Good Evening,
If you take the A81 out of Glasgow and head towards Drymen, after approximately 21 miles and many twists and turns, you will come to one of Scotland’s listed buildings called Auchentroig House. It sits just outside the village of Buchlyvie where, it is said, Rob Roy McGregor once roamed the fields causing mayhem and havoc to the establishment in the 17th and 18th Century.
Legend has it that one of the residents of Auchentroig offended The Great McGregor one day, with the result that Big Rob chased him all the way home and set fire to the front door of the mansion-house, in an attempt to gain entry and get his hands on the guilty party.
By the time I became a regular visitor to Auchentroig, the house had become the Scottish seat of the Kiltegan Fathers and the St Patrick’s Missionary Society of Ireland, and “St Pat’s”, as it was known, was the scene of the regular Sunday Mass for many of the Catholics who lived locally.
With its 50 acres of garden ground, Auchentroig was also the scene of many a garden party, picnics and sports days.
Football games were often played on the lawns, and, whilst I have no doubt that such games were greatly enjoyed by the kids, my clear memory is that on such occasions dad’s like myself would often be the keenest of participants.
The big house at Auchentroig had been a place of study in the past, and for many years young men would come from Ireland and elsewhere to study under the watchful gaze of the Kiltegans and to play football and other games in the extensive grounds.
One such student turned up in Buchlyvie in 1973, and for the next year or so he would be resident at Auchentroig and was quickly elected school sports captain – a position he gained much to his surprise I suspect.
The young man concerned had been born in 1956 and was one of five children from an ordinary working class family who lived on the Creggan Estate in Derry, and his short stay at Auchentroig would prove to be a peaceful, and perhaps, uneventful chapter in what can only be described as an extraordinary life.
Don Mullan was to prove no ordinary student and was destined to follow no ordinary career path for a boy born on the Republican Creggan. He was also to have the most unlikely of heroes for a Northern Irish boy who, unknowingly, had a huge influence on who Don would become, and what he would go on to achieve.
By the time young Mullan came to Stirlingshire in 1973 “The Troubles” were in full swing having begun on 5th October 1968 when Don was 11 or 12 years old, and like many of the young people in the six counties he was to bear direct witness and feel the impact of the turmoil. He was to witness some of the seminal events of modern Irish history, including the birth of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement; the introduction of Internment without Trial (9 August 1971), and most significantly he was a direct witness of the tragic events of Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972) – all before he came to the peaceful fields of Stirlingshire and the calming influence of the Kiltegans.
Years later, Mullan would openly write about how it would have been oh so easy to join the Provisional IRA after the events of Bloody Sunday, however he opted to go down a very different road indeed.
Despite failing his Eleven Plus and being dyslexic (something which was only diagnosed in 1994), Mullan threw himself into writing, speaking and being as active as possible in promoting human rights and righting historical injustice throughout the world.
Between 1979 until 1993 he would champion the commemoration of “The Great Famine” in Ireland and he recreated the Famine Walk in County Mayo thus replicating the enforced march of starving Irish men, woman and children in 1848. Mullan’s efforts to highlight the famine and its lasting effects would see him appear on TV screens throughout the world.
Mullan also worked tirelessly in Africa and South America highlighting the plight of those held in refugee camps in Zaire and the conditions faced by thousands of starving people in Northern Brazil. By the time Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as President of South Africa, Mullan was held in such high regard that he was invited to attend the ceremony as the special guest of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in recognition of his work on behalf of the anti-apartheid movement, and after the ceremony he was asked to attend a symposium on Robben Island to discuss the future use of the island in a new South Africa. At the congress, Mullan was invited to address the gathering and talk of his own work on harnessing the memory of the Great Irish ‘Famine’ (1845–1849) and in fighting injustice and oppression today.
He has written extensively on Dyslexia and has championed the cause of the Choctaw Nations and their treatment in the United States, and he participated in their “Trail of Tears” charity walk from Oklahoma to Mississippi in 1992, during which he spoke extensively about his humanitarian work.
