PRE 1894
ALL OUR SATURDAYS This exhibition is inspired by London 2012 and is a celebration of sporting achievement in Northern Ireland as seen through the eyes of the Ireland’s Saturday Night newspaper which was published from 1894 until 2008. It takes a nostalgic look at some of those occasions when local individuals and teams achieved sporting immortality on both the local and international stage as well as those from further afield who graced our shores. This exhibition is not attempting to offer an exhaustive history of sport in Ireland; it chronicles just some of the diverse range of characters that have helped to shape the landscape of local sport, as reported by Ulster’s premier sports newspaper over the past century. Copies of Ireland’s Saturday Night from 1894 onward can be found in Belfast Central Library’s Newspaper Library. We recommend that you take a copy of the brochure that supplements the exhibition. It contains a wealth of additional information that will undoubtedly enhance your enjoyment of the exhibition.
The greatest local sporting hero prior to the launch of the Ulster in 1894 was our very own champion greyhound, MASTER McGRATH.
Master McGrath with his owner Lord Lurgan
Master McGrath was owned by Lord Lurgan and was so well known that Queen Victoria requested a meeting with him at one of her royal residences. Master McGrath is buried in the grounds of Brownlow House in Lurgan.
We also had sporting innovators as well as heroes... WILLIAM McCRUM was goalkeeper for Milford F.C., a Co. Armagh club that competed in the first season of the Irish League competition. McCrum believed that on the field of play, only the ball and not the player should be kicked, so he proposed the idea of a penalty kick to punish defenders who fouled an opponent to prevent a goal being scored.
McCrum’s suggestion was adopted and became Law Thirteen of the Laws of the Game, in June 1891.
1894-1899
No. 1
VOL. 1.
B E L FA S T,
NOVEMBER 17,
1894.
PRICE ONE HALFPENCE.
Formative years The Ulster Saturday Night was launched on Saturday 17th November, 1894. It cost one halfpenny and styled itself as a ‘journal of general reading, football, cycling [and] athletics.’ It came into being because Belfast Telegraph readers regularly complained that the Saturday edition of the newspaper contained too much sport. In January 1896 it was renamed Ireland’s Saturday Night.
Front cover of the first edition
The first edition contained news on football, cycling, athletics, gymnastics, pigeon racing, yachting and billiards, and reported on both local and crosschannel football matches. Articles on unusual sports and pastimes such as tug-of-war, bagatelle, draughts and quoits also made it into early editions of the newspaper.
Glentoran v Belfast Celtic at The Oval, September 1898.
Events such as the INTERNATIONAL AQUATIC FESTIVAL at the Waterworks in North Belfast attracted column inches in Ireland’s Saturday Night as well as large crowds. The reporter sent to cover the 1898 event set the scene in very elaborate terms as he claimed...
“never in the history of Belfast has so much interest been evinced in natatorial affairs as was witnessed to-day in the Waterworks.” The 1890s saw various tussles in Belfast between two of the first true footballing superstars. Steve Bloomer was a Derby County and England legend who holds the record for the number of international goals scored before 1900, and OLPHERT STANFIELD of Distillery and Ireland who holds the record for the most international caps gained prior to 1900. Olphert Stanfield
1900-1909
No. 652.
VOL. XIII.
AT THE G.P.O. [ REGISTERED ] AS A NEWSPAPER
S A T U R D A Y N I G H T,
JUNE 30, 1907.
PRICE ONE HALFPENCE.
The ISN gets the country walking, cycling and running The 13th JUNE, 1903, saw one hundred and seventy-five starters take up the challenge of completing a twenty-seven mile walking race from Carlisle Circus in Belfast to Ballymena. This established a new record as the largest event of its kind ever held in the United Kingdom. Participants ranged from eighteen to sixty years of age, with the oldest competitor being Anthony McKinley of Ballycastle, a one time weightlifting world record holder. As early as Glengormley, S. Kernaghan took a lead which he was never to lose. He won the race in a time of four hours and forty minutes.
The Ballymena walk was a great success and indicated that there was a keen appetite for such mass events.
Four years after the Belfast to Ballymena walk came its successor in June 1907, the great ‘GO AS YOU PLEASE’ Belfast to Lurgan marathon. Four hundred and one competitors started the race and three hundred and three runners finished, which, according to the newspaper, “constituted a new record, and puts all the old figures hopelessly in the shade.” The starting point for the race was St. George’s Market and, as with the Ballymena walk of 1903, every possible vantage point was taken as the racers wound their way out of the city in the direction of Lisburn. The race was won by F. W. Furlonger, in a time of three hours, eight minutes and two seconds, despite the hailstorms that hampered the racers.
