You’ll have to do better than that, chief.
He was from Strabane and seems to have been rated alongside Giggs and Scholes as being cast iron certainties to become among the very best British players, played guitar and was a huge Dylan fan, he wrote poetry and had little interest in football outside of playing. I believe he played schoolboy football with Brendan Rodgers at some stage, then with what happened it could be a good if tragic read.
It appears that every on here has googled and is quoting from the same Daniel Taylor Guardian article about this chap.
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Sorry mate, I was listening to the feature on him on off the ball the other night, I’ve had that book in my hands a few times over the past few weeks
The interesting character guy ?
@horsebox I see they’ve made a documentary on Tommy byrne,it’s been shown at some film festival this weekend
Interesting. That could be very decent.
Hope so,it’s a great story
Finished this book last week and thought it was very good. Must have been an unbelievable talent. I remember reading an interview before with Robbie Savage few years ago (I know) but he was asked who was the best underage talent he played with and he said without doubt it was Doherty.
Kay has gone to unbelievable research as it probably not easy guy to track down. Doherty was an extremely eccentric character and seemed to be a bit of a loner. He was also quiet and very private, for example he worked in a bar in Galway for a few years without anyone knowing who he was. Seemed to be just happy writing music and poetry. When a junior at United he would give away his ticket and head off busking for the day instead.
United do not come out very good out of this book. He seems to have been treated very poorly, which even made Fergie uncomfortable. He knew they should have done more for him in terms of his injury and welfare afterwards.
Still not sure if he would have actually made it tho. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if he played a year with the first team and then just packed it in. He definitely wouldn’t have had a long career.
Solid 8 out of 10 for me.
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Picked up a few books recently, been reading Ray Parlours book which is fairly poor, felt it would be better as he’s a bit of a character and Amy Lawrence isn’t the worst writer, can anybody make sense of this passage which describes his experience at Hull, bearing in mind he’s talking about championship football players and not under 10s
I met Ray Parlor once after playing a round of golf. He is indeed a character
Probably a made up story but what are you getting at in terms of making sense of it?
Championship players aren’t very good.
I got about a third of the way through this and I’m a bit bored. I’m finding it repetitive and just written like an extremely long newspaper article with no great narrative.
The winger had gone past the full back (without the ball as the Romford Pele had that) and having done so appears to have stood still rather than continuing his run, Ray passed it ten yards in front (to where he assumed the lad would run) and straight into touch.
Maybe I read it all wrong but it seems a little bit ridiculous to have to explain something as blatantly obvious to a professional footballer.
Anyone here ever read John Leonard’s book ? Sober Paddy ? About ex Dublin sub goalie ? Any good ?
It’s ok. Bit repetitive. Seems like an alright fella but no huge insight into the football side of it and just a lot of tales of his drinking and drugging and riding
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I thought it was decent enough, one of the better GAA biographies. Gives a good insight into Pillars Dubs and what it takes to play inter county. Seems like a good lad. Apparently he wrote it himself as well.
I’m reading a brilliant book called Forever Boys by James Lawton which is about the Man City team of the late 60s and Malcolm Allison, superbly written and serves as part memoir for Lawton.
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I just read Tomás Ó Sé and Rory Kavanagh’s books. Thought they weren’t bad at all, especially Ó Sé’s book. The little stories about Paídí and the general Kerry gombeenism were funny enough.