Running the risk of the ban for love of soccer

SPORTING PASSIONS:Former Donegal football manager Brian McEniff.

MY LATE father was a man who took an interest in all sports. He was born in Scotland so there was a great love of soccer but he also told me about rugby.

Of course, we had Christy O'Connor Snr here as a professional in Bundoran. I remember him winning the first £1,000 tournament that was ever played for in these islands and coming in on the train. He was a superstar when superstars weren't heard tell of.

Then Micheál O'Hehir made me a Wexford hurling fan. He could make you feel like you were right in the centre of Croke Park and I was able to envisage the Rackard brothers playing. I am still a Wexford fan now.

When I went to Canada I worked in a hotel in Toronto and the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team won a couple of Stanley Cups while I was there. Everyone took an interest in basketball and I got to see the Harlem Globetrotters, which back then was something special.

I had an interest in a wide range of sports but naturally enough Gaelic football, because I went to boarding school where Gaelic football was the prominent game. I suppose by virtue of the fact that at boarding school you weren't allowed to play soccer, that made you twice as interested in trying to play it.

When I went to college in Dublin I joined Bohemians. My first competitive game was when I played in Bohs' third team against Home Farm. I think I was offside about four or five times and I was pulled for obstruction about four or five times too because I was getting my shoulder into men.

I played the latter end of the 1962 season with Sligo Rovers. I emigrated to Canada then and played there with Toronto Roma, a semi-professional Italian club in Toronto. I was getting 75 dollars a week. At that time the minimum wage in England was £20, so I was actually getting more than the professional players in England.

I got very involved with the GAA in Toronto and I was secretary, captain and a manager of the Clan na Gael club. I would have filled a similar role for the Toronto All-Star team. I played hurling there too but I wasn't good - I hurled with a golfing grip.

When I got back to Ireland, we'd been away for a couple of years. I had got married to a Cork lady, Cautie, so we spent a good bit of time in Cork.

I went down to Flower Lodge and I met Jackie Morley, Tucker Allen and John Herrick, who were quite famous for their soccer exploits.

A guy called Amby Fogarty came in and he put Cork soccer on a very professional structure. I was coming and going between Donegal and Cork Hibs and then I'd disappear. I wasn't getting a regular game.

I suppose I had a certain amount of ability and Fogarty asked me: "What gives with you?" I told Fogarty the truth because at that stage I was using the name John Rooney because of the ban.

So while I was down in Cork for those years I was known as John Rooney to the lads. My late mother-in-law used to get great fun out of that when people would phone the farmhouse looking for me.

Donegal got to a couple of National League semi-finals but your photograph would never be in the paper. We hadn't won an Ulster Championship so there was no exposure. But when Finn Harps came into the league and Cork Hibs were travelling up there, I phoned John Crowley, the secretary of Cork Hibs and I had to tell him the truth.

After that I was still knocking around and playing with a side in Sligo. I got called for a trial for the Sligo/Leitrim team to play the Oscar Traynor Cup. At that time, the Evening Press used to come to Sligo and there would be local news printed in bold on the front page of the paper.

The Oscar Traynor Cup team for Sligo/Leitrim was announced and my name was there. I looked at the paper and said "My God". I thought I was for the high jump because the ban was there - 12 months automatic suspension. But then at 9.50pm that night my Dad died. With his death and my mother coming from a strong GAA family I went back to the county football and the rest is history.

When I stopped playing soccer I became very successful as a Gaelic footballer, because the two skills don't really suit. In soccer, you're waiting for the ball to come out of the air to control it and in Gaelic you must be moving to it. Strangely in soccer I was a striker and in football I was a defender.

I was an avid follower of soccer. I was at boarding school when the Munich disaster happened so we were all Manchester United fans, we were Celtic fans coming from Donegal, we were Sligo Rovers fans and then Harps came in.

It was something that my Dad created for me, this huge interest in a cross-section of sports. Soccer would be the second love outside of Gaelic games but I'm a very committed GAA person.

In an interview with Mark Rodden