Happy in the company of Wolves

In recent years television has caused a huge upsurge of interest in soccer, mainly because it is difficult to avoid it. Time was when Irish soccer fans would take a keen interest only in teams like Manchester United and Everton and, from time to time, Celtic in Scotland, mainly because it was to those clubs that Irish players seemed to drift. Attendances at domestic club soccer matches would tax accommodation at places like Dalymount Park, Glenmalure Park, Kilcohan Park or the Showgrounds.

Things have changed dramatically and not for the better, one fears. In this context one can only wonder about the exclusion of players such as Jackie Carey and Noel Cantwell from an All-Ireland team of Manchester United players named recently. Liam Whelan has also dropped out of the reckoning. Some people have short memories!

It has come as a surprise that a Galwayman, Kevin Brophy, has recently published a book devoted, and the word is deliberately used in this context, to Wolverhampton Wanderers called "In the Company of Wolves" *

The strange thing is that it is difficult to recall any prominent Irish player who played for Wolves in their great days although Noel O'Dwyer played towards the end of his career if my memory serves me right. Derek Dougan also made an impact there and, more recently, young Robbie Keane wore the Wolves shirt of "old gold" and black. Kevin Brophy does not fully explain why, as a teenager, he became besotted with Wolves. Maybe that is an unfair assessment. In his introduction he says: "If you are looking for objectivity, then this is not the book for you. (It is) seriously partisan , it is an extended love lyric-com-ode to a team that has a place in my heart since I was a boy in the middle of the century."

Perhaps there is nothing more important in life than this inexplicable devotion. Kevin Brophy arrived in Wolverhampton in July of 1988 to realise his boyhood dream of getting close to the club, the team, the players and the history of what was, once, a very significant force in English football.

He writes: "I knew no one there. I had neither friends nor contacts. I had never been to Molineux and I could lay claim to no special knowledge of fotball. "I had no official standing, whatever, at Molineaux yet both Colin (Lee, the manager) and John (Ward, the team coach) never let me feel less than welcome." What is most interesting about this neatly turned out book, is that people from a background such as Kevin Brophy can become fascinated with something which is totally outside their ordinary ambience.

In his previous book "Walking The Line" Brophy reveals that his background in Galway was very much in hurling, his father having played with Galway. Yet, here were have a youngster of the forties and fifties becoming intellectually involved in a soccer team to the extent that he decided to spend a year of his life with the town and the team.

He treads a road, however, which others have travelled before television became so invasive on so many lives, before customers in public houses turned out in club colours and roared encouragement and, or, abuse at television sets showing pictures of players, many of them with unpronouncable names.

It would be quite wrong of someone of this writer's generation to pour too much scorn on people who are prepared to support any team so long as it isn't Manchester United (ABU). Some commentators have made a fettish about boasting about being attached to this horrendous mass of unexplained bigotry.

This writer has no brief for Manchester United or any other team but he remembers a bleak day in February of I958 when on arrival home from school to be told that the United plane had crashed at Munich airport. Having seen many of them play in the Ireland - England game, not many months previously in Dalymount Park, the memory is still vivid and the tears then were real. The loss of greats such as Duncan Edwards and Liam Whelan has never faded from memory.

To suggest that any team or club is open to scorn and ridicule is an insult to those young men and those who indulge in such ridicule say more about their own ignorance than they do about any team.

`Nuff said about that! Here, however is a book written out of respect and unexplained affection for a team and a club which never really gained the same popularity in Ireland as Manchester United or Everton or Celtic, but which comes directly from the heart.

It is a labour of love and one which celebrates the positive aspect of devotion to sport.

Kevin Brophy has now contributed more than his share to this situation and his latest book is a valuable contribution to a rapidly growing library of splendid books on sporting topics.

In the Company of Wolves, by Kevin Brophy, Mainstream Publishing, £9.99 stg.