Inside Track: Joe Martin liked to play football, have a bet and make people laugh

My friendship with Joe Martin over a long number of years centred mostly on dogs, the ones that run around a greyhound track, and horses, the names of which appear in the racing pages each day and are hung up on the walls of bookies’ offices.

Of course there would be talk of soccer every so often, and, when Geraldines were going well in Louth football, they would also get a mention or two. Same with my club, Dundalk Gaels. Joe died recently at the grand age of 91.

Joe was a three nights-a-week man at the old greyhound track on the Ramparts. Most often he’d be in the company of his long-time pal and a former Democrat workmate of mine, Johnny McEvoy.

The lads would saunter down from Dublin Street, where they both lived, each Friday, Saturday and Monday night, and quickly set about an assiduous study of form.

It’s probably fair to say that like me, who would often enter in the racenight conversation along with a football colleague of Joe’s, John Murphy, they’d most often end up with less money than they had going in, or maybe none at all.

No matter how hard we studied, there was no legislation for a bad break, crowding at the first bend, a fight, or, in the days before there were cameras to decide a close finish, a wrong decision.

Same with visits to bookies’ offices. Two up in a treble, one beaten on the line, or not backing the one there’d been a tip for, which, of course, would skate up. This was all par for the course.

As he recounted some of the bets he had over the years, you got the impression Joe took greater relish out of telling of the ones that got away. The yarn would invariably end with one of Joe’s heartiest laughs.

There was a gathering of us one Saturday a few years ago in Boylesports in Anne Street, and I suggested there was the makings of a good football team there – Patsy Cole, Willie McKeever, Jackie Winkless, Sean Cunningham, and Joe.

I didn’t include myself, but volunteered to carry the water. By then, Joe had packed in the betting. It wasn’t because he had his fortune made, just a loss of interest, he told me.

I’ve often remarked here that it was around the early 1960s when I stopped going to Oriel Park. But when I was a regular, Joe was a fixture on the Dundalk team.

The No 9 jersey was his, and it was when he was eyeball to eyeball with the goalie that he bagged most of what once stood as a record number of goals for the Lilywhites. He got some vital scores in the FAI Cup win of 1952.

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I once described him a “bustling centre-forward”, in the mould of Bobby Smith, who was the leader of the attack in the famous Tottenham double-winning team of the early ‘60s, led by Danny Blanchflower.

I was glad to hear back from his nephew, Alan Martin – Dundalk Gaels’ long-serving treasurer – that while Joe saw himself as more than a bustler, he was chuffed to have been likened to the England International.

But maybe he might have been happier if I’d made a comparison with a Man United player. This was Joe’s team right to the very end.

As his son-in-law, John ‘Speedy’ Thornton – a senior championship winner with Geraldines – related last week, just days before his passing Joe listened in to the radio recording of the Old Trafford side’s Derby win over their City rivals, while he was a patient in Louth County Hospital.

Like his sister, Manchester-based Terry, who, as an entertainer had Sir Alex Ferguson as one of her greatest admirers, Joe was no stranger to the stage, or, indeed, to the airwaves.

He had a weekly show on Dundalk FM, ‘Magic Moments’, on which he delved into the past with music and stories, and had a huge listenership. Never did a programme pass without him making people laugh or evoke memories of days long gone.

He also featured on television, and probably one of his proudest days was when he led Dundalk’s St Patrick’s Day parade as Grand Marshall.

A photo from that occasion was one of many on the walls of McGeough’s Funeral Home, where Joe laid in rest prior to his removal to St Patrick’s Cathedral.

There was a fine turn-out for his Requiem Mass and funeral, which, on its way to St Patrick’s Cemetery, passed Oriel Park, where Joe had some of his finest games in a distinguished career. The cortege also stopped at his first and most recent home on Dublin Street.

Sympathy is extended to his daughters Carole and Mary, son Anton, brother, Tony, and sisters, Terry and Sr Antoninus (Rosemary), grandchildren, great-grandchildren and many other relatives and friends. The coffin carried the black-and-white of Dundalk FC.