The Man They Couldn't Ban: The story of Ireland's 'most harshly treated footballer of all time'
John Crossan and Brian Clough in 1964. Picture: Colmcille Press
It's 1984. A 14-year-old boy in an over sized school blazer stares longingly into a fogged up sports shop window.
His eyes darting across the disorganised but tantalising collection of replica jersies, football boots, gloves, sports coats, balls and, of course, gold and silver trophies just waiting to be won.
Oblivious to the synapses being fired and the dreams bursting into life on the wet pavement outside, a group of aging grey haired men sit behind the glass cradling cups of steaming hot tea, laughing and shooting the breeze around an old gas supersayer.
The boy is, of course, my teenage self in a scene replicated often on the days on which I made my way home from St Columb's College in Derry via a bus stop just yards away from the city's most famous sports shop.
The day dreams sparked into life by the shop window at 'Jobby's Sports Centre' took on even added vibrancy when a school friend who lived nearby pointed out that sitting among the ordinary looking and slowly greying men was a man who had played professional football for Standard Liege, Sunderland and Manchester City.
In a decade where the millionaire superstar sportsman (they were still only men) exploded into our consciousness - from Michael Jordan to Diego Maradona - here was one who had seen similar sporting heights (if not pay cheques) shooting the breeze in our midst ... and he looked ordinary.
That man's name was, and is, John 'Jobby' Crossan. Last week a new book on the now 82-year-old's life was published and at last provides the definitive and perhaps most overdue account of what must be one of the most compelling and enduring of Irish sporting stories.
It is, in short, the story of an Irish footballer once described by Bobby Charlton as one of the games most skilful and who The Guardian newspaper has said is entitled to assume the mantle of 'the most harshly treated professional footballer of all time'.
Those who go to the bother of reading it will understand why that adjective is not, in this case, platitudinous.
John Crossan was born and reared in working-class Derry but was banned from playing professional football for life in 1959 after he demanded a higher cut of his own transfer fee from Derry City to Sunderland.
An expulsion later partially lifted on condition the young Derryman only played outside the British Isles.
Undeterred, Crossan followed his dream of playing professional football. First playing with the Dutch champions Sparta Rotterdam - where he reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup - and then moving to Standard Liege in Belgium where - after beating Glasgow Rangers in the 1963 European Cup quarterfinals - lost out on an historic final place to a Real Madrid side containing Di Stefano and Puskas.
The book reveals how Crossan made his international debut for Northern Ireland against England at Wembley but enraged at his call-up the football hierarchy in the North ensured it would be another three years before he played his second.
In all Crossan won just 24 caps for Northern Ireland, scoring 10 goals as an inside forward, including a hat trick in a World Cup qualifier.
'The Man They Couldn't Ban' recounts how on his return from the Continent - after his ban was lifted - Crossan spent two seasons at Sunderland where he became close friends with the legendary Brian Clough and one of Cork's most famous sons, Charlie Hurley.
Hurley played 40 times for the Republic of Ireland and between 1959 and 1969 made 358 league appearances and scored 23 goals for Sunderland. The Corkman was Sunderland captain and was part of one of the most notable and settled back fives in the club’s history. He secured legendary status on Tyneside when, despite playing in the lower division, finished second in the 1963/64 Footballer of the Year vote.
After helping the Black Cats win promotion to the top flight in that 1963/64 season, Crossan then moved to a struggling Manchester City where he quickly became club captain and again lead that side to the First Division.
After some 'off-the-field problems'- described in the book - Crossan was transferred to Middlesbrough before ending his playing career in Belgium with KSK Tongeren.
Packed with footballing anecdotes that are insightful and rivetting the book does not, however, shy away from the prejudices that surrounded Northern Ireland football league structures at the time Crossan - as a working class Catholic - was attempting to make his way in professional football.
Crossan reflects honestly on how different his career - and that of his two professional football-playing brothers, Eddie and Jim(bo) - would have been in a fairer society.
Scottish international, Paddy Crerand, Crossan's good friend despite having played for the opposing sides in the great Manchester rivalry, has written the foreword to the book.
'The Man They Couldn't Ban' is an authorised biography and was written over a period of seven years by Crossan's former broadcasting colleague and friend, Richie Kelly.
Kelly is himself a former senior League of Ireland footballer who played with Finn Harps. The two became close friends when Crossan was recruited by the BBC as a football analyst when Derry City returned to League of Ireland football in the 1980s.
"Charlie Hurley, during the period I was at Sunderland and indeed throughout the greater part of his Roker Park career, was the best centre-half of that time – not just in England but anywhere in the world.
"I never saw better. Charlie was stupendous as a centre-back and he wasn’t just a magnificent header of the ball. He could play like a midfielder.
"What I recall is that ‘Big Charlie’ used to come up at set-plays – corners and free kicks. Often his headers would get blocked and quite often, as I’ve often suggested to people, I’d get goals as a result.
"Charlie could have got on any team, anywhere. He was magnificent. Technically his ability was outstanding. He was superb. He was ever so dangerous as an attacker of the ball in the air when we were on the offensive. A supreme footballer as well. What a defender!"
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
