My grandfather Hughie McGartland and Castlebar Celtic
CLUB CENTENARY SPECIAL
by Edwin McGreal
“Whenever the history of Castlebar Celtic is debated, there is one man who will always stand head and shoulders above all others as the Godfather figure in the creation of a powerful club.
“Hughie McGartland knew quite a lot about the ins and outs of the game when he came to Castlebar from Omagh and he utilised his experience to play an influential role in the development of the club over a number of decades.”
- Boots, Rules and Fantasy Free – A History of Mayo Football by Tom Kelly (1996)
WE’RE not sure what our grandfather’s long-term plans were when he first came to Castlebar. We’re not even sure what year he arrived – possibly 1930 or 1931 though one account states as early as 1926.
But if his initial plans involved a couple of years valuable experience as a barber with Hack Walsh on Castle Street before heading back up to his native Tyrone, those plans didn’t last.
Instead, Castlebar became Hughie McGartland’s home, where he set up his own business, met his wife and where they raised a family of three girls (my late aunts Pauline and Ronnie and my mother Mary Rose).
And Castlebar was where he left a big mark in soccer as can be easily gathered from the above passage from Tom Kelly’s brilliant, definitive history of the Mayo League.
At the time of his death in 1974 at the age of 68, Hughie – as he is still simply known in our family – had given a lifetime of service to Castlebar Celtic.
He had been secretary of the club across five decades – from 1931/32 to 1971 with only a brief interregnum in the late 1940s. He was the key figure in Celtic’s purchase and development of Flannelly’s Field, now Celtic Park.
He was one of the main movers in the formation of the Mayo League too and he served as its chairman. He was also heavily involved in the Connacht FA, serving as treasurer in the 1940s and chairman in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.
He died eight years before I was born and research for this article discovered plenty we were unaware of.
For instance he was chairman of a local housing committee in the late 1940s which took on Castlebar Urban District Council (UDC), demanding better housing facilities for people in the town, with Hughie bemoaning children ‘cooped up like birds in a cage in rooms and insanitary dwellings’. He stood, unsuccessfully, for the UDC on two occasions on a housing ticket.
He was in court for cutting someone’s hair after 10 p.m. – who knew this was a crime in 1942?
He opened his own barbers in October 1940 down the street from Hack Walsh’s when Europe was at war – he never minded a challenge.
And there’s a possibility that he Christened the club Castlebar Celtic.
While this was strong in our family’s oral history, given that he was born in Glasgow and a strong supporter of Celtic (and Manchester United), we discounted it once it became apparent he wasn’t in Castlebar when the club was formed.
But that changed when I discovered in the course of research for this article that the club was not called Castlebar Celtic until 1932. Up to that point they had either been just Castlebar or Castlebar Corinthians.
He either commenced as club secretary in 1931 or 1932 so would have been around the table when the decision was made. I cannot be certain it was explicitly his idea but if it wasn’t, it certainly would not have been a proposal he would have objected to.
'CALLING THE SHOTS'
As a journalist who covered local GAA and soccer politics for many years and witnessed every type of character from altruistic to Machiavellian, authoritarian to democratic, I was curious to know what type of operator he was.
Reading Tom Kelly’s book, it was fascinating to read the very first chapter being about a controversy involving my grandfather.
‘The Peter Duke affair’ helped establish the league’s authority in the late 1950s, after their foundation in 1954. Peter Duke was a prolific forward with Castlebar Celtic but had a row with Hughie. It’s not clear what the row was about but Duke’s response was to try to line out with Westport United against Celtic – a bold move in any era!
Celtic refused to play and Duke was suspended. In describing the row, Tom Kelly said of Hughie that he was ‘the man who clearly called the shots as far as the Castlebar club was concerned’.
He was certainly more a proponent of the chief style of leadership than the consensus chairman approach.
He could be stubborn. At Mayo League and Connacht FA meetings, my grandfather was often a strident voice and did not back from a battle.
