seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Merseyside


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Birth of Steve Heighway, Irish Footballer

Stephen Derek Heighway, former Irish footballer who plays as a winger, is born in Dublin on November 25, 1947. He is part of the successful Liverpool F.C. team of the 1970s. Following his eleven-years with the club, he is ranked 23rd in the 100 Players Who Shook the Kop poll.

Heighway’s early education takes place in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, where he attends Ecclesall Junior School until 1959, followed by High Storrs School and latterly Moseley Hall Grammar School for Boys in Cheadle, near Stockport.

Heighway’s early promise as a winger is not spotted by professionals. Instead, he concentrates on his studies in economics and politics at the University of Warwick in Coventry achieving a 2:1.

In 1970, Heighway is studying for his final exams and playing for Skelmersdale United F.C. when he is spotted by Liverpool’s scouting system. With manager Bill Shankly keen to rebuild his ageing, underachieving team of the 1960s, Heighway is signed up swiftly in May of that year. It is due to his academic achievements that he gets his nickname “Big Bamber,” while teammate and fellow university graduate Brian Hall is dubbed “Little Bamber” – both after the television programme University Challenge host Bamber Gascoigne.

A strong and fast left winger with two good feet, Heighway settles into topflight football after making his debut on September 22, 1970, in a League Cup 2nd round replay at Anfield against Mansfield Town F.C. (3-2). He opens his goalscoring account in the 51st minute of a 2–0 home league win over Burnley F.C. on October 1, 1970.

A month later, Heighway scores against Merseyside rivals Everton F.C. in a hard-fought 3–2 win, after his team had found themselves down 2–0 early in the second half. He stays in the side for the rest of the season as Liverpool’s new charges finish the league campaign strongly and also defeat Everton in the semi-finals of the FA Cup to reach the final at Wembley Stadium.

Their opponents are Arsenal F.C., who are after a coveted “double” having won the Football League First Division championship. Heighway plays confidently in a match that is goalless after 90 minutes and therefore needs a period of extra-time. Just two minutes into the added half-hour, he receives the ball wide on his left flank from substitute Peter Thompson and starts a run toward the Arsenal penalty area, with Gunners full back Pat Rice tracking his run but unwilling to put in a tackle. With a swift turn outside, he gains a yard on Rice and hits a low drive into the net past Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson, who had committed the cardinal goalkeeping sin of coming out too far from his near post to anticipate a cross, thereby leaving a gap that Heighway exploits. Sadly, for Heighway and Liverpool, their opponents scored two goals in response.

Heighway settles into the Liverpool team for the next decade, winning the first of four League titles in 1973, along with the UEFA Cup. He returns to Wembley for another FA Cup final a year later as Liverpool faces Newcastle United F.C. He scores again with 16 minutes remaining in the match to make the score 2–0, latching on to a flick from John Toshack after a long clearance from goalkeeper Ray Clemence to slot a right-footed shot into the far corner. The game ends 3–0.

By now, Heighway is a regular for the Republic of Ireland national football team, making his debut on September 23, 1970, against the Poland national football team. He remains so for the whole of the 1970s, winning a total of 34 caps but never managing to score. He does have a goal disallowed in a qualifier for the 1978 FIFA World Cup against the Bulgaria national football team in Sofia. On the domestic front, he attains another League and UEFA Cup double with Liverpool in 1976 and then forms part of the side which comes so close to the “treble” of League, FA Cup and European Cup.

Liverpool wins the League by a single point and again defeats rivals Everton in the semi-final to reach the FA Cup final, this time to face bitter rival Manchester United F.C. at Wembley. Liverpool loses 2–1 and the “treble” dream is dead.

Heighway scores his first goal of the 1977 European Cup in a 5–0 first round second leg win over Crusaders F.C. He then scores in a 3–0 second round win against Trabzonspor and in the 3–1 semi-final first leg win over FC Zürich. Liverpool beats Borussia Mönchengladbach 3–1 to win their first European Cup, with Heighway setting up both outfield goals for Terry McDermott, a defence-splitting pass, and Tommy Smith, a corner.

In 1978, Heighway is on the bench as Liverpool retains the European Cup with a 1–0 victory over Club Brugge KV at Wembley, coming on as a substitute for Jimmy Case. The following year he is again in the side frequently as Liverpool wins another League title, but from 1980 onward his opportunities in the side diminish.

Heighway stays for two more seasons, appearing only occasionally in the team and missing out on two more League title medals, another European Cup triumph and a first EFL Cup medal, which is successfully defended a year later. He leaves Anfield in 1982 after 444 matches and 76 goals.

Heighway then prolongs his career with a move to the United States, joining the Minnesota Kicks for the 1981 season. He plays 26 games, scoring four goals. He then joins the coaching staff of Umbro, which leads to a position with the Clearwater Chargers where he pioneers the role of director of coaching in the United States. In 1989 he is asked to rejoin Liverpool to run their youth academy, bringing promising youngsters up through the system until they were ready for the professional game. Among his successes are Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Dominic Matteo, David Thompson and Michael Owen.

On September 4, 2006, a poll on Liverpool’s official web site names Heighway 23rd out of 100 Players Who Shook the Kop.

