New United coach Lumsden a hit with Cork Hibs, recalls Allen

New Manchester United coach Jimmy Lumsden, who has joined manager David Moyes from Everton, spent part of his playing career with Cork Hibernians in the 1970s.

Dinny Allen, who captained Cork to the 1989 All-Ireland football title, played with Hibs at the time and has fond memories of his former team-mate.

“He was super to play with,” Allen recalled.

“He used to play in midfield and he was kind of small but he was a real players’ player.

“He was very good at one-touch stuff, if the ball was coming towards him he’d have the next move planned in his head already.

“From that point of view he was a dream, because you’d be waiting all day to get the ball from other fellas!”

One standout memory for Allen is a goal Lumsden scored against FA Cup holders Sunderland in a friendly in 1973.

“We played them in Flower Lodge, there must have been 15,000 or 20,000 people there,” he said. “We won 2-1 and Jimmy got a brilliant goal from a free-kick late on. It was funny because John Lawson normally took our free-kicks and there were a few players standing over the ball but Jimmy must have seen a gap, he ran up and just let it rip into the roof of the net.

“After just winning the FA Cup, they wouldn’t have liked being beaten by a League of Ireland team but we had some good players then.”

Unfortunately, Lumsden didn’t taste success in his spell on Leeside.

“He was there for a season and a half, I suppose,” Allen said.

“Although we had won the cup in ’73, we weren’t too successful in the 1973-74 League campaign, people had been expecting us to win stuff and we were well down the league.

“Jimmy left halfway through the following season, it was a pity that he hadn’t been with us a few years earlier when we had been successful.

“He stayed in touch with me and was on at me to go over to England but I had just signed for Cork Celtic and was contemplating going back playing GAA so in the end nothing came of it.”

While Allen has not met Lumsden in years, every so often he heard dispatches that the Scot was asking for him.

“He was at Preston as a coach when Brian Barry-Murphy was over there,” he said. “When he found out that Brian was from Cork, he asked him if he had ever heard of Dinny Allen and when Brian said, ‘He’s married to my aunt’, he couldn’t get over it!”