By Malcolm Brodie

26 November 2004

When one studies the history of Distillery the names of the Burnison brothers, Joe, Sam and Harold, are enshrined in it - each captained an Irish Cup winning team spread over almost a quarter of a century.

It was Joe, an Irish international, who made a comment now part of Irish football folklore: "The Whites wear a colour that never fades - and neither will the club."

Most people in football have a soft spot for Distillery, a club that has experienced amazing twists of fortune, great moments and then despair and knockbacks.

Yet, despite many star-studded teams, the club never generated the prolonged and consistent support it deserved.

The story is superbly chronicled in The Whites - a History of Distillery Football Club 1880-2004 by Dawson Simpson, a Northern Ireland librarian, who has spent more than a decade researching and writing this tome on a team he has followed since a teenager.

What is more, he paid for the production out of his own pocket.

That is real dedication to the cause. It is a an enthralling and nostalgic 220-page read sprinkled with dozens of rare photographs of teams, and legendary personalities.

Leading Seaman James Magennis, VC kicking off against Linfield at Grosvenor Park on December 14, 1945, and those memorable European nights against Benfica and Barcelona - an invaluable addition to the growing number of books on Irish League football.

The chapters are split into decades with brief pen pictures of key players at the end of them and the appendices supply all the statistics.

The Whites, oldest professional club in Ireland, have had a remarkable series of firsts in local football: Ireland's first goal scored by Sam Johnston against Wales in February, 1882 at Wrexham; three time Irish Cup winners 1883-84;84-85,1885-86; Irish Junior Cup winners, 1888, international hat-trick scored by Olphie Stanfield against Wales in Belfast, 1889, season tickets issued by Whites, 1901-02; winning Irish Cup without conceding a goal 1904-05; erection of tubular goalposts and crush barriers, installation of permanent floodlights, December 1952; £1,000 player Gerry Bowler when signed from Derry City; introduction of squad numbers and players names on shirts.

This book is really an encyclopaedia of Distillery.

In it you will find the background to the first floodlit matches played in Ireland on Thursday December 19, 1889 by Lucigen Light - compressed air produced from carbon hydro oil as a large brush of flame, about six inches in diameter and 26 high capable of lighting a considerable era. Distillery won 7-0.

Olphie Stanfield in an article in 1951 observed: "No serious football could have been played under, as we termed it then, the Lucy Lane lights.

Four lights were insufficient to light the ground - it required eight."

Distillery's early teams included Sam Johnston, the youngest player to wear the Ireland jersey at 15 years and 154 days and who signed for Linfield in 1887-88; one of the players on the books just before the start of the First World War was George Kay, the Bolton centre-half who later became Liverpool manager and, of course, full back Billy McCracken is arguably their most famous player.

The Whites - A History of Distillery Football Club 1880-2004 by Dawson Simpson is published December 4. Copies can be obtained at the Distillery Shop, New Grosvenor Stadium, or by e-mail from www.lisburn-distillery.net £13.

 

Article reproduced courtesy of Belfast Telegraph