroyed Billy Wright and Co. 5-3 that such tactical experiments began to get greater credence in Britain and Ireland.

Such was the success of this tactical innovation (no doubt worked out on the infamous magnetic tactics board) that other Irish sides soon started copying the ploy with Belfast Celtic using their international winger Norman Kernaghan in the O’Flanagan role.

Call of battle and the return to English football

Lax had two spells with Bohemians, joining in 1938 before leaving in 1942 at the height of the Second World War to enlist in the RAF. As someone resident in neutral Ireland at the time he could have conveniently avoided the danger of the conflict but instead chose to enlist. He was eventually demobilised some months after the end of the War in February 1946. The high-points of his first spell as coach of Bohs included a 3rd place league finish in the 1940-41 season as well as back to back League of Ireland shield wins (1938-39, 1939-40) and a Leinster Senior Cup win also in 1939-40.

George’s first spell at Bohs would see him succeeded by Sheffield United and Ireland legend Jimmy Dunne who had fallen out with Shamrock Rovers where he was previously player-coach. Once he was demobilised George was straight back into his sporting involvement, first with non-league Scunthorpe United where he was coach but also an occasional player while serving at the RAF station at Lindholm and then onto second division Hull City as a “trainer-coach”.

George’s job at Hull was secured by the intervention of his former mentor Major Frank Buckley who wrote to club Chairman Harold Needler stating that Lax was a “grand servant, of irreproachable character, keen, willing and loyal”. Buckley also boasted that it was “on my recommendation that he went as trainer-coach to the famous amateur Irish club, the Bohemians of Dublin. He gave grand service to them and it was the war that caused their severance”.

George was joined by his mentor Buckley as manager at Hull just a month later in May 1946. Hull were stuck in the unglamorous world of the English Division Three North, however they certainly had ambition, over the course of the next few seasons Hull sought promotion to the second division, succeeding by winning Division Three North in 1948-49. By that stage Major Buckley had already moved onto Leeds United where he would help start the careers of John Charles and later Jack Charlton.

His trusty lieutenant George Lax remained on Humberside working for Raich Carter who took over as player-manager. Carter had been one of the most highly-regarded and stylish inside-forwards of his era and over the coming years he brought some big names to Hull’s new ground at Boothferry Park. Joining Carter were players like England centre-half Neil Franklin, Danish international Viggo Jensen and an up and coming young forward named Don Revie.

Carter retired in 1952 and his role was taken over by Bob Jackson, a league winning manager with Portsmouth only a couple of years earlier. George Lax stayed on as part of his coaching team although Hull, despite all their ambition couldn’t do better than lower mid-table finishes in the second tier. After almost ten years with Hull as coach, trainer and physio among other roles George left for a new challenge. During his time at Hull he’d played second fiddle to some of the most famous and successful English managers in the game but perhaps he wanted to be in charge of himself again.

George had been a player-manager at Evesham before he had even hit the age of 30. During his time there he’d helped to launch the career of players like future West Brom and England forward Jack Haines. He was used to being his own man. Still it was with some surprise that in 1955 he moved the short distance to take over the management of Goole Town of the Midland league. During his brief tenure George led the club to the third round of the FA Cup, their best ever result in that competition.  George’s time in Goole was short and by 1957 he was heading back to Ireland, but this time not to Dublin but to a new club from Cork.

A return to Hibernia

In 1957 yet another Cork football club went the way of the dodo, this time it was the short-lived Cork Athletic. Although they had won back to back titles and two FAI cups around the turn of the 50’s, and had even coaxed George Lax’s old boss Raich Carter out of retirement to lead them briefly as player-manager, by 1957 financial difficulties saw them withdraw from the League. Their spot was taken by another Cork based club, this time it was Cork Hibernians. Their first manager was to be George Lax.

A tough first season for the Hibernians finish bottom of the 12 team division but gradual progress was made in the following seasons with Hibs finishing 9th and then by 1959-60 up to 6th place. George had set up a comfortable life in Cork, he ran a physiotherapy practice in the city and was on a considerable salary of £1,000 a year to manage the team. However, despite the steady progress Lax was making he left Cork Hibernians to return to Dublin and to Dalymount to take on a Bohs side that had finished bottom the previous two seasons. By the time he left the press credited him with having “moulded Cork Hibs into a first class side”. Lax took the reigns again at Bohemians for the beginning of the 1960-61 season, some 22 years after he had first arrived at Dalymount.

While the side that George had inherited in the late 30’s had some genuine stars like the O’Flanagan brothers, Fred Horlacher, “Pip” Meighan, Kevin Kerr and Billy Jordan. The side of the early 60’s unfortunately wasn’t so blessed and the drawbacks of the enforced amateur ethos at the club was being keenly felt. Some genuine greats of Bohs history were to join not long afterwards, most notably centre-half Willie Browne who would go on to win three Irish caps during his time in red and black and became captain of the club in only his second season.

After two seasons of propping up the table, including the 59-60 season where Bohs had finished without a single win and with a paltry five points there was some modest yet clear improvements under Lax, Bohs finished 11th out of 12th in his first season back in charge and 9th the year after. The following year however Bohs once again finished bottom in a reduced 10 team division and bottom again the following season (1963-64) as the division expanded again to 12 sides. Despite the initial improvements and the fact that he had helped bring through players like Browne, Billy Young, Mick Kearin and Larry Gilmore the club felt it was time for a significant change.

Lax left the club at the end of the 1963-64 season and the club directors finally agreed to the abolition of the 5 man selection committee that still picked the starting XI. Full control of team affairs was to be entrusted to a team manager for the first time and Phibsborough local Seán Thomas was given the reigns. Thomas’s talent and the additional authority invested in his role had the desired impact and Bohs finished the following season in 3rd place and saw the emergence of future Irish internationals like Jimmy Conway and Turlough O’Connor.

During his less successful second stay George remained true to his footballing philosophy. Unlike his mentor Major Buckley the focus on Lax’s teams was always on trying to play good football even on the boggy winter pitches of the League of Ireland. He told the Evening Herald that “there is no substitute for good football and it only will draw the crowds”. He had a focus on discipline and skill, players were instructed strictly to never argue with the referee, a practice that certainly isn’t a new phenomenon. In training his focus was always on improving touch and ball control, often preferring to organise 5-a-sides with various handicaps such as players only taking two touches or only using their weaker foot so as to build technique.  Practices that might now seem commonplace but were certainly ahead of their time for the league in the 1960’s. His commitment to this footballing ideal wasn’t even shaken during times of duress. Commenting after a heavy 6-0 defeat to a strong Drumcondra side Lax rejected the idea that his team should have tried to spoil or play more direct, stating simply “I’ve made it quite clear, I want them to play football all the time”. In many ways despite the struggles of the team in the early 60’s George Lax certainly seemed to try to embody the three golden rules of Bohemian F.C.  “never say die, keep the ball on the floor and the best defence is attack”.

After leaving the Bohs George’s services were quickly in demand. He was  signed up by St. Patrick’s Athletic to replace Ronnie Whelan Snr but he would spend only a season in Inchicore before quitting. He would later take on a physio role at Dundalk and later at Shelbourne where he was working well into his 60’s. He continued to run a physiotherapy practice in the Phibsboro area and treated many prominent GAA players and other athletes in his private practice.