Far from it; without him, how could I get to the heart of the man, delve into his opinions; tease out his stories and all the experiences of his magical years in football. To write this book without him, how could I possibly put flesh on the bones and bring it to life?

     From his initial lack of enthusiasm when I first broached the idea, little seeds of interest began to appear, but it took some time to bring him round. I drove over from Leeds not entirely confident or certain of his agreement. I knew from talking to his daughter Ann that he had genuine reservations. I’d met him several times since 2003 when I wrote about him in No Nay Never. Regarding this new book, we had spoken by ‘phone several times, but not until the first meeting did he agree to go ahead. Three things concerned him, that firstly it would not sound like him; secondly that it would be a rush job, and thirdly that his memory would let him down. I knew by the end of the morning that the latter would be no problem as he related a dozen stories. He was relieved to hear that it would take probably a year from start to finish. And as for sounding like him, (he speaks softly and quietly, the gentle Irish brogue still firmly there after all these years in Lancashire), all I could say was that I would write it in plain simple English, or maybe I should have said plain simple Irish, and anyway it would be a biography, not an autobiography, so the bulk of it would be in my voice or those of other contributors.

     When a book is about a man like Jimmy McIlroy, the writing of it is like a journey. Somehow I wanted to take him back in time to how and where it all began. Once there, at the beginning, I wanted Jimmy then to bring me back on the return journey to the present. In this case both of us could relive our past, for whilst Jimmy was at Burnley playing and enthralling the crowd, I was one of that crowd. I have scrapbooks that narrate those times and the programmes of games he played in. There are landmarks in my own life that I can remember and they relate to the events in his story. He and I are not two distant people who have come together simply to write this book. Though the first time we met in person was in 2003, I have in fact known Jimmy McIlroy all my life from my schoolboy days, through watching him play, reading his book, and then seeing him leave. He is, quite simply, one of my great heroes. I grew up with him. My boyhood and teenage years coincided with his greatest times.   

     It was when I was leaving and we stood just outside the front door of his house that I realised that before this visit, he must have intended to go ahead. He had already given thought to wanting to write about his early years in Ireland and knew what he wanted to call the book. “I’ve thought of a title. I’d like to call it Why Me?” The reasons for that title I hope will emerge. As it turned out much later, we changed this name when it became clear the ‘Prince of Inside Forwards’ were the words that summed him up.

     The 1931 wider world he was born into was not an easy one. There was a deepening economic crisis particularly in Europe. Britain was verging on bankruptcy and civil unrest. 12,000 sailors mutinied over pay. A new coalition government raised taxes and reduced unemployment allowances. Against this background Oswald Mosley launched his fascist ‘New Party’. In Germany the Nazi party was growing stronger by the day against a background of 5million unemployed. In the USA Al Capone was put behind bars, and the Empire State Building was finally completed and opened its doors. But all of that was miles away from the Ballyskeagh that Jimmy came to describe, especially as news from afar was something seldom heard in a place, where in 1931, not one person in the village possessed a radio.

         All the history books say that Jimmy McIlroy was from Lambeg. “But that’s probably because they didn’t know how to spell Ballyskeagh,” he says with a smile. He was born in Greenhill a mile or so from Ballyskeagh in his Grandmother Maguire’s house. But he was brought up and raised in his Grandmother McIlroy’s house in Ballyskeagh, a tiny place that in 1931 could hardly be described as even a village. Close to Lambeg and Lisburn, the latter today a city of over 70,000 people, it consisted of just four rows of terraced houses, with only earthen lanes in between. Only one of them, a row of houses that ran alongside the main road, affectionately known as the ‘parlour houses’ by the villagers, had running water. They were called the ‘parlour houses’ because they had a front and back room with a front and back garden.