A poem was published in the Ulster to mark the occasion:
“And they go’ed, go’ed as they pleased Out to Lurgan town. For they know’d, know’d, know’d that a victory meant great renown. Such “wenters” were they That they “go’ed” the whole way As though for defeat with their lives they would pay. And the Mrs. and Misses were lonely to-day Through the “Pink ‘un’s great “Go-as-you-Please.”
1910-1919
No. 1,080.
VOL. XX.
AT THE G.P.O. [ REGISTERED ] AS A NEWSPAPER
S A T U R D A Y N I G H T,
NOVEMBER 14, 1914.
ONE HALFPENCE.
International recognition Sporting excellence does not have to be about international recognition or being a household name. Very often it was the ordinary person who achieved something extraordinary. In 1913, MARGUERITE CODY of the Victoria Ladies’ Swimming Club, and a member of the Ireland’s Saturday Night editorial staff, accomplished a Herculean task by swimming across the mouth of Belfast Lough between Bangor and Whitehead Harbour. This was the first time a woman had succeeded in doing so, and she set a new Irish long-distance swimming record in the process. Miss M. S. Cody
Billy Gillespie
1914 was a landmark year for local football as Ireland won the British Championship outright for the first time. This gifted Ireland side, featuring Belfast Celtic legend Mickey Hamill and Sheffield United’s Billy Gillespie, defeated England 3-0 at Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough, to lift the trophy.
Later that year GLENTORAN was invited to compete in an international tournament organized by the Vienna Football Club. The Glens played Deutsche and Hertha Berlin before travelling to Vienna to play, and defeat a Vienna Select XI, to win the Vienna Cup.
‘Bombardier’ Billy Wells fought ‘Bandsman’ Dick Rice for the British Heavyweight Championship at the Grand Opera House. Wells later achieved fame as the figure who struck the huge gong at the start of every J. Arthur Rank feature film.
1920-1929
AT THE G.P.O. [ REGISTERED ] AS A NEWSPAPER
S AT U R D A Y,
A U G U S T 1 8 ,
1 9 2 8 .
[ T E N PAG E S ]
THREE HALFPENCE
Motor mania sweeps the country In 1922, the vim and vigour of the great inventor and engineer Harry Ferguson helped to secure a special Act of Parliament to exclude all non-race traffic for the duration of the inaugural ULSTER GRAND PRIX. A local sporting legend was born. The first Ulster Grand Prix motor cycle race was run over the old Clady Course, north of Belfast. In the early years, the Ulster Grand Prix claimed the proud title of “the world’s fastest road race.”
The internationally renowned NORTH WEST 200 was also inaugurated during this decade. It is still run annually on the triangle circuit between By 1953, the North West 200 had replaced the Ulster Portrush, Portstewart Grand Prix as the fastest road race in the British Isles. and Coleraine. In common with the Ulster Grand Prix, THE ARDS TOURIST TROPHY car race was the brainchild of Harry Ferguson who founded it along with Wallace McLeod. Inspired by the Brooklands race meetings in England, the organisers persuaded the top racers of the day to come to Northern Ireland to compete in a TT race over thirty
laps around a thirteen mile circuit through Dundonald, Newtownards, Comber and the notorious “Butcher’s Corner.” The race was an immediate hit and Dublin’s Kaye Don won the inaugural race in 1928 in a Lea-Francis S Type Hyper.
The legendary Kaye Don
In April 1927, CELTIC PARK (home of Belfast Celtic) became the venue for the first fully ‘mechanized’ greyhound track in Ireland.
Aerial view of Celtic Park, Ireland’s first greyhound track
1930-1939
AT THE G.P.O. [ REGISTERED ] AS A NEWSPAPER
S AT U R D A Y,
M A Y
2 9 ,
1 9 3 7 .
THREE HALFPENCE
A record-breaking decade JOE BAMBRICK came to widespread prominence when he scored six goals for Ireland against Wales in a home international match in 1930. By the end of the season he had also scored an incredible ninety-four goals for Linfield. It was thought unlikely at the time that anyone could even come close to matching his scoring achievements.
“Head, heel or toe, slip it to Joe”
Joe Bambrick in action for Linfield against Ballymena United in 1931
However, one man not only matched his feat but surpassed it the very next season. FRED ROBERTS scored a phenomenal ninety-six goals for Glentoran in the 1930/31 season in just over forty appearances, and in doing so, set a virtually unbeatable British and Irish record.
