Missing identity

Every picture, they say, tells a story. But as the television producer Billy McGrath discovered, some pictures don't, exactly: they just drop a tantalising hint. Such was the photograph he came across while researching his best-selling video Que Sera Sera, a behind-the-scenes look at the Irish soccer team's bid to qualify for the 1990 World Cup. Taken in 1973 at the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Street, it showed four teenage hopefuls who had signed for Arsenal.

Three of the players were, despite the cheesy 1970s haircuts, instantly recognisable, for they had gone on to become international soccer heroes. But who was the fourth man? McGrath turned the picture over. Just three names were written on the back: Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton and David O'Leary. McGrath was intrigued - and, perhaps, slightly appalled, for the episode seemed to underline the ruthlessness of top-level football.

In the end the image was used for Que Sera Sera, with the mysterious fourth man cropped out. But he wasn't cropped out of McGrath's mind; always on the lookout for a good idea for a documentary, he held on to the picture. "I kept the photograph pinned to the cork board in my kitchen," he says. "I took it with me when I went to work in the UK, and brought it with me when I came back. I always had it in my head to find out the name of the guy who was standing beside David O'Leary."

Fast-forward to 1999. While working in TV3 as an independent in-house producer, McGrath saw a lot of Frank Stapleton, a panellist on the station's coverage of Ireland's away matches. Over a beer one night Stapleton produced not just a name for the "fourth man", but enough details about his home and family to enable McGrath to track him down.

"I got the Yellow Pages, and like a private detective, I kept making phone calls until I got the right number." One thing led to another, and finally to the one-hour documentary Who's That Standing Beside John Murphy?, which will be shown as part of the True Lives series on RTE 1 on Tuesday. It's McGrath's first documentary for 10 years, and may be his last for some time, since he has just been appointed to the new, high-profile post of commissioning editor/entertainment at RTE.

Besides the softly-spoken Murphy (no, we're not going to tell you about him, apart from pointing out that he not only made a name for himself in another sport, but appears to be a happy, balanced individual) the programme features lengthy interviews with Brady, O'Leary and Stapleton - and their mammies, who, in the way of mammies, tell all.

Thus Eileen Brady, who declares blithely that although her son was a strong lad, she couldn't get him to eat. "Chippy?" she chuckles, over footage of a glorious ball floating across the screen with her offspring's trademark accuracy. "Chippy? People thought he was called `Chippy' because of the way he chipped the ball. Huh. It was because he wouldn't eat anything except chips . . . " So much for being a poet of the long pass: even Nick Hornby's ecstatic eulogy to Brady from Fever Pitch, read over still more mouth-watering footage, can't beat a mammy in full flow.

There's also much talk of homesickness and loneliness and the problems faced by very young, very innocent kids in a very big, very strange city. Was it hard to get these three famous heads to speak frankly about their emotions as louche teenagers, instead of talking about results and refereeing decisions? "Not at all," says McGrath. "A lot of people only ever see footballers in soundbites after the match, or doing analysis or something like that, but I had built up a good rapport with David, Frank and Liam when I was making Que Sera Sera, and I knew they'd be honest."

Anyone who paid sufficient attention to the recent BBC2 series Match of the Seven- ties will be familiar with the on-the-pitch milieu of the period: scandalously short shorts, improbably long hairstyles, and acre upon acre of mud. But Who's That Standing Beside John Murphy? explores the off-the-pitch world of youth soccer at the time; a world of kindly landladies and phone calls home, of tearful journeys on the Tube from Heathrow and of being forced to sweep out the locker room at Highbury. It harks back to an era when football was a good deal more innocent - though not necessarily kinder or gentler - than it is now.

"The programme wasn't meant to make any political points about clubs signing up young players, or about ambition or anything like that," says McGrath. "But having a son aged 10, I see the parents at weekend matches, how determined they are. Of course there's always the dream factor; kids always want to be a pop singer or a footballer. But if the programme shows anything it shows that there's no easy way out. To succeed as a footballer demands focus, sacrifice, support and a huge amount of hard work." And as it also shows, it's a life which doesn't suit everybody.

Who's That Standing Beside John Mur- phy? is on Tuesday, RTE 1 at 10 p.m.