Heighway announces his retirement from Liverpool on April 26, 2007, immediately after the side he manages won the FA Youth Cup for the second year running. He comments, “I don’t know what the future holds just yet, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Heighway returns to working at Liverpool’s Academy part-time in 2015, at the request of Academy Director Alex Inglethorpe, before taking up a full-time consultancy role later that year. After seven years in this position, he retires for a second time in December 2022.

Heighway also features in the popular Liverpool chant, The Fields of Anfield Road, which is frequently sung by Liverpool fans during matches.


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Birth of Janet McNeill, Novelist & Playwright

Janet McNeill, prolific Irish novelist and playwright, is born on September 14, 1907, in Dublin. Author of more than 20 children’s books, as well as adult novels, plays, and two opera libretti, she is best known for her children’s comic fantasy series My Friend Specs McCann.

McNeill is born to Rev. William McNeill, a minister at Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, and Jeannie Patterson (Hogg) McNeill. In 1913, the family moves to Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, where her father becomes minister at Trinity Road Church. She attends public school in Birkenhead and studies classics at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland, completing a MA degree in 1929. While at university, she is involved in writing and acting with the College Players. In 1924, the family returns to Ireland due to her father’s failing health, and Rev. McNeill becomes the minister of a village church in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland, while Janet joins the Belfast Telegraph as a secretary.

In 1933, McNeill marries Robert Alexander, the chief engineer in the Belfast city surveyor’s department, and the couple settles in Lisburn, where they raise their four sons. One son is the zoologist Professor Robert McNeill Alexander, CBE, FRS. Though she plans to write her first novel early on, she finds it impossible to write seriously until the children grow up, saying, “It was four years before I had a baby and twenty-five before I produced the book.”

In 1946, McNeill wins a prize in a BBC competition for her play Gospel Truth. She begins writing radio dramas, which are broadcast by the BBC. She suffers an intracerebral hemorrhage in 1953. During her recovery, she begins writing novels both for adults and children, producing a large body of work between 1955 and 1964. Her popular children’s character, Specs McCann, who debuts in a 1955 book and makes several reappearances, also inspires a newspaper cartoon strip by Rowel Friers, a Belfast artist and friend of hers.

Her 1944 novel The Maiden Dinosaur is her first to be published in the United States, twenty-two years later. She also has three writing credits on television with series and plays. Several of her plays are staged at the Ulster Group Theatre.

In 1964, McNeill’s husband retires, and the couple moves to Bristol, South West England. She writes one more novel after she leaves Northern Ireland but continues to write children’s books for another decade. During this time, she writes her only children’s play, published as Switch On, Switch Off, and other plays (1968), which presents different moral themes in scenes set in “domestic and workplace settings in contemporary England.” Her children’s book The Battle of St. George Without is televised by the BBC in 1969.

In her adult fiction, McNeill focuses on the lifestyle and social mores of Belfast and Ulster in the mid-twentieth century. Her characters are primarily “menopausal, middle-aged, middle-class Protestants.” She depicts the “dreary, Ulster religiosity” of ministers and laymen alike, and the class conventions and sexual repression of middle-aged, upper-middle-class women. The theme of suppressing self-identity and goals, both by wives in deference to their husbands and parents on behalf of their children, pervades her adult novels.

McNeill has a number of health problems and dies in Bristol in October 1994.


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Death of Irish Songwriter Percy French

percy-french

Percy French, one of Ireland’s foremost songwriters and entertainers of his day, dies of pneumonia in Formby, England, on January 24, 1920.

French is born at Cloonyquin House, near Tulsk, County Roscommon. He is educated at Foyle College, Derry, and writes his first successful song, Abdul Abulbul Amir, while studying at Trinity College Dublin in 1877. The song is sold for £5 to an unscrupulous publisher and later becomes hugely popular and is falsely claimed by other authors.

He graduates from Trinity as a civil engineer in 1881 and joins the Board of Works in County Cavan as an “Inspector of Drains.” It is said that he writes his best songs during this period. French is also a prolific painter of landscape watercolours and during this period he considers art to be his true vocation. When he becomes well-known later in his life, his paintings from his time as a civil engineer become fashionable and sought after.

When the Board of Works reduces its staff around 1887, French turns to journalism as the editor of The Jarvey, a weekly comic paper. Upon the failure of the paper, he embarks on a long and successful career as a songwriter and entertainer. It is around this time that he marries Ethel Kathleen Armitage-Moore, second daughter of William Armytage-Moore, brother of Countess of Annesley. Tragically, at the age of 20, she dies during childbirth along with her daughter.

percy-french-statue

French becomes renowned for composing and singing comic songs and gains considerable distinction with such songs as Phil the Fluther’s Ball, Slattery’s Mounted Foot, and The Mountains of Mourne. One of his most famous songs is Are Ye Right There Michael, a song that ridicules the state of the rail system in rural County Clare. The song causes such embarrassment to the rail company that it lead to an ultimately unsuccessful libel action against French. It is said that he arrives late for the libel hearing and, when questioned by the judge on his lateness, he responds, “Your honour, I travelled by the West Clare Railway,” which results in the case being thrown out.

French takes ill while performing in Glasgow and dies of pneumonia on January 24, 1920, at the age of 65 at the home of his cousin, Canon Richardson of Green Lea, in Formby. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Luke’s Parish Church, Formby in Merseyside. A statue of him sitting on a park bench can be found in the town center of Ballyjamesduff in honour of him and his famous song, Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff.