So many questions – but only one Eamonn Dunphy!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

It’s never good when a passion becomes an obsession, so I gave myself a double take the other day. I was reading Eamon Dunphy writing in his recently-released autobiography ‘Rocky Road’ about Bill Shankly’s Liverpool, on the way up from Division Two.

Thing is, I’d just stopped reading David Peace’s Red or Dead about Shankly’s Liverpool to read this, another football-related book, which was now showing me a different side of the same events of a football club and its manager, several decades ago.

Was I maybe just possibly losing it in the noodle a little with all the football?

While I’ve over-boiled a lot of my mental spaghetti over the years, thankfully football is not a problem. It’s under control, y’know what I mean, like like like I can live with it and I can live without it. Like, last week, y’know, I went a couple of days without watching it or reading about it. Well, more like one day really. But it’s under control. Honest.

Anyway, the reason I need to read Dunphy’s book in such a hurry is that I’m going to be interviewing the man himself, in Dubray’s Bookshop on Shop Street in Galway City on November 7. I’ll be asking him questions for 20 minutes or so, there’ll be a couple of questions from the floor (that’s you if you come, not the laminate strips) and then he’ll read from his new book.

So while thinking back to the book I’d just relinquished about Shankly, I was reading Dunphy writing about Shankly. He couldn’t recall why he turned down the chance to play for Shankly’s Liverpool. Back then they were in Division Two, which we now call the Championship.

Actually, the difference between those two league titles sums up perfectly why I’m (maybe just a squidgem) obsessed with the game.

You see, in them there far off days, when men was men and refs waved play on, the four top leagues in England had no nonsense to ‘em: 1, 2, 3, and 4. There was no need for the liberal wrapping and fancy tinsel of today’s Premiership, Championship and the Less Wonderful But Still Worthy Of Corporate Sponsorship-Ships, now optimistically called Leagues 1 and 2.

When you won League Division One in the ’60 and ’70s, you knew well enough you were the best team. No rockets, no exploding multicoloured glitter balls. Each team had 11 players on the field (12 if your manager was into bungs), and there was one named substitute, who came on only if somebody’s head was broken off. The game was played with vigour and violence, more akin to today’s ice hockey and the GAA/Aussie Mish-Mash Rules.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.