The Interwiew!

As promised here are the first questions I put to the Ballymena Boy and my friend, Norman Clarke, enjoy!

Question One: What was your favourite moment in football?

Like all questions I find this very difficult to answer. I'll list a few of my favourite moments. (1) Scoring the winning goal against Portadown in the Irish cup 2nd round replay in February 1959 with a 25 yard shot.
(2) Winning the Ulster cup  with Ballymena United at Grosvenor Park in November 1960, beating Glenavon 3-1. (3) Providing the cross for the legendary Brian Clough to score his first goal of the 1962-63 season for Sunderland and hearing the roar of the 48,000 crowd. (4) Scoring with a low 20 yard volley against Linfield, in January 1961 in a 2-1 win. (5) Playing for the Irish league at Ibrox Park, Glasgow

(6) Playing for Northern Ireland under23 team against Wales and being marked by Mike England in February 1962. (7) But being a Ballymena fan and from a family of Ballymena fans, my absolute favourite was watching my favourite team, winning the Irish cup at the Oval grounds Belfast in 1958 beating Linfield 2-0 and winning the cup for the first time in almost 20 years. I would truthfully say that when the final whistle blew that day, that would be my absolute favourite football moment. That team (Bond, Trevorrow, Johnstone, Brown, Lowry, Cubit, Egan, Forsythe, McGee, McRae and Russell), are regularly recited by men of a certain age (myself included) and it was a great thrill for me as a sixteen year-old, to see Ballymena win the Irish cup.

Question Two: What is your happiest memory from outside of football?

Well this is an especially thorny question, for my life outside and after football, has been rather unhappy. Quite truthfully I could say I haven't had one, but the birth of my daughter Kim in September 1965, brought some happiness. Even going back to my school-days at Ballymena Academy I have no happy memories.
Now let me stress here, I'm not an unhappy person, but if I were to detail the experiences I have had in the last 40 odd years, it really is a nightmare scenario, so I'll say no more than that. Martin Luther King said, 'Shattered dreams are a hallmark of our mortal life', I couldn't put it better myself.

Question 3: How did you adapt when your career was cut short at such an early age?

I was three days short of 22nd birthday when I received a very serious injury to my left knee, a complete rupture of the medial and anterior cruciate ligament and a displacement of the external cartilage. Any damage to the Cruciate ligament then, 50 years ago last March, meant your playing days were over, the cruciate ligament could not be repaired. So I knew that my career in fulltime football was over. Sunderland retained me during 1964-65 season to recover and keep training, with no chance of playing. I made as a good a recovery that was possible and when I was released in 1965 I was feeling confident enough and young enough to go play part-time football which I did for 30 months back with Ballymena.

I was in retrospect not the player I had been and my constant concern every-time I would go out on the pitch was what if I got a bad knock on my knee, I could be crippled for life, but I think I did quite well. The difficulty was, for various reasons, I found it impossible to get a decent job in Ballymena, so I returned to Sunderland in March 1969 to work for the Plessey Company. The late Alex Parker, who was Ballymena's manager at that time, had said he thought the way I was playing, he thought me the greatest winger in the Irish league, but I couldn't exist on part-time wages of £6 a week and with a wife and child to support I had to take a job which was going to pay at least £20 a week, good money in  them days. Human beings are quite adaptable and despite my obvious disappointment about my promising career, which had finished so early, I just had to accept that its all part of the game and had just been desperately unlucky.



Remember Norman answers another 3 questions next week, Tuesday 10 December, 2013