Joe Carroll: My Arsenal team was never next to or near Highbury

There was a time when I would get away with it, telling the latest generation that I once played for Arsenal. They’d be there open-mouthed as I told them that we wore red and in one memorable season won the Cup.

I didn’t go as far as to say that Pat Jennings was in goal for us, or that we played our home games at Highbury. I didn’t have to; they heard enough to be in thrall, that their grandfather togged out in the famous colours.

They used their imagination after that, one of them known to have hot-footed it into school to tell his mates, his story losing nothing in the telling.

That was then, this is now. They’re older, wiser, and know that the tales of derring-do they used absorb with relish – with a few from Croke Park thrown in for good measure – were just that, tales, most of them of the tallest order.

There was, however, a modicum of truth in what I had to say. I did play for Arsenal.....the team that competed in the Dundalk Schoolboys’ League many years ago.

A wonderful man by the name of Frankie Whitmarsh, whose father, George, had a long association with Dundalk FC, was in charge. He guided us to a Cup win one year, the final played at St Joseph’s Park, next door to Oriel.

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All I remember of the game was our captain, Gerry Coleman, shouting, “It’s all over bar the shouting” after he’d stuck the clincher in the back of the net.

Gerry’s brother, Willie, had a great soccer career, playing with, among other teams, Drumcondra and Dundalk in the League of Ireland, while two other siblings, Tony and Seanie, went the other direction, joining forces with Dundalk Gaels and giving The Ramparts club outstanding service over a long number of years.

Another brother, Ollie, headed the ball in his playing days, but is now a GAA regular, following the fortunes of one of his latest generation, the young man wearing the blue-and-white like his grand-uncle, Seanie.

Also on the Arsenal team was Kevin Mulligan, with whom, many years later, I would again share spaces – this time in Press boxes and at get-togethers to which newspaper editors were invited.

Kevin, happily still putting his thoughts – on Dundalk FC – down on paper, wielded the red pen of mass correction in The Argus, while I was at the same with this paper.

I’m also still keeping my mind occupied in front of a computer, having started out on an Underwood 10, which, when I think back on it, had the noise of a John Deere threshing machine. (Did John make threshing machines, or was it just tractors?)

Back to Arsenal, first of all the one I played for. The presentation of our Cup win was held in the AOH Hall, and I often wondered if it ruffled a few Fianna Fail feathers in 21, McDermott’s Terrace when I said that that’s where I was going to get my trophy. If it did, nothing was said.

And now to the other Arsenal, the one which Liam Brady played for and George Graham managed. Brady was one of the North London club’s best, a midfield general who dictated play with an elegant efficiency. He could also score.

Arsenal played in three FA Cup finals in succession from 1978 to ‘80, winning one of them. Brady was one of six Irishmen that started in all three matches: Jennings, Pat Rice, Sammy Nelson, David O’Leary and Frank Stapleton the others, with John Devine coming on for Nelson to make it an involvement of seven from this country in the 1980 final.

As portrayed in a recent RTE programme, Brady was also one of the Republic of Ireland’s greatest players, winning 72 caps. It would have been more if Jack Charlton had been a fan of the game that Brady had perfected in a stellar career.

Charlton wanted the ball transferred long as quickly and directly as possible, while Brady, singing from the Johnny Giles hymn sheet, believed in building from the middle.

It can’t be said Charlton’s strategy wasn’t successful – it’s just a pity that the pair, one of them the national team’s best-ever manager, the other a gifted player, couldn’t find common ground.

Brady had long left Arsenal to play in Italy by the time George Graham came in as manager. The Scot had been one of the club’s icons in his playing career, captaining the famous 1971 double-winning side. He was headhunted from Millwall when the Arsenal board looked for a replacement for Don Howe.

Graham would prove himself one of the Highbury club’s most successful managers, producing a team which, if it wasn’t in the same category of Arsene Wenger’s “Invincibles” which followed, was still good enough to win the league and league-cup twice and the FA Cup once. There was also success on the continent, the Gunners beating Parma in the 1994 Cup-Winners’ Cup.

Graham’s nine-year reign came to an end in 1995, not, as you would expect, with a handshake but a warning to watch-yourself-on-the-step-on-the-way-out-the-door.

In other words, he got the heave-ho, and it was all to do with him taking bungs for advising a Norwegian agent on the potential transfer of Scandanavian players to England.

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He and a member of his coaching staff, Steve Burtenshaw, both claiming the money they had received was a gift, had come under investigation from the Inland Revenue. Arsenal accepted the duo’s claims, and as a gesture of goodwill, Graham gave the £420,000 he had received to the club.

However, with the FA carrying out a thorough investigation into bungs at the time, Arsenal sacked both men (on this day, 28 years ago) because they had “failed to act in the best interests of the club.” Graham was also banned by the FA for a year, before taking over as manager at Leeds.

So that’s Arsenal in all its hues. Today’s team is among the Premier League’s frontrunners, but maybe still hurting after been hoodwinked, none of the latest generation follows them.

Man United, Liverpool, and even Crystal Palace, okay, but you’ll see none of them running around kissing the crest with a cannon gun on it after scoring a goal out the back of the house.