EVERY year since 2013, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Tony ‘Butch’ Doran has organized an underage charity soccer blitz in aid of Wicklow Cancer Support.
t is an organization very close to his heart, having been close with them since his wife Adele’s cancer diagnosis in 2013, and it was through this association that the annual underage exhibition was conceived.
He explained: “At the time, we needed support so we were told to go down to Wicklow Cancer Support to see if they could help us out.
“When we went to Wicklow Cancer Support, they gave us all the support we needed whenever we needed to go to the hospital.
“From there on, our heart was in Wicklow Cancer Support. Adele told me to come up with some sort of fundraiser. We thought we would make €500 out of a raffle or something, so we ran a soccer blitz in 2013 and we raised almost €8,000. Up to 2019, we raised over €68,000. Even over Covid, we got kind donations from people of around €2,300 which took us above €70,000.”
Adele sadly passed away in 2015, but her memory continues to live on with every kick of a ball. The blitz is generally held around Easter, but on this occasion will take place this Saturday, August 20.
According to Butch himself, Adele was not a big soccer fan, but that did not stop her from supporting his own exploits. Doran is one of the most recognizable faces in Wicklow soccer. He started playing for Wicklow Town at the age of 10. Despite being a sub for much of the season – at that time replacements were not permitted unless in the event of an injury – he did play in the under-12 cup final, even scoring a goal and setting up two more.
When he married Adele, however, he changed to Arklow Town, while he also played for Wicklow Rovers and Avenue Wanderers. The latter was a splinter side from Wicklow Town, named Avenue Wanderers because the manager was a Wicklow Rovers loyalist.
He stopped playing football at 33 and proceeded to coach underage teams – including this humble writer’s Wicklow Town team – while he has also been refereeing since 2011.
“(Adele) didn’t like football at all.
“As you know yourself from being on my team, she was always at the football, she always wanted to help people. This was our way of paying back Wicklow Cancer Support.
“I have sisters who had cancer and other members of my family. Thankfully, we got through that. One of my sisters passed away, but the fact is that I have two brothers who got through it.”
The conversation then segues to how they first met.
“She was 15 years old (when we met) and she was married when she was 17 years old. Adele was the love of my life. I was 21 when I got married. This year, we would have been married for 45 years. There was a great feeling there between us.”
For the purpose of full disclosure, much of our 42-minute chat was dedicated to taking trips down memory lane. There were tales of his first training session in charge of the under-12 team of which I was a part way back when. The training session was taking place in the Astro-turf pitch adjacent to the playground opposite St. Patrick’s National School.
At the end of the previous season, I had won Players’ Player of the Year, and had come to the conclusion that I was Cristiano Ronaldo’s natural successor and would be receiving a phone call from Sir Alex Ferguson himself in the immediate future. As a result, I strutted up to my new manager to inform him that I was the team’s right winger.
For context, in seven years playing football for the club, I scored six goals. Cristiano Ronaldo, I was most certainly not.
We reminisced about our storied, if admittedly one-sided, rivalry against Ashford Rovers back in the day – Butch suitably describes them as the “thorn in your backsides” – including losing the U11 shield final to an Ashford goal in the final 30 seconds. That came before Butch’s time, but he was there a few years later when we lost to the same side at Finlay Park in a game that ended up abandoned.
He delved into what it was like coaching Barry Roche, who went on to play for Nottingham Forest, Morecambe, Chesterfield, and the Ireland U21s.
In another extraordinary yarn, he revealed that he was introduced to a certain Liverpool legend by Pat Devlin during his time as the Merseyside club’s chief scout in Ireland.
He explains: “He came down to see me at work down in Arklow one time. He was doing a tournament for the FAI and Pat rang up and said, ‘Butch, where do you work?’ and I told him where I worked.
“This day, it was a scorching day like today, and Pat Devlin called me. ‘Whereabouts are you, Butch? I am on the Wexford Road’ and I said, ‘just up past Tesco’.
“Who comes in but Kenny Dalglish!”
“There were four or five customers at the till and they kept looking. I kept looking because I had never seen Kenny Dalglish myself.”
On one Saturday, he received another call from Pat Devlin, once again concerning Kenny Dalglish. On that occasion, however, he would be coming to watch a match to scout a couple of the team’s players, including a certain Collie Byrne.
All of the necessary preparations were made. He told Collie’s parents to make sure he didn’t go out the night before the game as there was an unnamed scout coming to watch him – he thought it best not to mention who that particular scout was – while Miley Doran had the pitch looking so immaculate that it wouldn’t have looked out of place at Anfield.
Unfortunately, Collie suffered a knee injury and would not be able to play in the game. Devlin and Dalglish arrived at the ground, found out, and left again before the game was played.
We spoke for 42 minutes, but we could have spoken for twice as long, such was his virtually eidetic memory of his life in and around football.
His passion for the sport is abundant throughout, a passion which continues to this day and which has carried on through the Doran generations; his son, Anthony, coaches at Wicklow Town, while his grandchildren also play.
It is part of what makes this Saturday’s blitz all the more precious. A fitting memorial for Adele, a festival of underage football in County Wicklow with up to 48 teams – ranging from under-8s to under-13s – expected to take part in matches across Finlay Park and Whitegates, and an opportunity to raise money for the worthiest of worthy causes.
And hey, there will be a full size replica of the Premier League trophy for the adults to participate in a bit of vicarious wish fulfillment.
The Doran Family Soccer Blitz, in aid of Wicklow Cancer Support, takes place on Saturday, August 20 at Finlay Park, Wicklow Town. If anyone is interested in volunteering, please email [email protected] or contact Tony ‘Butch’ Doran at 087-363-7797.