However, closer to home Mullan is best known for his 1997 best-selling book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday which has been officially recognised as an important catalyst which led to the decision by then Prime Minister Tony Blair to establish a new Bloody Sunday Inquiry in 1998. He also co-produced, wrote, and acted in the 2002 award-winning Granada/Hell’s Kitchen movie called Bloody Sunday, which was inspired by his book. He has addressed audiences throughout Ireland, Britain, Europe, Canada, Brazil, and the United States on justice, peace and human rights issues speaking at countless educational and governmental venues.
Don Mullan was attending his first ever Civil Rights march that Sunday and he was there to witness the shooting and the killing first hand. He saw what had happened, he was with people whom he knew when it happened, and he watched friends, neighbours and relatives run for cover when the Paras opened fire.
He was also sufficiently smart to know that the official version of events were plain lies and a cover up of the truth.
He toyed with the idea of joining the armed struggle immediately after. As we know, many went down that route for good or bad, but Don Mullan walked another road as described above and what a journey it would be, made all the more remarkable as he was a boy from the Creggan with reading difficulties and who failed the eleven plus.
It was this troubled teenager who pitched up in Stirlingshire in 1973 and played football on the lawns of Auchentroig and passed through the big door which had been set on fie by Rob Roy McGregor.
Yet throughout his entire life and in all his talks, Mullan has recorded his belief that his unlikely and unknown hero played a huge part in making him the man he was and in influencing his decision to follow a path that was to lead to an endless fight for justice, civil rights and decent treatment for all men and woman no matter where they came from and their station in life.
And all because the hero concerned was a goalkeeper – called Gordon Banks!
Don Mullan explains that he was never the first to be picked for a football team either at school or in and around The Creggan. In fact, he was always the last pick and inevitably he would be thrown into the goals and told by his classmates, and even friends, that he was “The keeper” – because he was never going to get a game outfield.
He threw himself into the role and in 1966 he watched the World Cup Finals in England on TV and for the first time he saw Gordon Banks keep goal for England. Life would never be the same again.
Banks was not the tallest keeper in history, but he was agile, quick footed and seemed able to pull of miraculous saves. For a politically innocent wee boy from the Creggan, Banks became a hero, so much so that when he went out to play on the streets of Derry he must have been the only kid to wear a yellow shirt which his mother had specially embroidered with the three lions of England at his request.
That in itself must be a unique claim to fame.
Then came The Troubles in 1968 and in 1970 the World Cup finals in Mexico and that save from Pele.
And here I will let Don Mullan take up the story in his own words following the match between England and West Germany during the 1966 World Cup Finals:
“That day he became my hero. I was ten years old,” says Mullan. “I turned a 500-page wallpaper book into a Gordon Banks scrapbook.”
Six weeks after Banks’ most famous save in the 1970 world cup finals, his father took 14-year-old Don “over the border” to Jackson’s Hotel in Ballybofey in County Donegal where Finn Harps were scheduled to play a pre season friendly against Stoke City FC.
“Unknown to me, my father hid my scrapbook in the boot of the car and drove into Jackson’s Hotel. He told me to wait with my mother and a few minutes later emerged excitedly calling, ‘Don, come here. Come here!’
“I followed my father into the foyer of the hotel and saw a tall man with his back to me leafing through my scrapbook at the reception desk. Then my father spoke the magic words: ‘Here he is Mr Banks.’
“The man turned around and it was him. I was speechless. It was, without exaggeration, like an audience with God. This moment remains the most cherished memory I have of my father. I was 14 years old.”
Despite being astounded at suddenly meeting his hero, 14-year-old Mullan recalls that his lasting impression of Banks was his “courtesy and kindness towards my mother and father. He saw in them his own parents from the same working class background”.
He goes on: “That encounter, especially after the events of Bloody Sunday in January 1972, was a calming influence on my growing anger. I figured in my adolescent innocence that not all English people were bad.”
And that was the mindset of the boy who came to Auchentroig to be schooled by the Kiltegans and to keep goal on the lawn where I would later play football with my own children and others.
But the story doesn’t end there – far from it.
Mullan never lost his enthusiasm for his boyhood hero. As an adult, he met Banks again in 2004. He says prior to that meeting, fellow Derry man, the musician and songwriter Phil Coulter, warned Mullan to be careful as boyhood heroes can often be a far cry from reality.
“Yet, for me it was the opposite. I found the same caring, kind and generous man who, on this occasion, showed the same courtesy to my 14-year-old son, Carl, as he had shown to me.”
