Manchester United’s Young Veteran

Sammy McIl­roy

Born in East Bel­fast, Sammy McIl­roy hails from a dis­trict that has pro­duced numer­ous Manchester United play­ers up through the years. McIl­roy was spot­ted by Bob Bishop while still a school­boy player and was adviced to seek his foot­ball for­tune in the calmer climes of Eng­land as his coun­try was tot­ter­ing on the brink of Civil War.

The last youth player to be signed by Manchester United man­ager Sir Matt Busby, Sammy McIl­roy arrived in Manchester as a fresh faced teen­ager in the sum­mer of 1969. What the Prot­est­ant boy lacked in nat­ural abil­ity he more than made up for in hard work and he made jaws drop when he found the back of the net on his Manchester United debut against crosstown rivals Manchester City at Maine Road in Novem­ber 1971. The for­ward think­ing mid­field player became an instant hit with the home fans and soon estab­lished him­self in the Manchester United first team under man­ager Frank O´Farrell. The Irish­man pro­ceeded to accu­mu­late an impress­ive total of 391 appear­ances for Manchester United and he played an import­ant part in the noth­ing but fant­astic revival of the sleep­ing giant in the nine­teen sev­en­ties. After finally leav­ing Manchester United mid­way through the 1981–82 cam­paign, the pop­u­lar player went on to appear for Stoke City, Manchester City, Bury, Pre­ston North End and North­wich Vic­toria. An inter­na­tional for North­ern Ire­land, Sammy McIl­roy amassed 88 senior caps and played in all of the country’s games dur­ing both the 1982 World Cup in Spain and the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

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