Here we go again …

Tony was the eldest of six children growing up in Glasthule in the ’50s, where Fr Frank McCabe, founder of the new local club St Josephs Boys in Sallynoggin, was working at the time.

Fr McCabe had established the club the year after Tony’s birth, and it was already achieving a measure of success. Not so much so, however, that the ‘Revo’ wasn’t regularly on the look-out for likely youngsters, and the 10-year-old was soon turning up at Pearse Park.

He was to spend eight years at the club, where he made the acquaintance of one Pat Devlin, playing on the same team with him (they are only a couple of months apart in age). It was the beginning of a friendship that has survived working together as easily as it has survived separation.

Other events that were to influence him a crucial moments were in train, however, as his mother, Nancy, died when Tony was just 13, leaving his father, Thomas, with the children – the youngest barely six months!

A move to Dún Laoghaire followed a couple of years later, and Thomas’s determination to look after his young family would colour Tony’s attitude to work much later in life.

After their under-18 year at Joes, four of the team went to Shamrock Rovers, having previously been allowed to train with the Hoops. “It was such a privilege,” says Tony, “just training on the same pitch as my heroes, men like Mick Leech, Frank O’Neill and Mick Smith.”

But although he captained the ‘B’ team (under Paddy Ambrose), and a long football career beckoned, the amateur – or at best semi-pro – game wasn’t going to be enough to allow him help his father with support for his younger siblings, and his employer would not allow Saturday afternoons off.

“Paddy (Ambrose) even came to see the boss, and offered to pay my wages for the Saturday, but there was nothing doing.”

Work was the priority, and while that was Rovers’ loss, the football bug had bitten young McGuirk hard. He returned to Joes to play in their AUL team, and then moved, via TEK and Dalkey United, to Drogheda.

He had developed into a useful midfielder, and had been top scorer in Dalkey, with 23 goals, the season before, and no doubt that had attracted the semi-pro outfit.

While there, he was unlucky enough to be the 14th man in a squad which could only name 13 players for the FAI Cup Final against Bohemians in 1976 (Bohs won 2-0).

It was a curious set-up in the Boyneside team under Jimmy MacAlinden at that time, with only two Louth-based players, and the rest all in Dublin and the North. They’d travel to Baltray on the Saturday, staying overnight before playing the match on the Sunday.

Things were even more bizarre for the city-based players on a couple of occasions when they had Cup replays: up to Drogheda at noon for a meal and a nap before piling into a convoy of cars to set off back to Dublin for the evening kick-off in Tolka Park!

But the travel pressure was telling, and soon he returned to TEK when Frank O’Neill called at the door to ask him to sign. The Borough outfit won the Leinster Senior League shortly after that, and Tony was to win League representative honours the following year.

He remained with TEK until 1985, when an accident to his eye put an end to his playing career. But fate always has something unexpected waiting.

Pat Devlin brought the entire TEK squad to see him in hospital, which was an unusual event for the medical staff, but on another occasion when Pat arrived on his own, Tony had just noticed an ad for an FAI coaching course. And once he mentioned that he was thinking of going on it, Pat said ‘Ah sure I’ll go with you.’

So they did, both being granted exemption for the first two levels of the four grades available because of their senior playing experience. And so it was that Devlin was a registered coach when he moved to Bray that autumn, and Tony took up coaching the TEK Reserves.

Moving to Ballybrack the following year, he took them straight to the top of Division 2, and to a Polikoff Cup victory over Tymon Bawn (1-0 at Dalymount) while they gained promotion from Div 1A the following year, and then to Premier Division victory in 1988/89.

It was probably that record as much as any friendship effect that led to Pat Devlin asking him to Bray as Coach the following season, when he would bask in a little of the reflected glory of the famous FAI Cup victory at Lansdowne Road – but again, Tony then found he was caught by domestic and personal pressure and couldn’t give the club the time commitment it needed.

So the curiosity repeats: taking more time for private matters, McGuirk nevertheless found himself back at Ballybrack, and managing the LSL Oscar Traynor Cup team, as well as the Interleague team which took the FAI trophy after victories over Donegal League at Inishowen, Cork League at Turners Cross, and finally Kerry League at Leixlip.

And yet again he became involved with Bray, scouting the opposition – and running an eye over promising players – in the 1996/7 season, and the following year managing the Under-21 team (then the club’s third, with the Reserve Division still active.

Gavin Teehan, who had retired from playing the previous year, was his assistant as they took Runners-up to St Patricks Athletic in that league, but then no Under-21 competition was in place the next year, so Tony moved on to the Reserves, working with John Holmes and Gary Zambra.

He was finally brought in to the senior team after 1999 Cup victory, “working my way up gradually from bag-man to coach and now assistant manager,” he says modestly.

That year, too, he was invited into international football by Brian Kerr, travelling as ‘Technical Coach’ to the Under-18s in Sweden, where they lifted the Bronze after Clive Delaney scored the only goal in the 3rd/4th place play-offs.

“It was the proudest moment of my life,” he says quietly.

It was also his only international experience until earlier this year, when he was asked to act as Coach to the Under-19s, managed by Sean McCaffrey. He’s committed to that until the end of the European Championships (in July in Liechtenstein) – and if they qualify for the World Cup, he’ll likely be with them there, too.

Curiously, it almost seems as if he’s enjoying football more as a coach than he did as a player!

“I still think I can play a bit. No,” he corrects himself, “I still think I can play better than some of the youngsters half my age! I love getting out in the training 5-a-sides and showing them how.”

With such an attitude, it’s hardly surprising that he credits football almost as much as his children with helping him through a difficult patch in his personal life a few years ago.

“It’s a great game,” he concludes.

And mild-mannered Tony is a great ambassador for it.

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