     He was the eldest and the only boy of six children, and was “the reason why my mother and father married.” Harry McIlroy and Matilda, ‘Tilly’, didn’t have a suitable property, thus Jimmy was born in Grandma Maguire’s house. Then, after he was born, Grandma McIlroy suggested that Jimmy should live with her in Ballyskeagh. “Until my mother and father found their feet. When he was 19 my father could have become a professional footballer but my grandmother said to him he couldn’t afford to now that now he had a wife and a baby. There was not enough money and in the summer there was even less, if you were a footballer.”

     As one by one, the five sisters were born, Jimmy stayed with her until he was thirteen. It was only on her death that he moved to live with his parents when his grandfather moved to live with one of his other daughters. In villages such as this whole families lived side by side. In the house next to his grandmother lived her sister; in the next house was her daughter, and then next to that another sister. His mother and father lived in one of the other rows. He saw them once or twice a week when he called in on them, or they called at his grandmother’s. To him it was all so very normal.

     “The village was full of cousins and aunts and uncles, it was so small you knew everybody and we were always in and out of each others’ rows of houses.”

     These were the rows without running water and electricity. Rainwater collected in a barrel from the roof of the house was used for washing. The village pump provided drinking water. It was under a corrugated tin hut with a tin roof that projected outwards to keep waiting people dry. People had their set time for fetching their water. It was a great place for gossip.

     “I could lie awake in bed at night, the pump was only 30 yards away, and I would know who was there filling up their containers. As soon as I was big enough it was one the jobs I did.” Baths in the tin bath were rare and Jimmy well remembers “in the one hot week of the year we seemed to have in May, we’d all just dive in the river. For some of the lads it was their only bath of the year and they were black with dirt.”

     “Why me?” is a question Jimmy asks himself sometimes as he looks back on his life. “Why did I become a footballer, why did I become so successful, when there were other boys who might have been just as good, just as successful?” Maybe one reason is simply that his grandmother had the end house in one of the terraces and he was able to spend hours kicking a tennis ball against the gable end without anyone telling him to stop. Had someone else lived in that house it is more than likely they would soon have become tired of the constant sound of the ball being kicked against the wall. He and his pals played football constantly in the nearby fields but when they were called in for their tea; Jimmy was more often than not straight back out to play on his own kicking the ball against the gable end. “Just how often do you see this today?” he asks, “A boy playing and practising with a tennis ball.

    “This was 1930s rural Ireland, today you just can’t imagine what it was like,” says Jimmy. “It seems to me now it was just one step above the poverty line of a Third World country. It’s hard to convey and describe just how primitive it was. I can remember the first electric lights and the first radio that someone had in their house. We all crowded into the hall or stood outside to listen to Big Bill Campbell’s Rocky Mountain Rhythm. The first sports programme I heard was a flyweight world championship boxing match between Rinty Monaghan and Dado Marino from Mexico. Rinty was the world champion and after every fight sang ‘When Irish eyes are smiling’. Years later in 1958 we sang it in Sweden. His nickname came from his fondness for dogs and frequently bringing injured dogs home, resulting in his grandmother calling him Rin Tin Tin, after the famous film dog.”

     Jimmy’s beginnings were poor; his mother didn’t work, “Too busy bringing up five girls,” says Jimmy. His father Harry left school at 14 and was a labourer until he found work in a Belfast paint factory. He had a wonderful knack for the blending and mixing of colours, becoming highly skilled. Today Jimmy smiles wistfully remembering all this and wishes that he had the same skill in the mixing of his watercolours when he is working on his paintings. Many of the other villagers worked in Churchill in the weaving factory that was near enough to walk to.

     It was when Jimmy moved to his parents’ house following the death of his grandmother that his father began to make sure that Jimmy had the meat, when there was any, and the girls according to Jimmy “got the vegetables.” It was clear by now that he was a talented and gifted footballer and his father wanted to make sure he grew stronger. But by now it was wartime, making food even scarcer still. Belfast suffered from bombing raids and an air raid shelter in Ballyskeagh provided four more walls against which a ball could be kicked and skills developed.