In 2004, Mullan published a memoir entitled ‘Gordon Banks – A Hero Who Could Fly’, in which he outlines the extraordinary influence Banks had on his life. The great goalkeeper even travelled to Ireland to launch the book, which was the beginning of a relationship which saw the two men become close friends.
Two years after meeting the young Don Mullan in Jacksons Hotel, Gordon Banks would lose the sight in one eye following a car crash in October 1972. The crash cost him not only the sight in his right eye but eventually his professional career. Having played at the top-level with Leicester City, Stoke and with England, he played two last seasons in the United States for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1977 and 1978, and despite only having vision in one eye, he was NASL Goalkeeper of the Year in 1977 after posting the best defensive record in the league.
Like many footballers of his age, Gordon Banks was forced to raise money by selling his footballing memorabilia in later years, having lost a significant sum of money when a Leicester based hospitality business which he fronted failed. In 2001, he sold his World Cup winners medal for £124,750, and his international cap from the final was also sold at auction for £27,025.
Leicester City had helped by giving him a testimonial and he was made the President of Stoke City following upon the death of Stanley Matthews.
However, Don Mullan wanted to do something more, something personal to honour his hero.
He was at the forefront of a campaign to have a monument erected to celebrate Banks’ career and so set about commissioning a statue of the great goalkeeper. He travelled throughout England in an attempt to find a sculptor who would create a special sculpture of Banks and eventually he was introduced to Carl Edwards who was commissioned to create a triple statue of Banks which was eventually unveiled outside Stoke City’s stadium in 2008 by Pele and by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
He would later tell RTE News “I’m not sure if, in the vexed history between Ireland and England, a statue has ever been erected by an Irishman to an Englishman. Perhaps I have added a little bit of peace in doing so. I hope.”
In December 2015, it was announced that Gordon Banks was receiving treatment for kidney cancer and he died in his sleep on 12 February 2019 at the age of 81 years old.
He was undoubtedly the greatest goalkeeper to ever play for England with a record of 73 international appearances in which he kept 35 clean sheets and lost just nine games. He was named FWA footballer of the year in 1972, and was named FIFA Goalkeeper of the Year on six occasions and the second-best goalkeeper of the 20th century, after Lev Yashin (1st) and ahead of Dino Zoff (3rd).
Pele ranked him as one of the 150 greatest living footballers.
For Don Mullan however, his hero had become a friend and his memory is now not that of a ten year old with a footballing hero.
As Banks’ life neared its end, Mullan’s close relationship with Gordon was acknowledged by his family, who invited him over to England during the last week of his life to say his goodbyes.
“It was a privileged two hours we shared. During my visit I helped him to the intimacy of the bathroom. My boyhood Superman now relying on my strength to hold him. So sad yet so beautiful,”
Following Banks’ recent death Mullan talked of “a hero who welcomed me into his family and who became a genuine friend. We lived in an era when sporting heroes were ordinary and unassuming people whose very modesty was the oxygen of dreams, and across the water, on a neighbouring island with whom we Irish had been in conflict for centuries, I had a hero who could fly. His name is Gordon Banks. From being a timid, fearful young boy, he taught me that impossible doesn’t exist. Unknown to him, he helped save a young fan from making choices that had brought too much sorrow and sadness to Irish and British alike.”
“Who knows? Perhaps it was his best save ever.”
Don Mullan has received Honorary Degrees from Iona College, New Rochelle, New York (1997) Mount Aloysius College, Pennsylvania (2001) and DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois (2011). In March 1998, he was Grand Marshal of the San Diego St Patrick’s Day Parade. On 9 December 2002, Mullan received A Defender of Human Dignity award from the International League for Human Rights at the United Nations, New York. In October 2003 he received the Sean MacBride Humanitarian Award from the Ancient Order of Hibernians of America. In May 1990, Mullan was made an Honorary Chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, an honour he shares with the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.
Mullan has been published in The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, Ireland on Sunday, the Sunday Tribune, The Examiner, Magill Magazine, La Reppublica, The Times (London), The Guardian, Journal do Brasil and Irish America.
A video of Don Mullan talking about his childhood, Derry and Gordon Banks can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxzQD3ZwMhg
Strandsky Tales & Stories 