Paddy Fox
"He came up to me and said, 'Paddy, get the hell out of here, there's going to be trouble…'"
The Story
Paddy had always been a supporter of Belfast Celtic and looked forward to this game as he had for any other. However this match would have a very different outcome and marked dark times ahead in Northern Ireland…
Comments
Name: Tony McIlhennon
Date: 09/11/2008
Comment: Great interview on days gone by with Paddy Fox. Some of the online comments would indicate that some people still cannot admit the injustices that led to Celtic's departure from football. Some things never change. I suggest they read the original documentation on the Belfast Celtic site -
Name: Kevin Simmons
Date: 05/04/2008
Comment: It is a disgrace the celtic left the league on there own terms,although some blue men went crazy they are not to blame for celtics going.And thats coming from a die hard third generation celtic fan.And now that great old stadium is a stupid shopping center. What a great shame as celtic would have been a wondeful to football in ireland north and south.
Name: Linda Mooney
Date: 30/01/2008
Comment: I've heard that story told many times(my father was a celtic player) but never as well told as this. Something died in Belfast that day and it was never recovered. One of the men who saved Jimmy Jones life was a great gentleman and Celtic player, the late Sean McCann. He too was a great friend of my father.
Thank you for telling it so well.
Name: D. Donegall road.
Date: 28/01/2008
Comment: SAD DAY FOR IRISH LEAGUE FOOTBALL, MAYBE IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO HAVE TWO BIG CLUBS A HALF MILE FROM EACH OTHER...IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE THE HOOPS TEAM THAT LEFT THE LEAGUE.
Name: Neil Smyth
Date: 25/01/2008
Comment: Yet again the myth of Belfast Celtic leaving the Irish league after an assault on Jimmy Jones after a game with Linfield is propagated via the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. Belfast Celtic were that stunned and distraught after THAT game that they fulfilled the rest of their fixtures that season and THEN went on a tour of America from which they returned midst internal wrangling over flags and financial issues. At a meeting of the board is what decided that Celtic would temporarily leave the league until such matters had been resolved. They were of course not and the internal wrangling at boardroom level continued until Celtic Park was sold to developers. One day, maybe one day, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ will give airtime to what REALLY happened to Belfast Celtic, instead of using yet another excuse to bash Linfield Football Club, the most successful side in Irish football during, and after Belfast Celtic's 'reign.
Name: N Finlay
Date: 25/01/2008
Comment: I didn't realise this section was fiction or I'd submit my story about how I parted the Red Sea as my "day like this".
More revionist drivel further accentuating the myth of Belfast Celtic.
Name: Neil House
Date: 24/01/2008
Comment: Revisionism of the highest order to deflect away from the fact that a boardroom disagreement a year or so later, took away a club missed by most Irish football supporters today!
Name: Michael O'Shea
Date: 23/01/2008
Comment: Paddy Fox's story hit me in a sore spot that has been with me almost all of my life. I knew that some people must share the sadness, the soreness, but I rarely talked to anyone about it. Thanks Paddy!
We lived on the Falls Road - now the Andersonstown Road - and when I was seven years old when my father took me to Celtic Park to see a match.
I don't remember much about the match, but I remember being very impressed when my uncle John Fitzpatrick (married to my father's sister) insisted that we join him in the Direstor's Box. I remember my father's face, red with embarrassment, as we moved from paid seats.
I was too young to follow all the events surrounding Jones' broken leg (and I thank Paddy Fox for relating details) but I do remember hoping that Belfast Celtic would be resurrected.
I waited many years, and it did not happen, much, much to my regret. I felt robbed of a local team that I could support, a team well-known throughout the world, and I never pass by the food store that now occupies the site without a feeling of regret.
Such a sad thing that a football team should be ended in this way, along with the greyhound track that was such a source of entertainment in those days, before TV and computer games - even though I lost all my money one night and never again went to the Dogs!
My cousin Brendan succeeded his father as a Belfast Celtic Director, and quite frankly I was appalled when the Celtic Board sold the ground. Brendan is dead now, but I have it in mind that at the general Resurrection I will ask him, and other Directors, just exactly why they took this step.
I always thought the team could have been brought back, to give supporters something to cheer about. I will continue to be disappointed.
Yours,
Michael O'Shea
P.S. I later discovered, looking at an old family photograph, that my mother's father, Joe Mulheron from Ballymacarret, had played for Belfast Celtic Seconds. More connections to a dead resorce. Ah me!
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