     Belfast, just a few miles to the north, was a total contrast, with its university and government buildings, grand shops, elegant streets, and all its industry and busy shipyards. A village like Ballyskeagh might have been a million miles away. Life and amenities were basic and luxuries were few and far between. Hunger, poverty and hardship were widespread. Entertainment was home made. Close as it was to Belfast, this was rural Ireland, a place of small farms, green fields, meadows, streams and woodlands. Available work was based around agriculture or the linen industry of which Lisburn was a major centre. The mills, general labouring and the Belfast shipyards were the biggest employers for many years.

     The climate was ideal for the growing of flax and Irish linen was world famous. The River Lagan flows through the vale and it was because of the river and the damp climate that flax was first grown there. Nearby Lambeg was known for its bleaching greens, these being large areas of grass where the linen was laid out to be bleached by the elements. Woven linen cloth is a pale beige colour and must be bleached to achieve the crisp whiteness for which it is famous. Before chemicals were introduced this was done by exposure to sunlight and weather. The cloth would be pegged out and turned over regularly to attain an even bleaching on both sides. Spreading it out and collecting it all in was an endless backbreaking task for those involved. Watchmen were employed to ensure that no cloth was stolen or grazing animals intruding. Small as it was, Lambeg became a place of some importance in 1921 when the Government of Northern Ireland set up a Linen Research Association but as the industry declined it closed in 1993. By the end of the 1950’s the competition from other textiles produced in poorer countries was too great.

           Today, Ballyskeagh is the home of Lisburn Distillery Football Club, Distillery having moved there from Belfast in the early 80s, and changing its name from Distillery to Lisburn Distillery in order to associate itself with new potential supporters. Next to it is McIlroy Park. The boy who grew up with all the difficulties and hardships of such a humble, although happy boyhood, brought up for most of that time by his grandmother, today has a park named after him. “Why me?” he asks again. “How did life manage to pick me out to be such a success?”  

     “In retrospect, I feel now that my life in football was the inevitable outcome of a Christmas gift from Uncle Willie McIlroy; to be correct, a succession of Christmas gifts. Most youngsters collect a ration of toys from their uncles, books and other welcome presents – but not me. I always received a football. With almost monotonous regularity, 25^th December, the most exciting day in the calendar for every youngster, yielded a ball for Jimmy McIlroy. I cannot remember when I was given my first; it seemed there was no beginning to the ritual. The footballs had always come for Christmas.

     “Uncle Willie had a great influence on my early development as a footballer. He had the background, being a professional player, a centre half with the Irish League club Portadown. My father, Harry, also possessed considerable ability as a player, being with Distillery at one time, though most of his games were played in the reserves.”

(Right Inside Soccer 1960)

     When Jimmy still wonders today how it was that he went on to become a player, he points to other happy accidents. In a family of six, the law of averages might suggest that five sisters is unusual and the fact that he was the only boy of the six children meant that it was he alone who received most attention. Not that his sisters were neglected; but another boy in the family might just have diluted the focus he got when it became clear to his father and uncle that he possessed a rare talent. The only boy therefore, with a footballing father and uncle, gave him the belief that he was destined to become a footballer, and the opportunity to fulfil it. He would have loved a brother in fact, and when his final sister arrived, he was hugely disappointed.

     “Many outstanding footballers claim they learned their trade with a tennis ball, or even a bundle of rags tied together with string. Constant practice with a tennis ball is the finest coaching ever devised. The ‘real’ ball was reserved for 90 minutes on a Saturday afternoon; the tennis ball was the tool for practice and we hoped might lead to perfection. As I gradually mastered ball skills, my dad became even more keen that I should not be hampered by my physique. There wasn’t very much of me which is why he made the unselfish decision – especially in the days of wartime rationing – that the best had to be fed to young Jimmy. Meats, eggs, bacon were all terribly scarce, but it was taken for granted that I should go short of nothing. I owe a debt to the other members of my family. (Right Inside Soccer 1960)

