DR BRENDAN MENTON: In an era when football has increasingly become as much a multinational business as a sport, few people were as well qualified to understand its development as Dr Brendan Menton who died on August 1st aged 90.
Born on August 20th, 1911, in Dublin to James and Margaret (née Molloy), a couple who had moved to the city from the midlands, he grew up on Drumcondra's Home Farm Road.
From an early age until the time of his death he had a strong faith and during his youth served as an altar boy in Corpus Christi church, which is situated on the road where he lived.
Through the church a local streets soccer league was run, and having initially become involved in organising his own road's team he joined forces at the age of 17 with his friend Don Seery to found Home Farm Football Club, a product of the pair's decision to merge the Home Farm Road and Richmond Road sides.
He was to remain actively involved with the club for the rest of his life.
The death, while Brendan Menton was still young, of his father meant that there was some pressure on him to find work soon after finishing his secondary schooling at O'Connell's.
The need was made more pressing by the fact that three of his four brothers (he also had a sister, all of who predeceased him) were training for the priesthood at the time and required some financial assistance.
He joined the Department of Lands as a clerical officer but continued his studies through distance learning with the University of London. Over the years which followed he obtained his primary degree then a master's and finally a Ph.D in economics.
His civil service career subsequently included spells at the Department of Industry and Commerce as well as the Central Statistics Office before, at the invitation of Dr Ken Whitaker, he moved to the Department of Finance in June 1949.
The move marked the beginning of a close and productive working relationship which did much to influence successive governments' economic policy over the decades that followed.
It also cemented a friendship that was to endure for more than half a century.
Over the course of his time at the department he won considerable respect for his work, particularly for his short-term economic forecasts.
He became director of the Economic Service and then chief economic adviser and regularly attended meetings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and other major international conferences.
By the time of his retirement in April 1975, he had also played a significant role in the negotiations which led to Ireland joining the then European Common Market.
Late in his career he taught economics for almost a decade to students of UCD's diploma in public administration course and after leaving the civil service he acted as an adviser to both Allied Irish Banks and the Confederation of Irish Industry (now IBEC).
He also continued to be involved with the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, an organisation he had been president of for a year during the early 1970s.
Despite his busy working life he nevertheless managed to devote an enormous amount of time and energy to the football club he had helped to found in 1928.
Over the years which followed Home Farm helped to produce many of the country's greatest footballers - its players and former players have to date won more than 600 international caps between them - and contributed hugely to north Dublin's sporting tradition.
Home Farm became the best-known schoolboy club in the country and earned an international reputation for its development of young players.
Though less centrally involved in its administration in recent years, he never stopped working on its behalf.
In 1999 he completed an extensive history of the club which was published that year and even on the afternoon of his death he had written a number of letters to friends at home and abroad in connection with the preparations being made for its 75th anniversary celebrations next year.
His warmth, sense of humour and upbeat nature made his appeals for support on behalf of the club hard to resist, particularly for those who had had any connection with the club in their youth.
As a result he helped to build up a wide-ranging network of support for its work which includes many well-known names from within the game and others like the club's current president Sir Anthony O'Reilly, himself a former Home Farm boy.
When the club was elected to the League of Ireland in 1972, Brendan Menton became more involved in the politics of the Football Association of Ireland.
Between 1980 and 1982 he served as the association's president and was also active for a time on various committees of the game's European governing body, UEFA.
He is remembered as a gifted, resourceful and persuasive administrator whose contribution included employing old civil service contacts to help confirm the eligibility of English-born players like Michael Robinson and Tony Galvin to play for the Republic.
Over the years his work within the game earned him widespread recognition.
In 1977, he and Don Seery were jointly presented with Person of the Year awards and in 2000 Brendan Menton was made an honorary life vice-president of the FAI.
His sporting interests were not confined to football and he was a member for many years of Donabate Golf Club.
He also encouraged his family to become involved in sport and one son, Kevin, went on to play Davis Cup tennis for Ireland while another, Brendan, also an economist, followed him into football administration and is currently the general secretary of the FAI.
His wife, Anna (née Duff) whom he married in 1947, died nine years ago.
He is survived by his sons Brendan, Colm, Kevin and Malachy and his daughter Mary.
Dr Brendan Menton: born 1911; died, August 2002