One of the sports that gained widespread popularity during this decade was pigeon racing.
Fred Roberts
In the 1930s the ‘Grand National’ of pigeon racing was the King’s Challenge Cup. The cup had been instituted in 1932 by King George V and the first winner was a pigeon called His Majesty whose owner was Robert Hawthorne of Ligoniel, Belfast. Of the two hundred and thirty-two birds that started the race, six hundred miles away in Les Sables, France, only four finished, because of the poor weather conditions.
Ireland’s Saturday Night proclaimed His Majesty as the “champion pigeon of the world.”
The “Gloved Dynamite,” JIMMY WARNOCK from the Shankill Road in Belfast took part in one of the most famous fights of the 1930s when he outpointed the undisputed World Flyweight Champion, Benny Lynch of Glasgow, in 1937 in front of a crowd of twenty-five thousand at a rain-lashed Celtic Park in Glasgow.
1940-1949
AT THE G.P.O. [ REGISTERED ] AS A NEWSPAPER
S AT U R D A Y,
53rd Year
AUGUST 28, 1948.
TWO PENCE
When Irish eyes were smiling In 1947, at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake, FRED DALY managed to do what no other golfer from Northern Ireland has ever managed, and lift the coveted ‘Claret Jug’ as the winner of The Open Championship. Fred was a native of Portrush, and his knowledge of how to play one of the most demanding links courses in the world, in adverse weather conditions, helped him survive the winds that battered Hoylake throughout the championship. Fred Daly receiving the famous ‘Claret Jug’
When Barry McGuigan’s dad Pat took the microphone before Barry’s fights at the King’s Hall with his rendition of “Danny Boy,” people’s minds were cast back to a time in the 1940s when a ‘wee’ Belfast boxer by the name of RINTY MONAGHAN also stood in the very same venue and sang “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” to his adoring fans after his victorious fights. In 1947 he outpointed Dado Marino for the vacant Flyweight World Championship, thereby becoming the first boxing world champion from Northern Ireland.
Rinty Monaghan in fine voice
Monaghan beat the tough Scottish fighter Jackie Paterson in 1948 to become undisputed British, Commonwealth and World Flyweight Boxing Champion.
To this day, when asked to name the finest player ever to pull on the green jersey of Ireland in rugby union, many will say the name.... JACK KYLE Ireland’s Triple Crown winning team of 1948 with Jack Kyle seated bottom right.
This modest doctor was capped forty-six times for Ireland and was a key player in the 1948 Grand Slam winning Ireland side.
In 2002 he was named as the greatest ever Irish rugby player by the Irish Rugby Football Union.
Jack Kyle in typical swashbuckling action
After retiring from rugby, Jack Kyle spent thirty years as a consultant surgeon in Zambia.
1950-1959
S AT U R D A Y,
64th Year
J U N E
1 4 ,
1 9 5 8 .
THREEPENCE
Northern Ireland takes on the world On 5th May 1956, THELMA HOPKINS broke the women’s world high jump record with a jump of five foot eight and a half inches (one metre and seventy-four centimetres) at Cherryvale Playing Fields in Belfast.
This remains the only world record broken by a Northern Ireland athlete on home soil.
Thelma Hopkins
Caldwell eventually went on to win a world title, and he crossed paths with Gilroy in October 1962 when they contested an eliminator for a World Bantamweight Championship title fight against Brazilian Eder Jofre. John Caldwell
Fifteen thousand attended the fight at the King’s Hall, and underdog Gilroy emerged as the winner after Caldwell’s cut eye curtailed the fight in the ninth round.
Our proud boxing tradition was carried on by Belfast boy JOHN McNALLY, who won a silver medal at the 1952 Olympic Games, and by FREDDIE GILROY and JOHN CALDWELL who both secured bronze medals at the 1956 Olympic Games.
Freddie Gilroy
For HARRY GREGG, the 1958 World Cup came only four months after the Munich air disaster that cost the lives of twenty-three people and saw Harry brave the burning wreckage to help his Despite this, Gregg had a fantastic fellow Ragged and injury ravaged, after a World Cup and was named as the gruelling schedule of five matches in clubmates and second best player in the tournament, twelve days, the Northern Ireland eight places ahead of Pele. boys were outrun in the quarter-finals passengers to The 1958 World Cup adventure broke by a brilliant French side. As one of safety. new ground for Northern Ireland the squad’s stalwarts, Jimmy McIlroy, Harry Gregg in action at a packed Windsor Park
football. They qualified from their tough group after defeating Czechoslovakia in a play-off.
said at the time, “the spirit was willing, but the legs weak.”