     “I’m certain I owe a lot to countless hours spent kicking a tennis ball against the wall of my home, when my pals tired of soccer, and using my imagination as an opponent, conjuring up all sorts of incidents I was likely to encounter in a match; such as a defender rushing in to tackle and being forced to play the ball first time from all heights and angles. I’m convinced this ‘self-coaching’ developed my skills, timing and balance, because in my imaginative wonderland I captured the pace and excitement of a real game, and it’s only in matches that skills are nurtured into peak performance. It’s possible, too, Irish as it may sound, that I was fortunate my schooldays happened during the war years, when footballs were practically non-existent, and touch and ball-sense was fostered with the only balls occasionally available – tennis balls.” (See appendices for full article: Gillette Book of Cricket and Football 1963)

     “I never doubted that I would become a footballer,” wrote Jimmy in 1960.

     The conditions and background for his development and the growth of his talent were in place. He and the village boys played from morning till night and he laughs now to think that one part of the fields where they played was where the earth toilets were emptied every so often. Other than in the ‘parlour houses’ a flush toilet was unheard of in Ballyskeagh and the ‘night soil’ as it was known, was periodically collected from every house and tipped down one of the sloping fields.

     What else was there to do then in the village but play football, with most people not even possessing a radio? But what do young lads do today when they are surrounded by so many other available activities and distractions, glued to their TV’s and computers in their bedrooms, whilst outdoors, the places where they can play dwindle, and Saturday morning school football led by eager teachers is almost a thing of the past in so many areas. Jimmy and hundreds like him developed their wonderful individual skills without any coaching. Today the scouting net is cast far and wide and youngsters are attached to clubs from as young as ten and even eight years old. They are coached on a regular basis. Yet, one of the most prolific eras of football in the UK, the 40s, 50s, and 60s; was a time when there were legions of supremely gifted, individually great players. A list of their names would fill several pages, yet this was a time when such early systematic coaching did not exist. Skills were honed in the backstreets, the fields, and the school playground; and if you were lucky, against the gable end of your house, like Jimmy McIlroy’s.

     He ran back home every night from school. “My fitness in later life must have had something to do with that.” It was in Drumbeg just a couple of miles away and they walked there in all weathers, winter and summer, but ran back. There were three teachers to teach the pupils who came at five years old and left at fourteen. “There was Mrs Allen and Miss Gordon. Then there was Mr Connor who taught us from age twelve to fourteen. He had white hair and was quite distinguished looking. He had travelled a lot to America and places in Europe and told us all about those places. He was interesting and I remember he cycled to school a distance of two to three miles.

   “Mrs Bunting had the village shop and it was the kind of shop where she’d have oil for the lamps we needed in one hand, and a loaf in the other when you went in. The shop sold everything from candles to sweets and groceries to cigarettes.

     “My grandmother’s house had a hall which opened into just one biggish living room. This room had what we called a ‘bunk’, a sort of, not really a cupboard, but a floor to ceiling space that was boxed off with a bed inside it. Upstairs there were two bedrooms. We had oil lamps and in winter we lit the coal fire and sat round it to keep warm. It was used for cooking and my grandmother always seemed to be baking soda bread, and wheaten bread.

       “The one holiday of the year and a highlight was the annual trip to the seaside. For those who went to Sunday School regularly there was the special day out, just the one day. A coach would take us. And that was our one treat of the year. The Orangemen’s March on July 12^th was always special and spectacular. They would use the Lambeg Drum, famous because it’s the biggest drum there is. On a Saturday I used to go the ‘pictures’ in Lisburn for the afternoon matinee. There was Gene Autry; I think he was ‘the singing cowboy’, and Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger. Then there was Tarzan. Once I was working, we went to Belfast on a Saturday night for the dancehalls or the cinema.

