ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
The third of Brian McClelland's compelling series of articles on significant figures from Glentoran's history. Many thanks to the Glentoran Supporters Committee (1923) for use of this material.
I had been reluctant to write this story, afraid, perhaps. It asks a question I couldn’t begin to answer. But I couldn’t let it go. Why had the world lost such a young man, a devout Christian, in the prime of his life? Why? Why? The Greeks had a phrase for it: “Only the good die young”. Now is time to mark his memory, and no better occasion than the 45th anniversary of his death.
Roy Stewart is the young man I am talking about. In March, 1974, Roy died suddenly at the age of 25 of an undiagnosed heart condition, only hours after playing for Glentoran in a European Cup Winners’ Cup tie at the Oval. The night before the game he was at the Boys’ Brigade as usual, taking the company PT squad for their weekly session. Roy was at his happiest working with the boys. There was no warning of the Greek tragedy about to to be enacted.
Roy was raised in Cable Street on the Newtownards Road. Like many young boys he began his football career in the Boys’ Brigade, an organisation close to his heart. He proceeded through the ranks of the 64th Belfast Company attached to Westbourne Presbyterian Church to become an officer in the company. Roy joined the Glens in 1966 when a teenager. Unfortunately, he fractured his right leg in October during a reserve game and was out of action for ten months.
Hobbling around in plaster and crutches for weeks was driving young Roy to distraction. He was determined to keep in shape, somehow! Showing immense courage and mental strength, Roy bought a football and limped into his back garden to practice kicking it with his good leg, his left. His right, his good leg in football terms, was still encased in plaster! Those one-legged training sessions stood Roy in good stead later for he was to play quite often on the left side of the Glens defence.
He played a couple of games for the first team in season 1967-68 but, naturally, found it difficult to break into John Colrain’s team of stars. The “Golden Vision” himself, Alex Young, is the man Roy credited with giving him his big start in the game. Young had replaced Colrain as Glentoran’s player-manager in August, 1968. Stewart told a journalist: “Alex Young had seen me in a reserve game…I was astonished to be picked for the European Cup (game). But Alex seemed to have great faith in me, which made me confident.” Roy had yet to reach his 20th birthday.
A rare Portuguese football sticker from 1968
The European Cup Roy referred to was the game against Anderlecht of Belgium, the first of many big European games for him. The strapping, red -headed Stewart caused Billy Neill to talk excitedly of the manner in which he had subdued the great Belgian international, Paul Van Himst. Neill felt this was the moment Stewart showed his true potential, his coming of age on the European stage.
Roy had played in an amazing 49 games that season yet was to compete in only 51 games during the following three seasons due to niggling problems like groin strains and back trouble. Indeed, Roy might have won Olympic glory but for injury. He was called up to the British amateur squad for training sessions in preparation for the 1972 Munich Olympics but, to his bitter disappointment, could not attend through being unfit. Roy did win Northern Ireland amateur international caps including the year the British title was won with Billy Neill as manager.
It was in season 1972-73, at last putting all his injury worries behind him, that Roy really developed as a player. And what a season it turned out to be. In August Roy was uncertain of his first team place, yet in the following April he was voted Glentoran’s Player of the Year. Along the way, his magnificent season was capped with an Irish Cup winner’s medal as an emergency goalkeeper and an All Ireland cup winner’s medal! He explained his resurgence in form to being permitted to play exclusively in the back four. In the parlance of football back then Roy had become variously a “twin centre-half” or a “sweeper” and was very happy to play at the back rather than midfield. Stylish, yet uncompromising when necessary, Roy was the warrior that every successful team requires.
George Eastham, who had succeeded Peter McParland as manager, couldn’t praise Stewart highly enough: “This boy has been a revelation to me. He reads the game intelligently and has the happy knack of popping up when the defence is in serious trouble. He is a really outstanding player.”
Roy receives his Player of the Year Award for 1972-73 in a team including Glentoran legends like Alan Paterson, Johnny Jamison,
Roy Walsh, Bimbo Weatherup, Rab McCreery and Billy McKeag
Heart bursting with pride, Roy received his Player of the Year award from Mr. J.L. Morgan, Glentoran’s chairman, on behalf of the Castlereagh Glentoran Supporters Club, on the pitch before the game against Ards. He just loved playing for Glentoran. As his brother Alan explained for me: “Had Roy not been able to play for Glentoran, then he would have had no interest in playing for any other club. He was literally living out his dream by turning out for the Glens. It was all he ever wanted to do.”
The “emergency goalkeeper” reference above needs some explanation. The Glens had reached the Irish Cup Final at Windsor against arch-rivals Linfield. The crowd, numbering 10,000, had watched the Glens take a late first half lead against the run of play through a goal by outside-left Warren Feeney. In the 35th minute goalkeeper Alan Paterson had dived to collect the ball only to be clobbered by the right boot of Linfield’s Billy Millen. His right shoulder badly damaged and arm paralysed, Paddy’s game was over at half time.
At the interval George Eastham, shrewd manager that he was, approached Roy Stewart and asked him to take over in goals. At first Roy was a reluctant hero. “I sneaked the yellow jersey over Roy’s head when his back was turned. He’d no experience of the job. I picked him out because he’s tall, but very quick and mobile. He wasn’t happy about it but he was the man with the best reflexes and I coaxed him into it,” confessed Eastham after the game. For Roy the phrase “Le jeu avant tout” wasn’t merely the club’s motto, it was a credo, a guiding principle. Thus, in the context of the game, Roy would have believed it was his duty to do what his manager had asked, and do it to the best of his ability.