1960-1969
Our first home grown superstar Our most famous sporting son GEORGE BEST is, and in all likelihood will forever remain, the most supremely gifted and feted sportsman ever to emanate from these shores. He gave home fans some of their most cherished footballing memories in the green shirt of Northern Ireland.
Many consider the day when he almost single-handedly defeated Scotland in 1967, to be his finest performance. During his career, George was voted European Footballer of the
Year, scored a goal in a European Cup Final and was known as the ‘fifth’ Beatle.
In the eyes of his adoring fans, his genius can be summed up in the saying, “Maradona good, Pelé better, George Best.”
The GAELIC FOOTBALLERS OF DOWN made history in the 1960s with their three All-Ireland Senior Championship victories. Their first was against the indomitable Kerrymen in 1960.
They repeated the feat a year later when they squeezed past Offaly by a point in front of a record ninety thousand crowd, and sealed the hat-trick in 1968. The great Seán O’Neill was one of four Down players, along with Joe Lennon, Dan McCartan and Paddy Doherty, to play in all three finals.
Dixon and Nash speed their way to gold
ROBIN DIXON struck gold at the 1964 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria in the two-man bob. After his victory, he said of his bobsled, “it’s as sensitive as a hairtrigger and can play you up like a spoilt child.”
1970-1979
Golden Girl lights up dark skies The 1970s was a difficult and dark decade in Northern Irish history, but one person whose fame still endures, delighted everyone with her magnificent pentathlon gold medal winning display in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, DAME MARY PETERS. In doing so, she became only the third British woman to achieve gold medal success in the Olympic Games after Mary Rand and Ann Packer.
Mary’s homecoming reception
Mary Peters on winning gold in Munich
WILLIE JOHN McBRIDE proved to be a truly inspirational leader on and off the field when he captained the British and Irish Lions on a ‘never to be forgotten’ tour of South The series itself was very physical, and Africa in the knowing that the South Africans were and able to ‘dish it out’ to the summer of ready Lions, McBride came up with the 1974. famous “ninety-nine” rallying call that
Captain invincible Willie John McBride
meant, should it be shouted by him, all Lions players would get their retaliation in first against the South Africans, reckoning that the referee couldn’t send all fifteen players off at once!
An amazing five of the twenty-two players who started the 1979 FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Manchester United were Northern Irish by birth. They were, PAT JENNINGS, PAT RICE and SAMMY NELSON for Arsenal, and SAMMY McILROY and JIMMY NICHOLL for Manchester United, not forgetting Arsenal manager TERRY NEILL.
1980-1989
Unprecedented success Donegall Road boy ALEX “HURRICANE” HIGGINS became the first superstar of snooker and, in 1982, won his second World Championship. Three years later, easy going, avuncular, DENNIS TAYLOR from Coalisland was under pressure from the off in his final with Steve Davis. An emotional Alex Higgins after winning the world title in 1982
He trailed Davis 8-0 after the first session, and had to draw on all of his reserves of character to take seven of the next eight frames to haul himself back into the match. At 17-17, the championship came down to a ‘black ball fight’.
Taylor eventually made the winning pot in front of eighteen million blearyeyed television viewers, long after midnight.
BARRY McGUIGAN is one of a rare breed. He is one of the few individuals who was able to bring an often divided Barry got his shot at the World Featherweight title in people together in a 1985, and in a ‘never to be forgotten’ night at Loftus common cause during Road, London, he managed to defeat Panamanian Eusebio Pedroza to become world champion. the most turbulent of times. After an illustrious amateur career which saw him win gold for Northern Ireland at the 1978 Commonwealth Games, he turned professional in 1981. The new featherweight champion of the world
After valiantly qualifying for the 1982 World Cup to be held in Spain, NORTHERN IRELAND was drawn in the host nation’s group in the first round stage. Few gave them any hope against Spain in front of a fiercely partisan support. However, on a balmy Friday night in Valencia...
GERRY ARMSTRONG thumped the ball past the Spanish goalkeeper Luis Arconada for the winning goal, and in doing so provided one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history. Never mind “They think it’s all over…it is now,” “Arconada…Armstrong” has more of a ring to it!
1990-1999
Magnifique for Ulster “Magnifique for Ulster!” ran the headline on the cover of Ireland’s Saturday Night as the ULSTER RUGBY TEAM defeated French side Colomiers 21-6 to become Champions of Europe. In doing so, Ulster became the first side from Ireland to triumph in the competition. Thousands of Ulster fans made their way to Lansdowne Road to witness the historic victory.
