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The well-illustrated story of the Derry City team from 1954 that won the Irish Cup.
In those great days of yesteryear when I covered the Candystripes at home and abroad, particularly 1954 when, after three games — the Final and two replays — they defeated Glentoran 1-0 to collect the Irish Cup watched by an aggregate crowd of 91,000.
They called them the Jimmy Delaney Finals as the famous Scotland, Celtic and Manchester United winger stamped his authority and influence on them. He was a superstar in every sense of the word — an iconic figure known as the Bald Buccaneer, who possessed immense crowd-pulling appeal.
Unquestionably, this was the golden chapter in the Derry City story and the club’s departure from the Irish League in 1975 during the civil unrest and admittance to the League of Ireland 10 years later, left a void in local domestic football never adequately filled.
How appropriate, therefore, that long-time colleague Denis O’Hara, former sports journalist on the Irish News and News Letter, has just published a fascinating book on that famous Irish Cup run entitled “The Candy Men of 54”.
It is a tome with a difference, told in the words of the four surviving members of the Derry City Cup Final squad who took part in the eight matches — Harry Smyth, goalkeeper Charlie Heffron, centre-half Willie Curran and the inimitable winger Arthur Bartholomew Brady, affectionately known as Mousey.
21 x 17 cms, softback, 106 pages.
2015
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