At the end of a day near the end of a week he will never forget, Jimmy Dunne sat out on the runway at Dublin Airport and waited. And waited.
Storm Darragh had arrived, adding logistical complexity to Dunne’s emotional turbulence. That morning Jimmy had said farewell to his father Eamonn at his funeral near Dundalk. The next day Jimmy was due to play for Queen’s Park Rangers at Loftus Road in west London.
And now the plane wasn’t moving.
The storm raged on. Flights were cancelled. Jimmy and his fellow passengers were on the tarmac for an hour. Then Aer Lingus made the decision and after many airborne bumps, the plane was landed safely at Heathrow. QPR v Norwich City: it was on for Jimmy Dunne.
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Dunne is a centre-half playing at right-back for Rangers and primarily thinks of goals as something you do not concede. He is therefore not among the favourites to be a game’s first scorer on any given Saturday. But midway through the first half against Norwich, Dunne moved himself forward for a corner. There was a melee, some ricochet football and eventually the ball fell to Dunne. From six yards he poked the ball into the net. He had made it on time. Tight, old Loftus Road bellowed its approval.
QPR, close to bottom of the Championship, kept pushing. It ended 3-0, a first home win of the season and some said Dunne’s goal was fate.
It wasn’t. As Eamonn Dunne would have recognised, it was determination. There was Jimmy’s desire to reach the ball ahead of others. There was the effort to get to the game in the first place. Above all that, as Dunne’s father knew more than anyone, was Jimmy’s drive to secure a professional football career.
It had taken him from Louth to trials all across England, to St Kevin’s Boys in Dublin and to Manchester United. Eamonn travelled, too, ferrying Jimmy to United’s academy in Belfast (and back) from 10-years-old, then to St Kevin’s (and back) and those trials (and back). From Eamonn and his mother Sharon, Jimmy understood commitment.
Now four days after his father’s death, 24 hours after the funeral, Jimmy was scoring a season-shaping goal in front of 16,000 spectators and his family watching from home. How did they feel?
“Overwhelmed,” Jimmy says. “Yeah, overwhelmed.
“They gave me a lot of credit for playing, but I didn’t feel that way. It’s what I wanted to do. It was a nice way to end a difficult week.”
Making kick-off, playing the game, Dunne says, was his way of coping. The week had been more than difficult, but not playing on Saturday would have made it worse.
“It was the best therapy for me,” Dunne says. “Football is the only way I know how to deal with things. It’s been my primary focus my whole life and whenever things have gone wrong, I’ve always found myself wanting to play football. That’s how I deal with it, anything.
“So not playing probably wouldn’t have been good for me. I would have been just sat there thinking about everything and the week we’d been through. For a lot of footballers, as difficult and uncomfortable as football can be – because it comes with a lot of pressure and criticism – when something off the pitch happens, you’re just grateful to be able to get back and do what you love again. These things off the pitch are much, much more uncomfortable.”
By the sounds of it – and there is a lovely interview involving the father and son on RTÉ’s archive shortly before Jimmy departed for Old Trafford – Eamonn would have approved.
“Me and my father had a professional relationship as much as we had a father and son relationship,” Dunne says. “He was a sportsman, a player himself, represented Louth.
“He was a manager to me as well as my Dad, my coach at GAA, coach at my soccer club. He managed a lot of Gaelic teams and eventually took Louth minors. He managed the Geraldines – we won a lot at underage with him as manager.
“I looked at him as my teenage peers did – when he spoke we paid attention. It’s definitely made me the attentive player I am. I listen, I try to learn as much as I can. I definitely got that from him.
“My mother, she’s my No. 1 fan. She works for Cross Border Orchestra Ireland, she’s the founder and director. It was founded 20 years ago to bring kids from both sides of the border to play music together. It’s an unbelievable Foundation, they travel the world spreading the word of peace. I’m so, so proud of her.”
Having just turned 27, what Jimmy got from both his parents is fresh in his mind. Having had trials with Chelsea, Newcastle United and Aston Villa “to name a few”, he says Manchester United convinced them due to their school programme.
“The reason I signed for Man United was because of the education they promised alongside football,” Dunne says. “My father being a science teacher and my mother being an English teacher, they were hugely keen on me not missing out on education, because the percentages of success at that age are so slim.”
He was 15 when he left, pre-Brexit. He wishes he had gone sooner, finding English boys ahead of him “technically and tactically.” He moved to Burnley, went on loan to different clubs in different leagues and in 2021 signed for QPR. The inner drive to “make it” meant he was not overly concerned whether he was playing for Accrington Stanley in League Two or Hearts in Scotland, but at QPR it has become about more than just Jimmy Dunne. “I love QPR,” he says.
The feeling is mutual. Dunne is a popular figure at a club where staff, manager and player turnover has been constant in their post-Premier League decade waving from the bottom half of the Championship.
Then there was “the Birmingham goal”.
At the end of March last season, having been 1-0 down at home to Birmingham City and already embroiled in a relegation battle, Dunne chested down a loose ball and volleyed it in with his left foot from 20 yards – in injury-time – to win the game. Loftus Road erupted. It was spectacular and in a different way mattered as much as last Saturday’s goal.
Afterwards we listened as Spanish head coach Marti Cifuentes declared Dunne “a quality human being”, not an everyday compliment in football.
Still, the industry is brutal and Dunne’s contract expires next June. As yet there have been no talks. He sounds relaxed. There are bigger things.
“I’ve tried to have a career, tried to succeed,” he explains. “The club didn’t matter so much, I just wanted to get to the next level in the most efficient way possible.
“But at QPR, it’s all about QPR. I don’t know anything else, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. I’m QPR through and through, I love west London, the connection with the people here.
“I live nearby, in an area where you’re in amongst QPR fans. My postman is a big QPR fan, we’ve a massive Irish Rs community. If you look around Loftus Road on a matchday, there’s Tricolours everywhere. There’s an Irish connection to west London anyway – my Nana, Breda, was a nurse in Richmond. A lot of Irish nurses would come to work. There’s a few Irish bars. I’ve never been in any of them.”
You could hear the smile.
Dunne was speaking on Thursday morning. On Wednesday night QPR had won again, against Oxford United. He didn’t score but there was a fourth consecutive clean sheet. Defenders like those.
On Saturday it’s Bristol City away. Next Saturday it’s Preston North End at home and if you’re in west London under-18s get in for £1. You will see Jimmy Dunne, or at least that fraction of his and every other player’s life that exists in front of us on a Saturday afternoon.
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