Most Irish bars on the continent feature a surname only, as with O’Malley’s of Marseille, O’Flaherty’s of Perpignan, and Finnegan’s of Valencia, in all of which I had a pint last week. The James Joyce in Barcelona (where I had one too), is an obvious exception.
But then there is Paddy O’Connell’s pub in Denia, a town halfway between Valencia and Alicante. That one is so named for an Irish football manager who, in his 1930s heyday, was probably better known in Spain than Joyce, and in some parts of it may still be.
He was promoted to “Don Patricio” eventually. And the respect he earned among Spaniards had a redemptive aspect. Because had he not reinvented himself there, he might today be best remembered for his role in an English betting scandal of 1915.
By then he had won five international caps playing for a 32-county Irish team, the last of them a heroic performance as captain that helped win the British “Home” Championship of 1914.
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In the decider against Scotland, Ireland finished with 10 men and had O’Connell playing on despite a broken arm. But trailing 1-0 late in the game, they came back to draw and clinch the title amid what The Irish Times called “a scene of enthusiasm unparalleled in the history of Irish association football”.
Soon afterwards, the Dubliner – born close to what is now Croke Park – was captaining Manchester United in the English football league. The First World War loomed, however, and with it the suspension of professional sports.
This explains a strange end-of-season game between Manchester United and Liverpool played on Good Friday 1915. One of England’s great rivalries, the fixture would not usually lack competitive edge. But there was little riding on the result that year except an opportunity for a final pay-day before the league broke up.
In a game observers found curiously tame, United won 2-0. It then emerged that bookmakers had received a high number of bets on that scoreline. This also explained why, presented with a chance to make it 3-0 from a penalty, O’Connell missed by a careful distance.
Several players were banned for life, but O’Connell somehow escaped punishment. He spent the rest of the war guesting for amateur clubs in England and Scotland. Then, after his sixth and last Irish cap, in 1919, he headed for Spain.
In the opposite of the situation today, British and Irish managers had a cachet on mainland Europe then, as perceived masters of the game. O’Connell justified the billing, first with Racing Santander, then briefly Oviedo, before going south to Seville and delivering the first and only La Liga title won by that city’s poor relation, Real Betis, in 1935.
After that, he went to Barcelona. But like many of his generation, O’Connell had been fated to live in interesting times. Another world war now threatened and its prequel would be in Spain.
In 1937, badly short of revenue, Barcelona embarked on a tour of the US and Mexico, making headlines not just for their football but also their anti-fascist politics. The tour cleared their debts, for which reason, O’Connell became known as “the man who saved Barcelona”.
The phrase even featured in the title of a book a few years ago. But it’s a bit of an overstatement, born from football’s love of a simple, heroic story line.
Probably the greatest thing O’Connell did for Barcelona was returning there as manager after the tour. Many of his players took the chance of a new life in the US. O’Connell, despite knowing the club no longer had money to pay him, went back, along with only four of the touring players, and remained there for the rest of the Civil War.
A narrative of his heroic attachment to the Catalan side doesn’t quite stand up either, however, because he then left Barcelona to return to Seville, where he finished his career.
There followed an all-too familiar ending to an Irish biography, when he spent his last years in London and died there destitute in 1959. His grave was at first unmarked. And if his name was still famous in Spain, it was soon to be deliberately erased in his native country.
O’Connell had married twice, first to Dubliner Ellen Treston, who moved with him to England; then, bigamously, to an Ellen O’Callaghan in Spain, after he abandoned his first family.
One of Ellen’s sons was christened Daniel and so might have enjoyed the doubly famous name of Dan O’Connell. But when his mother reverted to her maiden name, the son followed. It was as Dan Treston he returned to Ireland eventually and became a well-known radio and theatre producer.
He later recalled that although his father sent occasional remittances, the family depended mainly on their mother’s earnings as a cleaner. Their memory of Paddy O’Connell, meanwhile, was symbolised by the fate of his Irish caps, resplendent in green velvet with orange tassels. As recalled by Dan Treston, his mother used one of those as an oven mitt, whenever lifting the kettle off the fire.
