Ed Randolph Interview: Ed and shoulders above the rest
nother winter’s midweek night in and around Dublin and again a Randolph comes bounding off the bench. Only this time it isn’t Darren, and it isn’t anything as sensational or as unexpected as a goalkeeper with only 60 minutes of senior international football behind him being thrown in against the world champions - then setting up a goal that would prompt a surge of joy across the country we thought an Irish soccer team might never give us again.
This time it’s Ed Randolph that is checking into the game in the less glamorous environs of a school gym hall in Bray, playing in the second division of the Dublin basketball league.
In a way though, Randolph Senior’s participation here is just as remarkable as his son’s in the Aviva last month.
The two starting guards for the local team, Bray Bullets, are a couple of lightning quick but infuriating 20-year-olds who still haven’t heard the one about the old bull and the young bull and the best way to go about copulating with the cows in the next field.
The opposition, Dublin Lions, are a more grizzled, seasoned team, yet there is no mistaking who the senior vet is here.
At 55 years young, Ed Randolph is still lacing them up. For sure, he’s hardly the same player he was 30 years ago when he’d probably have lit up for 40 points as he used average for Claremont Admirals down in Ennistymon in the second division of the national league, wowing a town which had hardly seen a black man or a basketball before.
He may not be moving even quite as smoothly as he did when you last saw him play about five years ago, continuing to carve out game time with the best team in the Irish Superleague, Killester, throughout his forties. And yet he still cuts an impressive, lithe figure here. He pulls down a series of defensive rebounds. He sinks three of the six shots he puts up, craftily taking a sidestep and electing to use the cushion of the backboard. In a game littered with turnovers, he only commits two during his 28 minutes on the floor. He’s no danger to himself out there.
You could even make the claim his health was in more danger when he first started out playing in this country as a 22-year-old, in a city on fire.
He was just after a fine career with a Division Three college called Roger Williams University in Rhode Island where he remains their leading all-time scorer. “I didn’t know Ireland even existed,” he says. “What I was thinking was it was time to put on a shirt and tie and get a real job.”
Then, in the summer of 1982, he was playing in a semi-pro outdoor league in north Providence, alongside NBA talents like Otis Thorpe, a later two-time world champion with the Houston Rockets. In the midst of all the asphalt and hot dogs, packed bleachers and kids hanging from the wired fencing were Fergus Woods and Pearse Tohill, looking for an American to play for their newly-promoted side, Sporting Belfast.
“So I’m telling everyone my news and my brother Curtis says, ‘Are these guys from the Republic of Ireland or Londonderry?’ I’ll always remember him specifying Londonderry. And I said ‘What’s the difference?’ And he said, ‘You don’t watch the news, do you? Nightline, ABC News, Ted Koppel: Live from Londonderry. Cars burned. Car bombs. People being shot.’
“Sure enough, I started paying closer attention to the news after that. But when I called Fergie back, he said ‘Listen, you’ll be alright with us.’ I was determined to play ball so that was enough for me.”
The morning he first arrived in Dublin Airport, there were sheep grazing on either side of the Old Swords Road as Fergie Woods’ car pulled out of the gates of the airport. “And then there was the fog. I kept thinking of the old Sherlock Holmes black-and-white movies that we’d have seen back in America. I thought to myself: ‘What have I got myself into?’ But before I knew it, I was a couple of months settled in.”
It was an exhilarating but sometimes precarious time. The St Gall’s GAA clubhouse in Andersonstown was usually a safe spot to socialise, the Kerri Inn complex where Sporting played out of, likewise. Then they might head into town for a few more, like in The Elbow Room or Totters. Only that when Randolph came back from a stint playing in Liverpool, he’d learn that Totters had been blown up.
“I remember saying to one of the guys: ‘Man, you never told us going to Totters could be bad for our health.’ And he said: ‘Ah, there’d be [RUC] Special Branch in there in plain clothes, but if there was any trouble, you know we’d take care of you.’ “And that’s how it was. There was always someone who’d go: ‘You know what, guys? It might not be a good time to go downtown tonight.’ Now, how did they know? I don’t know. And you know what? I don’t want to.”
