Dalymount Park, 1955, and from a Dublin archive comes buried treasure.
It is an unseen black-and-white photograph of that year’s St Patrick’s Day. After a double-take, memories surge and connections occur. The reason is George Eastham.
Eastham was one of the Dalymount multitude that day almost 70 years ago. He was conspicuous by his presence – 18, slightly-built and English – and thrust into a League of Ireland-Irish League representative match with 30,000 swaying on the old, steepling terraces of Phibsborough.
The attendance alone tells a tale. Thirty-odd years after independence and the formation of the League of Ireland itself, these inter-league games mattered politically as well as to each league’s self-esteem. For the players there was cross-channel attention and an extra day’s pay. And here amid the competitive Irishmen was a Blackpool boy who would go on to be one of the most important figures in the history of professional football.
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Eastham became famous for verdicts; he gave one on his Dalymount performance: “Once again I let them down”.
The ‘once again’ was a reference to another Irish League game – against the ‘British Army (Western Command)’ in Belfast the same year. Eastham felt he did not play well then either. A teenager given to critical thinking.
News broke last Saturday that, aged 88, Eastham has passed away. The natural slump at these items was felt more keenly, perhaps because of the time of year, but also because his was a name in our Belfast home where he was known as ‘George Eastham junior’.
Our father, Tommy, knew George Eastham senior. The latter was a former England international who moved in 1953 to Co Down to be player-manager of Irish League club, Ards. And Tommy played for Ards.
So the Easthams ran out in the Irish League, sometimes together. George jr was delighted – he said his father was the best player he ever saw, an accolade given George jr played with Jimmy Greaves for England and with John Charles for Ards.
The obituaries and tributes to Eastham touch on his Irish beginnings, but understandably focus on an English career with Newcastle United, Arsenal, Stoke City and 19 caps for England. He was part of the 1966 World Cup squad.
Then, of course, there was the fact that while at Newcastle, Eastham challenged and outfought the club’s pompous hierarchy. After that, supported by the players’ union, Eastham took the entire the ‘retain-and-transfer’ system to the High Court in London. It was 1963 and he was, literally, in the dock.
Eastham won. He was Jean-Marc Bosman three decades before Bosman revolutionised European cross-border contracts.
As late as the 1960s British football treated players as pieces of meat. They were signed and usually retained on one year-contracts at a maximum £20 per week. If a club decided not to renew a contract it simply retained the player’s registration. He remained under their jurisdiction but without contract or pay.
As players often lived in club accommodation, they lost their house. It happened to Eastham’s uncle Harry, who had played for Liverpool and was seeing his career out at Accrington Stanley when told to get out. The vocal Welsh international Trevor Ford labelled it all ‘slavery’.
In London’s High Court the judge was a descendant of William Wilberforce and was familiar with this language. Richard Wilberforce ruled in Eastham’s favour.
Young George never forgot his uncle Harry’s distress, and recalled it when a comparable situation arose for him at Newcastle.
Eastham had moved – or been sold to – St James’ Park 18 months after Dalymount. There had been another representative game and Eastham scored as for the first time the Irish League defeated the English League. Watching was Newcastle’s legendary Irish scout Bill McCracken, a man so far ahead of his time the offside law was changed because of him.
Thinking of these history men at Christmas 2024, of Dalymount and the Irish element of Eastham’s career, a picture surfaced online. It is from that St Patrick’s Day ‘55, the Irish League XI photographed before kick-off. Eastham is there in the middle of the front row. Is that a Bohemians flag fluttering high behind?
And then you notice the man to Eastham’s left: is it Da? Our Dad?
Yes, it is.
We have a few pictures from Tommy’s playing days, but not this one, we’ve never seen it.
And it’s great. It belongs to the Irish Photo Archive, an amazing historic collection. There are seven images from that day revealing the scale of Dalymount and the intensity of the action.
The League of Ireland won 2-1. There was an Irish Times match report saying “young Eastham (inside left) was not strong enough for the occasion”. There is a reference to Wilbur Cush, who took a whiff of shrapnel with him on to any pitch. He joined Leeds United soon after.
Cush is said to be chasing Waterford’s Jimmy Gauld. Gauld, a Scot who moved to Charlton, then Everton was another historic football man. He was sentenced to four years in prison for match-fixing in the 1960s, in the notorious case with Tony Kay and Peter Swan. Many were shocked and had no sympathy for Gauld; others saw it as an inevitable byproduct of a system where a tiny fraction of 30,000 gate receipts at Dalymount or wherever would be seen by the players
Certainly if young George listened to Tommy or any of the older Ards players, he would have heard sharp criticism of the system, of those running the club and the Irish League.
In The Irish Times report Tommy Walker is described as “dangerous”, but that was because he scored the Irish League’s goal.
Again, this report is something we as a family have never seen, but then Irish Times sales were not large in 1950s east Belfast. A different newspaper cutting we have refers to Tommy’s transfer from his first club, Distillery, to an unnamed club in England’s Second Division. We can probably say now it was Luton Town.
But the deal was arranged without the player’s consultation, the standard practice. So even though Luton’s manager flew to Belfast to collect his cargo, the report says “Tommy had the final word and it was ‘No’.”
There were private as well as professional reasons for the decision, but the attitude – you’ll not buy and sell me – is one Eastham heard in various dressingrooms.
There was a difference in age and talent between these and other players, but not character. They saw an unjust football world through the eyes of George’s uncle Harry and were prepared to say ‘No’. The sadness at Eastham’s passing has been offset by this photograph and the memories provoked.
Rebellious George Eastham jnr and dangerous Tommy Walker, they also said ‘Yes’. We miss them.
Happy new year.
