Soccer star who turned his back on an English career

Johnny Fullam, who has died aged 75,will be recalled in sporting history as the man who abandoned a potentially brilliant career in England to establish himself as one of the most successful players of his generation in the League of Ireland.

Just months after winning his first Ireland cap while a member of the Preston North End team that included the celebrated England winger Tom Finney, Fullam upped and left Deepdale to the astonishment of the club manager and others. Under the banner headline of "Why Johnny Came Marching Home", the Dublin Evening Mail described it as the shock of the season.

Unfazed by the publicity, good and bad, he decided that henceforth he would play professional football on a part-time basis with Shamrock Rovers, combining this with a thriving business as a motor factor in south Dublin.

At much the same time Frank O’Neill, a former teammate in Home Farm’s underage sides, was embarking on a similar course of action, leaving Arsenal for the hoops of Rovers. Together with Ronnie Nolan, who had rejected the guarantee of a first team place at Manchester United in the wake of the air disaster at Munich in 1958, they would form the bedrock of a side which would rewrite records in so many ways in the 1960s.

After missing out on an FAI Cup medal in 1962 through injury, Fullam was an important contributor in 1964 to Rovers' unprecedented achievement of six cup wins in a row, a train of success flawed only by his failure to make the team for the 1969 win over Cork City. It was an omission which would have serious implications.

Sidelined

After playing in every round of the competition, he was controversially left out of the starting line up by manager

Liam Tuohy

who refused to accept that he had made a full recovery from a recent injury. The hurt caused by that decision would endure and by the time the new season started three months later, he had discarded the hoops for the red and black of Bohemians.

That was quite the most unexpected transfer of the year but together with Ronnie Nolan and Tony O’Connell, another ex-Rovers man, his presence would smooth the transition to professional status for Dublin’s oldest club.

His stay at Dalymount Park would bring two more FAI Cup winners medals in 1970 and 1976 but the lure of Milltown brought him back across the Liffey for a last hurrah with Rovers, captaining them to a 1-0 win over Sligo in the 1978 final. It was his eighth FAI Cup winners’ medal, enabling him to equal the achievement of the legendary William “Sacky” Glen some 40 years earlier.

Finally he moved to Athlone Town for the 1978/1979 season. Then, after a playing career lasting almost 40 years and encompassing 451 games in the League of Ireland, Fullam retired to concentrate on his golf handicap and his expanding business career.

As a part-time professional, Fullam made 11 appearances for the national team. Even so, it was scant enough return for a man described by Jack Carey, a celebrated name in football, as “a player who could have scaled the highest peaks had he chosen to stay in England at a time when he had so much more to give”.

Johnny Fullam is survived by his widow, Patricia, children Caroline, Siobhán, Sharon and John and sisters Maura and Catherine.