Buzzin Football

Martin O'Neill The Biography by Simon Moss

Football needs its characters. It needs surprise, people who can take the breath away, it needs beauty, skill and imagination, and it needs people who can express an opinion, perhaps even start an argument.

Martin O’Neill is one of the very few people within the ‘industry’ (players, managers, administrators, journalists or broadcasters) worth listening to. A lad from Northern Ireland, whose relatively unsung playing career saw him achieve far more than most present day kiss-the-badge mercenary millionnaires ever will. It included a successful world cup campaign for a start, when the journeymen of Northern Ireland defeated hosts Spain and made it to the last twelve in 1982. Add to this a league title and two European cup medals. A successful career in management has followed from Wycombe to Leicester, Celtic and, until this week, Aston Villa. He is an erudite and usually outspoken pundit on the box. He should also have got the England job when it was offered initially to Scholari and then to the hapless Steve McClaren.

Martin O’Neill is one of the present-day game’s few characters and, of course, he played for the biggest character of them all – Brian Clough OBE.

It is for all of these reasons that a biography of O’Neill should arouse the interest of anyone true football fan.

However, I am sorry to say that he is poorly served by this book. For a start, there is neither an index nor acknowledgements. All biogs should, at the very least, have an index. It is unclear from the publisher’s blurb whether the author has ever met or spoken to his subject (The Unauthorised Biography?). In fact,all quotes seem to have come from various newspapers. It would appear that the author has not spoken to a living soul in the writing of the book and instead produced it by spending diligent hours in a newspaper reference library.  Surely a first-hand quote or opinion could be gathered by picking up a phone to a former team mate, current player, fellow journalist or broadcaster? Just to add a little colour to the dryness of yellowing newspaper cuttings?

Let me give further examples of disappointment. By page 10, the young O’Neill, a bright lad from a tolerant nationalist household, has already left school with enough qualifications to study law (his other great passion) at university. However, he is playing senior football for Distillery and everyone know’s he is going to “make it” as a footballer. On page 12, “Terry Neill rewarded O’Neill with his first cap for the national side and teams from England started to send scouts to assess him.” That was it – Your debut for your country warrants half a sentence. How old was he? (He was 18 or 19 according to Wikipedia). Who did they play? What was the score? Did the young man play well? Did he impress the manager? What were his feelings? Was his Mum and Dad proud? Nothing.

Chapter two is Brian Clough and the Forest years. Oh goody. I have read every book by and about Clough, but there is nothing here I haven’t already read or heard. On page 17, O’Neill tells the Irish Times, “I have often said that it would have been difficult to work with that man (Clough) for five years and not to have learned anything from him.” On page 21, “you would have had to be really bone stupid to be with Brian Clough for five or six years and not learn something from him…”

O’Neill’s first managerial job was actually at Grantham Town. “Despite an inauspicious start, Grantham rapidly improved …as they began to play the style of football their new gaffer demanded. The squad responded to his methods, training and ideas of how he wanted the game played.” So, what was his style, his methods, training and ideas? How did they differ from those learned under Clough? Again, we are left to guess.

I could go on. As I’ve said, his story is a good one and one I was eager to read it, yet this book provides few answers and gives so little insight into this talented, strong-willed and principled man. A man who gave up his Celtic job to spend time with his sick wife. Here, Simon Moss rightly states the fact without delving deeper into what must have been a distressing time for all of the family.

The 58-year-old O’Neill spent five years at Celtic, yet this period fills half of the book. The author would have done better to make this the main focus of the book – bulk out the Celtic era to around 200 pages, with an additional 40 pages of background covering his previous career/life, then call it ‘Man of the Bhoys’ and you would still sell the print run to the thousands of Celtic fans worldwide.

The book also lacks a career record/stats appendix – another minimum requirement in a sporting biography.

To conclude, as if I have to, this is a very disappointing look at an engaging and intriguing football man.

Martin O’Neill The Biography by Simon Moss is published by John Blake.