That’s how it was back then. Friends kept you out of harm’s way but it was constantly on the margins. Randolph remembers one night in the Kerri Inn where there was a huge commotion coming from one of the back function rooms. Curiosity drew him towards all the noise until, before he knew it, he realised with all the Doc Martins and bulletbelts in the house, he was witnessing a Republican rally, with the congregation being stirred by the mother of a hunger striker, urging that her son’s death hadn’t been in vain.
A few years later he’d have a scarier brush with paramilitarism. It was 1987, the season basketball had become so popular nationwide, its national league had a third division, including a side from Dundalk. Randolph was their choice of American to help spread the hoops gospel which meant on Friday nights going across the border with a Fr Sweeney to a youth club in Crossmaglen.
“Out of nowhere on this country road two guys in balaclavas step out. One has a broken double-barrel shotgun and the other guy clicks his shotgun up and I’m thinking: ‘Would they have come across any black soldiers in and around Dungannon? Better put on your deepest American accent here, bud.
“They come over to the car and my life flashes in front of me. The States. Hanging out in Doolin. Anne. But then we roll down the window and they go, ‘Oh, good evening, Father Sweeney!’ And Father Sweeney explains where we’re going and they shine their torchlight in on me. ‘Right, basketball? A coach from America?’ I’m there in that deepest American accent: ‘How you doing?’ So that was it. ‘Okay, Father, sorry for disturbing you. Good night.’”
The spin was worth it. Every Friday night he’d get 75 quid for coaching those kids. Coaching was what kept him fed and later, little Darren and Neil. He figured that out very early in his time over here. Only a couple of games into his first season, Sporting’s backer flew a top veteran called Bruce ‘Soup’ Campbell into town and Randolph quickly did the maths. Three into two wasn’t going to go.
“So right away as Ed Randolph I learned to survive. You’d Jasper McElroy and Kelvin Troy and Mario Elie and all the great players that came through here. I may not have been as skilful as them but I knew how to survive. I started doing the little things. Soup didn’t want to coach. I was willing to coach. I was a good ambassador. I coached the women’s team. On Saturday mornings I’d coach the club’s kids. One day I asked: ‘If I do some extra schools, do I get paid?’ And someone said: ‘Yeah.’”
Generations of Irish children would go on to be coached and charmed by one of life’s most genial gentlemen. This writer first encountered him when I was 14 at a residential camp in Killarney. Over the years in Loretto Abbey in Rathfarnam, he’d coach and befriend the likes of Yvonne Connolly to the point she’d mind Darren when he was a kid and would invite him to her wedding to Ronan Keating. He teaches PE in St Joseph’s, Cluny, in Killiney as well as take all their school teams. Just this year he coached Muckross Park College in Donybrook to an All-Ireland C schools title. He runs and coaches his own club, Dublin Raiders.
Yet the place he’s probably most associated in all his time in Ireland is the little town of Ennistymon. After a couple of years playing in Liverpool, Randolph got another call from Fergie Woods. A good friend of his, Enda Byrt, in the west of Ireland was stuck for an American after the one he had bolted for home.
Randolph’s first session with the Claremont Admirals was conducted on a gravel outdoor court in which one of the baskets had fallen almost into the river by the Falls Hotel. The new community centre wasn’t completed yet and over the following weeks Randolph would be pictured on his hands and knees, helping the locals and his team-mates installing and varnishing the floor. But then it was Saturday Night Lights. For two years the team barely won a game but Randolph won the hearts and minds of a whole town.
“We would play after Mass. Because that way everyone would come into town. And you’d have farmers and everyone from around wanting to see this game called basketball and this big black American that was 6’5, 6’8 – Hey, I just got bigger and bigger – that could dunk the ball. I was a phenomenon.”
What was it like being a phenomenon? The best way he can describe it diplomatically is that he attracted “loads of attention”. Just leave it at that, okay? “LOADS of attention.”
But after a while, all his attention turned to Anne, a beautiful Kiltimagh woman working in the local AIB bank. A few years later they were living together in Dublin, then they had Darren, then they married and later had Neil.
Sometimes they were frowned upon as a couple. One night in the late ’80s, when Ed was playing for Galway Democrats, they were outside a bar in Eyre Square when a member of a rugby team from the north disapprovingly asked Anne: “You’re with him?” It was one of the few occasions in all of Randolph’s time here that he encountered racism and had momentary thoughts of exacting violence, before Anne discreetly checked him and navigated a way out.
