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 includ­ing names such as George Best, David McCreery and Nor­man Whiteside. McIl­roy was spot­ted by legendary tal­ent scout Bob Bishop while still a school­boy player and was adviced to seek his foot­ball for­tune in the calmer climes of Eng­land as North­ern Ire­land 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 bit­ter crosstown rivals Manchester City at Maine Road in Novem­ber 1971. The for­ward think­ing mid­field player became an instant favour­ite with the home sup­port­ers and soon estab­lished him­self in the Manchester United first team under 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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