Irish football was last night mourning the loss of one of its most respected personalities with the sudden death of Shay Brennan at the age of 63.

The man whose quiet demeanour on and off the pitch endeared him to a whole generation of Ireland and Manchester United supporters passed away while playing golf at Tramore.

That he should spend the final hours of his life on a golf course was appropriate for golf was his enduring passion after he had put away his football boots at the end of a splendid career in the early 1970s.

Few players in the history of the game in these parts have made a more dramatic introduction to senior football. It was February, 1958, and Matt Busby's immortal Manchester United team had been ravaged by the horrors of the Munich air disaster just weeks earlier.

While Busby fought for his life in a Munich hospital, his assistant, Jimmy Murphy, was entrusted with the task of cobbling together a team from what remained of a once proud squad for the remainder of United's programme.

The long road back started with an FA Cup sixth round tie against Sheffield Wednesday and in the depths of his dilemma, Murphy named Brennan, a full back by training and inclination, to play on the left wing.

Over 42 years, it is safe to say that there has never been a more emotive night in British football, with people across Europe willing United's tattered team, stripped of the talents of such superb players as Duncan Edwards, Tommy Taylor, Roger Byrne and Liam Whelan, to an unlikely victory.

And in this pit of passion, the youngster who had been left behind when Busby took his players on that ill-fated European Cup assignment, grew to manhood with two goals which helped United on their way to the final at Wembley.

Manchester United was his first and only club in England and 10 years later he savoured the supreme satisfaction of lifting the European Cup by beating Benfica in the final in extra-time.

Posterity would recall George Best, Bobby Charlton and Brian Kidd as the heroes of that treasured success. And yet, for many of us in Wembley that evening, the performances of Brennan and Republic of Ireland team-mate Tony Dunne were no less inspiring when Benfica came to win the game in the dying minutes of ordinary time.

Brennan, born in Manchester with a mother from Carlow, was intensely proud of his Irish origins and when his career at Old Trafford ended in 1969 after 289 first-team appearances, he came to make his living here, first as a player and then as manager of Waterford.

Before that, he had taken a special place in Irish football when in 1965 he became the first to benefit under a new rule, introduced by FIFA at its congress at Tokyo the previous year, qualifying players to represent the country of their ancestry.

His first appearance in a green shirt, which he would later recall as one of the milestones of his career, coincided with a celebrated 1-0 win over Spain in a World Cup game at Dalymount Park. He went on to win 18 more caps during a difficult period for the national team.

Speaking in New York yesterday, Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy said: "Although I didn't know him as a player, I met him at a number of functions subsequently and he struck me as a true gentleman. He was a great ambassador for the game in Ireland."

Those are sentiments with which the great majority would readily empathise. A gentle, mild-spoken man whose penchant for self-effacement ran contrary to the norm, he carried the trappings of fame lightly.

And for those of us who knew him personally his epitaph is that in the frequently coarse world of professional sport, he never deviated from the highest principles.