It even took her family some time to accept who was coming to dinner, to the point he initially wasn’t even invited to it, before like the rest of the country they could only warm to the gentleman from sunny Florida. For 25 years now the pair of them has lived in Bray. This is where their two children went to school here, and while they played hoops for Marian, they’d play Gaelic locally for the Emmets and soccer for Ardmore Rovers.
At 15 Darren was signed by Charlton. That made him the second member of the household to play professional sport in England. A few weeks after Soup Campbell had breezed into Belfast, Ed Randolph was picked up by Liverpool who were playing in the top basketball league in England.
He’d a couple of great years there, on and off the court. His place of residence was the Paradise Holiday Inn where his fellow American Mike Pyatt of former Neptune fame also stayed. After a game they might come in and find Mark Lawrenson, Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish at the bar and be introduced by a couple of mutual friends. Sometimes it would be the place where Paul Young would lay his hat, Boy George and Kajagoogoo too. The most memorable night of the lot though was when a ska band came to town.
Marcus Newburn, another one of Randolph’s American team-mates, had come back from a nightclub with some friends and quietly urged Randolph to take the backstairs and head down to the pool. A baffled Randolph duly followed him to find the members of Madness partying in the water with some naked ladies. Welcome to the House of Fun, y’all!
Maybe that’s why he didn’t come down as God, jury and judge on Darren when he struggled a bit in his early years at Charlton.
“As a young fella he could have learned quicker about body fat and to keep your nose down. But being in south-east London with some of the other academy guys, there were a lot of guys saying: ‘Hey, mon, let’s check out this!’ He was dating Rochelle Wiseman from The Saturdays. I remember when he bought his first house, it didn’t take long for an ex-pro with Chelsea who ran a taxi company to tip off the club that there was a lot of activity in his house ’til four in the morning.
“But, it was just all part of the journey. He wasn’t doing drugs or anything, but he’d to learn to pick and choose his partying. Because you’re a footballer. People watch you.”
There’ve been some magical days. Like his debut as a 19-year-old at Anfield. In the last game of the season Charlton were 2-1 up until a last-minute penalty was conceded. Darren got his hand to Harry Kewell’s effort, but it wasn’t enough to keep it out. After the game as Robbie Fowler saluted The Kop for the final time, Steven Gerrard approached the opposition’s goalkeeper. Top debut. Hope you have a top career. For a father who was already partial to Liverpool from playing and partying in the same city, Ed Randolph couldn’t help but think what a top man Gerrard was too.
There have been trying times. Like at Birmingham, where one day against Bournemouth he had to pick the ball out of the net eight times. The last day of the season his studs got caught in the ground and the ball rolled into the net for his team to go 2-0 down. It seemed certain then Birmingham were going down with it and no mistaking who their scapegoat would be. But that time his team-mates would bail him out and come back to draw 2-2.
Now this season he’s been bailing out West Ham in the Premiership and the national team when called upon. At 28, it’s all finally opening up for Darren.
As for his dad, when he began playing here in the ’80s he’d regularly attend a team-mate’s or friend’s 21st. Then it would progress to weddings and christenings. “Now,” he muses, “we go to more funerals.
“I’m 55. Who knows how long we’ve to go. But if I was to go now? With what I’ve seen and experienced from Ireland, the people I’ve met and the people’s lives I’ve touched, along with my own wife and two sons? I would die a happy man.
“They talk about living in the moment... now. It’s the taste of this cashew nut [sampling one from the bowl on his kitchen table]. Or the taste of this cup of tea [lifts and sips his cup]. Taking a deep breath [Breathes]. It’s life. It’s now. This is good. Because after this, you don’t know.
“There used to be an old friend of my father’s and he’d work with us [landscaping]. And he used to say to us: ‘Every step you take, death is right behind you.’ And I used to think: ‘Man, you’re crazy, messing with my head!’ But you know what, he was right. As time goes by, every step we take, death is right behind us.
“But,” he says, breaking out that familiar smile that has charmed generations in his adopted country, “the future is right ahead of us too.”
