Joe Brolly: Remembering ‘The King’

I RANG Frank McGuigan’s life-long friend John Joe O’Neill this week. “Lonely Housewives.com,” he said, “How can we help you?” When I had stopped laughing, he said, “If you are a lady seeking to join, we will require your death certificate madam. We don’t want an angry husband walking in on a client.” When I had stopped laughing, he said, “Joe, we used to date women and take them places. Now its like stopping for diesel.”
Hard to think of two more opposite people. Frank, shy, warm, private and an Ardboe man. John Joe, one of the most extraordinary, exuberant, boundaryless characters who ever lived, a Moortown man. John Joe once fixed a darts match at the old world championships.

The King: The legacy of Frank McGuigan

“He pretended to be the darts correspondent for the Belfast Telegraph and rang around the qualifiers. “The first two were a banker and a civil engineer. I hung up immediately. I hit pay dirt with the third. He was unemployed and was playing the number 10 seed in the first round.”
Me: How do you think you’ll do?
Him: Not very well.
Me: What it would cost me to make sure you don’t do well?
Him: Five thousand in used twenties.
When I gave him the money at the Lakeside, he said, “that’ll do my renovation.” There was a huge crowd and when he walked out they cheered him out to the rafters. His first three darts were 26. His fourth dart bounced off the rim and landed in the lap of a woman in the front row. He didn’t win a game.”
The McGuigans were a huge family, living in a small council house in Ardboe. The council built them a house in neighbouring Moortown and they moved down. The boys all went on to play for Moortown. The problem was that Frank had already started playing underage for Ardboe. As John Joe said (loudly) at the wake, “We got the crumbs.”
Maradona was born in the slums. Frank was born on the Lough shore. Two miracles straight from the womb. On the football field, there wasn’t anything Frank couldn’t do. A painfully shy child, he came alive with the size five. Football was how he communicated.
As a teenager he was a thing of wonder. When Bellaghy were All-Ireland club champions, sporting half the Derry team and feared throughout Ireland, they retained their Derry title and played tiny Ardboe in the first round in Ulster in 1972. Peter Doherty, the Bellaghy great, takes up the story. “They had a scrawny 17 year old kid playing. Half our team spent the game watching him open mouthed in amazement. He bate us on his own. It was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw.”

New York

That year, he captained Tyrone to the Ulster minor title, then later in the day came on in the senior final against Donegal. The following year, aged 19, he captained the seniors to the Ulster title. Later in the 70s he was chosen to go on the All-Star tour and didn’t come back. He had seen the promised land. Alcohol made him articulate and took away his shyness. In New York, there was nothing to hold him back.
He later said that trom the age of 22 to 30, he was lost, finally coming back in 1983 at the urging of then Tyrone manager Art McRory who idolised him. I saw him in the flesh that year for the first time. Before that, I had only ever heard about him from my father, who spoke of him with awe. My father was not in the habit of speaking about anyone with awe. The only other person he spoke of like that was Pele.
It was the 1983 Tyrone semi-final between Ardboe and Moortown. Coalisland had never seen a crowd like it. Frank was marked by his own brother Stevie over the course of an electrifying draw and replay. John Joe, Moortown’s star forward, scored a brilliant goal the first day and celebrated with a somersault. I still remember the vast excitement of those games. Moortown lost the replay by a point.
John Joe says, “Moortown scored 28 points over the two games, me and our Paddy got 25 of them. If my mother had had a third son we would have been All-Ireland champions.” It was of course his great friend Frank who made the difference. I had never seen skills like that. Left foot, right foot, high catching with one hand, bewildering dummies, his appreciation of space. All self taught. In 1984, he was back at no.14 for Tyrone. They played us in the first round of Ulster. Big Frankie Johnston marked him, holding Frank to 0-6 from play. In the Ulster final, Armagh held him to 0-11, all from play, with both feet and the fist. What could you do with him?
I said to Peter Canavan a few years ago it must have been great to have been born two footed. He said, “You must be joking.” He told me that his father brought him to that Ulster final and that having watched Frank he was mesmerised. “I started working on my left foot that night in the garden. Every day, I kicked with it. It took me about a year to get it as good as the right. It was all down to Frank.”
A car crash the following year ended the big man’s career. If he had been full forward, Tyrone would have beaten Kerry in that 86 final, but like Best or Maradona, he was a mystery.
Eventually, he settled and for the last ten or fifteen years barely touched a drop. When John Joe went to see him in the hospital near the end, he said, “If I could only get five more years with the grandchilder.”
I am lucky I saw him play five times. Standing with my mouth open in amazement.