Roy in the 1972-73 Irish Cup winning Glentoran squad
The rest, as they say, is history, glorious red, green and black history. Though conceding two goals, Roy, well outside his comfort zone, gave his team heart with a confident display which included a fine save from Eric Magee. With the score finely balanced at 2-2 Feeney sealed a famous victory for the ten men of Glentoran via an 81st minute penalty after a foul by Linfield’s player-manager and former Detroit Cougar, Billy Sinclair. Modest to a fault, Roy confessed that his 45 minute stint as a deputy goal-keeper was the most nerve-wracking of his life. He even took the blame for one of Linfield’s goals!
An outstanding season for Roy culminated in May with the team winning the Blaxnit Cup against FAI Cup winners Cork City over two legs. “Glorious Glens are champions of Ireland” ran the Belfast Telegraph’s headline. Three trophies had been won, the City Cup making up the trio, and Roy had played in 49 of the team’s 51 games. Roll-on August and fresh challenges!
Far from being a continuation of the previous season’s accomplishments, 1973-74 was a season of broken legs and broken hearts, of success in Europe and failure at home. Taking everything into consideration, it was close to being the season from hell. A streak of appalling luck culminated in the tragic events of Tuesday, 4th March 1974.
Roy (top right) in the Gibson Cup winning team of 1971-72
Billy Murray had broken his leg in the first month of the season. Rab McCreery broke his leg in October during the second round European Cup game in Norway against Brann Bergen on a water logged pitch. In addition, Johnny Jamison received a nine inch gash to his leg in February which required 12 stitches and hospitalised him for ten days.
Such was his dedication to Glentoran that Roy interrupted his honeymoon to assist the club. Roy had taken his wife of less than a week, 20 year old Pat Reay, to London in September where he met up with the Glens official party on its way to Rumania to tackle Chimea Ramnicu Valcea in the first round. Recognising the value of Roy to the team manager Eastham commented pragmatically, “Roy was going to withdraw because of the wedding but we want him in the team. So he is bringing along Pat as part of the honeymoon. It’s as cheap to travel to Rumania as spend another week in London.” Pat was the only woman in the party.
Having helped see off the threat of Chimea and Brann, Roy was relishing the prospect of playing against the star-studded Germans of Borussia Munchengladbach in the quarter-final. Domestically, matters on the field had gone badly with a youthful team, beset by injuries, unable to reproduce their European heroics. It was almost a relief, therefore, to stride the big European stage once more, in an underdog role against the mighty interlopers.
Tuesday, 4th March, 1974. I remember the day well, the drama of it forever etched in my memory. I had taken the afternoon off work and sauntered from town up the Newtownards Road in time for the 4.15 pm kick-off. The Germans were strong, very strong and very fit. Players like Vogts, Bonhoff, Steilike and Heynkes had won the 1972 European Championship with Germany and would be in the German squad destined to win the 1974 World Cup.
It was tough going. Then the broken leg jinx struck again in the first half. This time Billy Walker fractured his right ankle making a courageous tackle. The part-time players of Glentoran were out on their feet at the finish. “Drained of every ounce of energy”, was how Belfast Telegraph journalist Malcolm Brodie described it. “Everybody ran till they almost dropped,” said manager Eastham after the 0-2 defeat.
In the Glens dressing room at full time, drained and dehydrated, along with his team mates, Roy Stewart sat slumped, totally exhausted. He had given his all for the cause. He would shower and dress, leave the Oval for the last time, head home to Bangor and the comfort of his young wife. A few hours later he would be dead.
What of Roy Stewart’s legacy? Was his passing a mere statistic? Now, we are informed that every week in the UK twelve young people (aged 35 and under), apparently fit and healthy, die suddenly from a previously undiagnosed heart condition. In the vast majority of cases, the first sign will be the last. The only way to detect a potentially fatal cardiac abnormality, say the experts, is through proactive cardiac screening by specially trained cardiologists. In Northern Ireland over the past couple of decades there has been much publicity over the early and sudden deaths of a small number of active young athletes.
Roy (third left back row) in the 1970-71 Championship winning squad
CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) is a charity whose vision is preventing young sudden cardiac deaths through awareness, screening and research and supporting affected families involved. The first electrocardiogram (ECG) clinic in Northern Ireland was set up in November, 2006 when the University of Ulster teamed up with CRY to offer a screening service. With a simple ECG and diagnosis by an expert consultant cardiologist, many heart conditions can be detected.
I questioned whether Roy’s death was just another statistic and I think I have given the answer. The accumulation of similar deaths across the UK over the years has resulted in the founding of the charity CRY. This is the legacy of Roy Stewart: the saving of young lives through his premature death is his gift.
To conclude, new UEFA Medical Regulations came into force on 1 January, 2018 making it mandatory that all players participating in a UEFA competition have up-to-date medical records and undergo an annual medical examination and an annual 12 lead ECG cardiological examination. In the words of Dr. Michael D’Hooghe, chairman of the UEFA Medical Committee, “Nobody should die playing football, the game we all love.”
Footnote: I would like to express my thanks to Darren Topping, a relative of Roy Stewart, for his help and encouragement in writing this story. I do hope I have done justice to Roy’s memory.
