Morrissey's People: The unsung hero of Doyle Street

This article featured in the July 11, 2017 edition.

ON Friday last, Michael Walsh arrived at work prepared for a 12-hour day. Stepping into the Regional Sports Centre, Waterford FC’s kit man carries out an array of tasks on match day including setting up the manager’s flip charts, pumping the footballs and laying out the players’ gear. Jokingly, he explains that he is waiting to be told that he is no longer needed.

“At the start I was told they were looking at getting someone in and that I’d only be there a little while,” he says, “that was 1978 - it’s 2017 now and they’re still looking!” Michael, who turns 70 this month, has lived in Lisduggan since 1970 but is originally from Doyle Street, one of the proudest parts of his home city.

“People from Doyle Street, Morrison’s Road and all the places along Barrack Street looked after each other. If anybody came up to cause hassle to anyone in those areas would be… I suppose you would call it vigilante now! Back then we would give a couple of clatters to make sure they didn’t come back to the area and get on with things ourselves.” “The milkman, rent man or coalman’s money would all be left on the mantelpiece and you would leave the key in the door, tell them to come in and help themselves! They would take the money, leave the change and the receipts there and nobody ever took advantage of that. When you were going out in the night there was no such thing as having your own key – it was left in the door for you all night and nobody would come near the place. You couldn’t do any of that now.” The past pupil of Mount Sion was one of four children to a mother working in the Jute factory and a Dad in the army. While he enjoyed school, despite receiving a few clatters on the back of the knee from teachers, his day would really begin when he arrived home and dumped his schoolbag in the hall.

“They’re all playing these video games nowadays. We would take out the football and go out until it either got pitch dark or the fella who owned the ball got called in. If he did that was game over. There was none of this half-hour a-side, you could be out there for five or six hours. And I enjoyed every minute of it. The fella who owned the ball was the only fella always to get a game, if not they would go home with the ball!” He left school at 13 to help contribute to the family’s earnings, helping clean Tom Molloy’s each day, and later picked up a job at Waterford Crystal for six years.

“Everybody worked hard but there was always good craic there. You wouldn’t get it now where everything is so regimental. Somebody might put a pair of smelly slippers or socks in a bucket with a cloth over it and when the person sitting near it would pick it up to see what it was they would get this smell in their face. I was caught out a couple of times. There would be new fellas looking all over the place for a glass hammer and I was looking for a bucket of steam once! Anybody who says they weren’t are lying. We were all caught out but we all got our own back later on as well.” Following a brief stint in England a homesick Michael returned to Waterford to work in Waterford Metal Industries and the Texaco Garage on Military Road, a job he cannot speak highly enough. A natural people’s person, many customers become friends of his throughout his decade there.

The job he is most passionate about however is his role with his beloved Blues. A 16-year-old Michael first got involved with the club doing bits and pieces for them, including some time as a groundsman, before manager Tony Jackson asked him to give a hand organising the gear for the squad.

Speaking of his childhood memories of supporting the team, Michael recalls: “There used to be free buses that would leave from where the trees are nowadays on Barrack Street. Anybody who wanted to go would hop on it and head out to Kilcohan and then the bus would come back in and collect another crowd. The Barrack Street Band would walk out on match day as well and there was 300-400 marching out with them. Hopefully we will get the good times back again.” Having served 51 years for the club in some shape or form, he has witnessed first-hand the highs and lows that inevitably come with football and met no shortage of characters along the way.

“There was one chap who used to play for us, Al Finucane, he had a big knee brace on his left knee and after about five or six years I said to him “Al that knee must be very bad”. He said there was nothing wrong with that one, it was his right knee that troubled him. By putting it on that one they’ll keep hitting me on what they think is the bad knee. Then there’s been a lot of players who come in and need things the exact way they want it for superstition. It mightn’t count for anything but if it keeps them happy you do it that way.” While he only ever played Junior football, he is as passionate about the beautiful game as anyone and he thanks his wife for understanding how much it means to him, jokingly adding “when there’s a match on she won’t get me to do anything around the house!” The most important thing isn’t what happens on the pitch to Michael however, that is the people off it.

“You’re involved with everyone; the players, the manager, there’s not a club that we travel to where I don’t know somebody from over the years whether they be working for the club or players who used to play with Waterford. The sort of friendships that we make, no money could pay you for it. It’s great.” 

In conversation with Ronan Morrissey.