Michael Feeney, who was Mayo League secretary in the 1980s and the driving force behind the Milebush development, worked closely with Hughie from a young age.
He recalls, aged 14, being brought by Hughie to a Mayo League meeting. Perhaps my grandfather saw something worth nurturing in the young Feeney. He also had two pieces of advice going in.
“He told me going in ‘whatever I say, just agree with it’!” Feeney recalled. “He would also tell me: ‘The Westport fellas are out to screw us and they’re cute. Don’t be listening to them!’”
He remembers Hughie as a man who kept the club going in hard times.
“He left an outstanding legacy to the club. Himself and Tom Ketterick lived and breathed Castlebar Celtic and worked really well together.
“Hughie was Mr. Soccer in Castlebar from the early stages in the 1930s, into the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. He kept the club going when no one else wanted to. No matter how tough things got, he never abandoned ship,” added Feeney.
“I’d often hear my brother John, who was Celtic treasurer with Hughie, talking about a club issue with others and the line would always be – ‘we’ll see what Hughie thinks’.
They would not make the decision themselves. He wasn’t always the most democratic – what Hughie said went. He was usually right though. He was green and white all through and everything he did was for the betterment of the club,” said Feeney.
He took a similarly firm hand at Mayo League level, as revered former Mayo League chairman, the late Henry Downes, told Tom Kelly in Boots, Rules and Fantasy Free.
“Whether he held a position or not, it did not matter. He was the one pulling the strings. Only for Hughie and people like him, the Mayo League would never have got off the ground.”
Indeed, Hughie played a significant, if perhaps accidental, role in Henry Downes’ own Mayo League involvement. Henry met Hughie on the street and Hughie asked his friend to drop him down to a Mayo League meeting in the old boys national school on Chapel Street.
Downes ended up leaving as the new Mayo League chairman!
NEEDING A LIFT
The reason he asked Henry for the lift is my grandfather never learned to drive. My mother recalls frequent visits with him to family in Omagh.
They either got a lift or, more frequently, the bus. Trips to Connacht FA meetings and Irish soccer internationals in Dalymount were only possible with a good driver to call on.
He was a decent player, who played on the right wing, according to contemporaneous reports. He was still playing in 1943, when he would have been 38 years of age, but his real calling was in administration.
Not alone was he club secretary, but he was effectively the team manager for much of that time, even if it was before such terms were used.
“There was a de facto selection committee but what Hughie said went,” recalls Michael Feeney.
During his time at the helm of the club, Celtic won five Connacht Cups (1947, 1955, 1959, 1960 and 1964), something which was clearly a source of great pride to Hughie when you read AGM reports from those years.
He met his wife, Bridie Gibbons, from Killeen, Louisburgh, at a dance in Smyth’s on Spencer Street (where Tommy Robinson’s is now) and they were married in 1945.
Eerily, they died on the same date, October 17, eleven years apart. Bridie died in 1963, aged only 54, and Hughie died in 1974.
While he was renowned for his role in soccer, he was something of a sporting ecumenicalist. Reports show him playing or being involved in snooker, billiards, golf, darts, athletics and he even popped up as a rugby referee too.
You could see how he could hate the GAA’s ban on ‘foreign sports’ although he felt it helped players commit fully to Celtic.
He had plenty of heated exchanges with the De La Salle brothers when he was looking to get St. Gerald’s College playing soccer. He wasn’t slow to confront nuns or teachers in the convent when he felt they were out of line with his daughters either.
He exchanged letters with the legendary Manchester United manager Matt Busby. He loved to socialise and his favourite song was ‘Molly Malone’.
The family initially lived on Thomas Street before moving to Castle Street, above the barber’s.
My mother remembers one phrase Hughie would always use whenever she would try to cadge some money off him.
“He used to say ‘my pocket thinks my hand is mad’ but he never refused,” she recalls.
He never refused Celtic either.