     “My grandmother had never been anywhere further than Belfast in her life. There was a morning bus to Belfast and one in the evening. At weekends there would be a few more. In wartime, Belfast suffered a number of air raids. We could see them from Ballyskeagh ten miles away. Whenever we could see and hear a raid we all ran down to a relative’s house to shelter together in the one room. I laugh now to think that’s what we did instead of spreading out, all of us hiding together. If one bomb had hit that one house we’d have all been blown up.”

     “There was no organised football at this time. There was no school football at all and we organised games amongst ourselves. But at the school in Lambeg the headmaster was Tom Priestley and he had played for Northern Ireland. He had played for Chelsea as well. He was bald and wore a wig, but if he was playing he took the wig off. I met him when I signed for Burnley. He had his wig on that day.”

     Jimmy never saw his father or Uncle Willie play but his father always told him the story that on one occasion he was walking towards the Belfast Oval; who was coming towards him but Peter Doherty then playing for Glentoran. Jimmy says his father told him that story so many times and always counted it as one of his greatest thrills. At that time Harry McIlroy would never have guessed that his son Jimmy would play for Glentoran and Northern Ireland, the latter with the legendary Peter Doherty as manager.

     One particular friend of Jimmy’s was a lad called Artie Taylor who lived in Greenhill. Artie too was a brilliant footballer; in fact Jimmy says he was the best of all the lads he knew. He was a wonderful dribbler and no-one could ever get the ball off him. His memories of Artie again prompt Jimmy to ask “why me” when he contemplates his career. “Artie was so good, why was it me and not him who found fame? Artie played for Luton and still lives there I think.”

     It was Artie who persuaded Jimmy to join him playing for Craigavad which was way past Belfast on the road towards Bangor. It was a walk into Lambeg for the bus, the bus to Belfast and then change to another bus to Craigavad. “I’d be at work in the morning, rush home, grab something to eat, rush to Lambeg – and then to Craigavad. It seemed to take hours to get there, but we thought nothing of it. It’s what you did.”

     “At 14, I’d won a scholarship to Lisburn Technical School, where one of my fellow pupils was Norman Drew, who later became a distinguished member of the Great Britain Ryder Cup golf team. Norman swears to this day that it was playing behind me in the ‘Tech’ football team that made him switch from football to golf. He thought his own limitations as a footballer became far too obvious.

   My stay at the Technical School was brief, only six months in fact and then I thought it was about time I did some work for a living, to repay all that my parents had done for me. My father, dedicated to helping me becoming a footballer, insisted that whatever I did should not be strenuous and that living on double rations I should avoid anything too laborious. We decided I would be an electrician.

     But, a cousin of mine then suggested that what I really needed to build me up with man-sized muscles was an outdoor job. I should do something physical – like building, or tree-felling.

     I became a bricklayer.

     The sacrifices my family made continued. When sandwiches for lunch were made in the morning, mine were filled with meat and the first to be made. Food was still short even when the war ended and my parents continually tried to get extra eggs from the local farms. As a famous politician might have said, “I’d never had it so good.”

     It was a wonderful, glorious summer. I stripped to the waist and worked hard. Muscles developed everywhere and the sun gave me a deep brown tan. The family was delighted.

     But that was the summer and then the winter came. For months I froze and tried to warm my hands over an open brazier. My fingers were numbed, the circulation seemed to stop. All I wanted to do was find some other job, anything, any job, instead of bricklaying. One of my workmates was Tommy Casey who one day would also play for Northern Ireland alongside me. He would become a star player with Newcastle United. On cold, frosty mornings as we shivered and grumbled each of us would try to get the newspaper first and look at the jobs section. Even today I shudder to think of those wintry days, the cold, the damp and our icy fingers. I decided you couldn’t pay bricklayers enough in these conditions, and it was impossible to overpay a man who laid bricks for his living. “I’d rather be a rag and bone man,” said Tommy one morning.

     The only thing that made up for this was football. I had become a member of the Craigavad club near Bangor.       

(Adapted from Chapter One ‘Right Inside Soccer: Jimmy McIlroy 1960)

Hopefully we will have more to come of Jimmy Mac The Price in the very near future.