OBITUARY: Republic of Ireland player and manager Liam Tuohy
Dundalk’s heroics in Warsaw this week saw Stephen Kenny’s men come so close to going where no League of Ireland club has gone before, by qualifying for the group stages of the Champions League.
But their brush with glory was not wholly without precedent in the history of Irish club football in Europe, the Lilywhites’ prodigious effort in trying to overturn a two-goal first leg deficit against Legia Warsaw recalling the arguably even more daunting challenge faced by Shamrock Rovers away to Bayern Munich in the old European Cup Winners’ Cup back in 1966.
Central to that night of drama in Munich 50 years ago was Liam Tuohy whose recent passing at the age of 83 has been mourned throughout the extended Irish football family.
Tuohy was player-manager for a Rovers side which had already exceeded all expectations by holding the German giants 1-1 in the first leg in Dalymount Park, this at a time when the Bayern team could boast such stellar names as Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller and Sepp Maier. But in the return game on an icy night in the Bavarian capital, things quickly went from good to bad to worse for the Irish part-timers as the home side raced into a 2-0 goal lead inside the first 15 minutes, meaning they were 3-1 ahead on aggregate at half-time, with the bonus of an away goal already in the bag.
Paddy Mulligan, later to become a star with Ireland and Chelsea, played in both legs and recalls how magnificently Tuohy delivered, as a player and as a manager, when the chips were really down.
“Liam Tuohy wanted you to express yourself on the pitch and he always preached that if you kept your nerve, your balance and your discipline, you’d be okay,” Paddy recalls. “And as it transpired, we were. They were probably lulled into a false sense of security because they were two up. But we were a very good team and we had an awful lot of resilience as well.
“And we had Liam. He had many great games for Shamrock Rovers but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play better. He was such an intelligent player. He ghosted into positions, made these wonderful runs, brilliantly timed, and I think it was those that caught Bayern off guard.
“He had wonderful close control too. Back in those days, playing as a left winger or inside left, he was known as a dribbler. Or as they say in the modern parlance, he could go past people. Tuohy was brilliant at that and was exceptional that night in Munich.”
After a rousing Tuohy half-time talk, Bobby Gilbert grabbed a goal for Rovers 10 minutes after the restart. Then Tuohy got in on the act himself, rounding a defender and beating Maier to make it 2-2 on the night and 3-3 on aggregate, so that with a half an hour to go, Rovers suddenly found themselves leading on the away goal and, as a result, on the very brink of qualifying, in the most sensational fashion, for the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
But with just seven minutes remaining, there was heartbreak for the Hoops — and all those at home listening to Philip Greene’s increasingly impassioned commentary on RTÉ radio – as the feared Muller struck to put Bayern ahead again, 4-3 on aggregate, a lead they defended to the end.
While Bayern survived that monumental scare to go on and claim the glittering prize that year, beating Rangers in the final, Rovers returned to business as usual at home as, under the guidance of Tuohy, they went on to create their celebrated record of six-in-a-row FAI Cup triumphs.
Striker Mick Leech, one of the Hoops stars of that era, had long been only too aware of Liam Tuohy’s brilliance as a player.
“As a kid who was a Pat’s fan, I hated Liam Tuohy because of what he used to do against us,” he laughs. “And then, when I was 17, he signed me for Rovers and, as I like to say, he gave me his place a few weeks later. My debut was against Dundalk at Milltown and halfway through the match Liam took himself off and put me on - and that was sort of the end of his playing career and the start of mine.”
And the apprentice game to revere the master, playing under him for Rovers and Ireland. Liam had a great ability to be one of the players and a manager at the same time,” says Leech. “Liam could be one of the lads yet you always knew he was the boss when it came to the crunch. There was no such thing as the hair-dryer treatment with him but he could lay the law down. You respected whatever he said. He was the most quick-witted, sharpest fella you could meet. He’d never be stuck for a word.”
Mulligan, who has no doubt Tuohy could have managed at the highest level in England, also believes he played a crucial role in helping forge a more professional era for the national senior team.
“He was like a breath of fresh air coming into the Irish set-up,” he says. “In the old days it was selection by committee but then Liam Tuohy came in and everything was organised and more professional from then on. He was a trendsetter in so many eras: In the 50s playing for Rovers, in the 60s playing and managing Rovers, in the 70s managing Ireland and then, in the 80s, managing youths.”
Eoin Hand, who played for Ireland under Tuohy and was senior manager when the latter was masterminding great underage success, still speaks with anger and dismay about the fall-out from the decision of then newly appointed Ireland boss Jack Charlton to hijack Tuohy’s team talk at half-time during a youths game against England in 1986 – interference which prompted Liam to resign as a matter of principle.
“That was a disgrace and then his talents were lost to the FAI,” Hand laments. “I know for a fact when I was managing the senior team that everything was done the right way at underage level under Liam. But then all that knowledge was just thrown away. But Liam’s attitude was to just get on with it at Home Farm. The glass was always half-full with Liam. He devoted so much of his life to football and that was simply because he loved it.”
And football, in turn, loved him.
The last word goes to Paddy Mulligan.
“If you were in Liam Tuohy’s company you couldn’t help but be impressed and touched by him,” he says, “and you could never forget him for the rest of your life.”