The proud captain David Humphreys
THE MILK CUP youth football tournament began life in the 1980s and it quickly grew in size and stature, attracting quality teams such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Porto, Barcelona and Bayern Munich to these shores. If you were lucky enough to have been in the crowd at the Coleraine Showgrounds on Friday 26th July, 1991, you would have witnessed the first flight of Alex Ferguson’s famous ‘fledglings’.
The names David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Nicky Butt have since graced the world stage, and the Manchester United under-16 side that triumphed 2-0 over Hearts at Coleraine on that day to lift the trophy, contained all of those internationally renowned footballing superstars.
Manchester United triumph at the Milk Cup in 1991. How many familiar faces do you recognise?
JOEY DUNLOP came to fame in the 1970s as one quarter He would often load up his transporter and think nothing of driving thousands of miles of the Armoy to Bosnia, Albania and Romania to deliver much needed supplies in person. He did all Armada. of this without drawing attention to himself, which was typical of this modest superstar. For over twenty years Joey was the main draw to local race meetings and the 1990s was the decade in which he broke many of his now seemingly unsurpassable records. His OBE was awarded in 1996 for his humanitarian aid work. Joey Dunlop in that distinctive yellow crash helmet
2000-2008
New Millennium, new horizons JANET GRAY, the multiple world champion water skier from Lisburn, lost her sight at the age of twenty-one. However, after a water skiing accident in 2004 it was widely believed that Janet would never walk again, let alone water ski. Her determination to defy these predictions is a testament to her resilience. After three years of surgery and rehabilitation, Janet once again returned to water skiing where she shocked and delighted the world by regaining her World Disabled Water Ski title in 2007.
During this decade ULSTER GAELIC FOOTBALL was in the ascendancy. TYRONE repeated the feat in 2005 and ARMAGH beat Kerry in the Championship final by a single point in 2002, but in 2003 were defeated by neighbours Tyrone in the first ever final encounter between two teams from the same province.
Triumphant scenes at Armagh’s 2003 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship victory
The BELFAST GIANTS were formed in 2000 and became members of the Superleague, playing their home games at the Odyssey Arena. The Giants won the Superleague in the 2001/02 season and were play-off champions in 2002/03. The Giants have actively sought support from all sections of the community through initiatives such as the banning of football shirts, emblems and flags from the arena. As a result, the Giants have been able to build a large and enthusiastic following that enjoy sport free from sectarian trappings.
2008 when they defeated Kerry on both occasions.
Janet Gray in action
Mickey Harte, three times All-Ireland winning Tyrone manager
Since his first career victory in 1992, TONY McCOY has ridden more than three thousand winners. He first became Champion Jockey in the 1995/96 season, and incredibly has repeated that feat in each of the thirteen subsequent seasons.
Tony McCoy rides to victory yet again
THE FUTURE
JONNY EVANS from Newtownabbey is now an internationally renowned footballer playing for one of the top club sides in the world, Manchester United. He is also an automatic choice for the Northern Ireland side.
Former World Amateur Snooker champion MARK ALLEN from Antrim has broken into the elite top sixteen in the world and after reaching the semifinal of the World Championship, he has the potential to go one better and win the championship.
Seven times British ice skating champion JENNA McCORKELL from Coleraine was ranked in the top ten of European ice skaters in 2008, the first British skater to do so for twenty years.
In motorcycling, the DUNLOP BOYS; MICHAEL, WILLIAM and SAM will undoubtedly carry on the proud tradition attached to their family name. RORY McILROY from Holywood is racing up the professional golf rankings. Given his swift rise to the summit of his sport, he could win a ‘major’ in the next few years. TYRONE and ARMAGH MINORS brought the All-Ireland Minor Football Championship north in 2008 and 2009, ensuring that a bright future looks assured for Ulster Gaelic football.
Potentially, these individuals will continue to ensure the success of sport in Northern Ireland, and inspire the next generation of sporting stars. This is an important decade for British sport because of the imminent LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC GAMES. The planning for the Olympic and Paralympic Games have had a positive ripple-effect on sport locally. Twenty-seven venues in Northern Ireland have been included in the Pre-Games Training Camp Guide. These facilities have reached the standard required to allow them to be used by Olympians to prepare and acclimatise for London 2012 and are, at least, the equal of many similar venues in the rest of the United Kingdom. The overall goal is that the Games will leave a lasting legacy on local sport.