Maurice, one of my older brothers, embarked upon a career in banking in March 1949 when the portals of the Belfast Banking Company's head office at Waring Street, Belfast, were opened to him.
At that time, no more than a stripling of sixteen years, he was to spend the next forty years, his entire working life, with that financial institution.

No mean Gaelic footballer himself and a free taking aficionado to boot he was to win County Minor League and Championship medals with his home club, Kilkeel Young Emeralds, in 1949 by virtue of victory over Ballynahinch. Incidentally this same team had been beaten in the previous year's 1948 Minor Championship Final after a replay by an outstanding Newry Shamrocks' team. The winning margin was one point.

It should be borne in mind that extremely valuable contributions to this success were made by players from the lower Moume clubs of Ballymartin and Longstone. It behoves me also to record that the man who engineered the achievements of this team was none other than the peerless Joe Donnan, still happily, actively and successfully promoting the ideals of the Association half a century later with An Riocht.

Having settled into the austere life of post-war Belfast Maurice was soon to become captivated by the spell of another sporting phenomenon of that time; one which had won the admiration and support of huge sections of the population of Belfast, patricularly in the Falls area, the country at large and further afield.

This was the Belfast Celtic Football and Athletic Club, to give it its full title. The season of 1947/48 was a particularly successful one for Celtic and my brother on his end of week visits home to Kilkeel would hold myself and several other brothers in thrall recounting the daring exploits of these "demi-gods" in the green and white hoops.

The eruption of naked sectarian violence following the St. Stephen's Day fixture of 1948, against Linfield at Windsor Park was to leave indelible scars on his memory. So foul and revolting were the events of the immediate aftermath of that day's match, which were targeted mostly against one of Celtic's most prolific forwards, that a series of decisions were taken by the club's directors to terminate the club's activities. By April 1949 all the playing staff of the Belfast Celtic Club were placed on the transfer market.

The club however had been the Irish League Champions of the previous season and as such had been invited to play a series of exhibition games in the United States and Canada during the early summer of 1949.

As J.J.Tohill so fluently recounts in his historical survey of the Celtic Club, it was to be "a fitting finale to the great club's sixty year history."

The highlight of the ten match tour was undoubtedly the defeat of the Scottish National team in New York on May 29th 1949. The final score - Celtic 2, Scotland 0.

The outcome of the demise of the Belfast Celtic club augured for me the final curtain of the epic weekend stories. My brother Maurice was transferred to the Derry City Branch of the Belfast Bank in March 1950. At this juncture I was ten years of age.

By the time July of 1960 had come and gone another sporting saga, this time G.A.A., of Homeric proportions was beginning to unfold.

Down had collected its second Ulster Senior Football title, again at Cavan's expense, and was girding itself for what was to be a crunching encounter against a strongly motivated,skillful and hard hitting team from Offaly.

Subsequent to the defeat of Cavan in Ulster the Down Management and Selectors' Panel, in an effort to enhance the players' performances, called upon the services of a professional team of masseurs from Belfast.

Paddy McGuigan, Ar dheis De go raibh a anam, and his two sons Pat and Sean made up the "physio" department. while Charlie McGettigan, a Springfield Road chemist, supplied the olive oil and plied his skills as a chiropodist dealing with advice and treatment of a wide variety of foot ailments, ranging from fallen arches to ingrowing toe nails, corns and athlete's foot. He was kept busy.

Paddy normally carried on his practice in his own house at Sevastopol Street, off the Falls Road, in West Belfast. In his younger days he was the "assistant trainer" of the various Belfast Celtic teams, gaining experience and "hands-on" knowledge of the ancient skills of the art of massage and of the benefits that accrue to the mental and physical make-up of the human body by its proper application.

This team of professionals set to work immediately and were available after all training sessions in an upstairs room of St. Malachy's Secondary School in Castlewellan of which incidentally our own Down trainer, the genial Danny Flynn, Ar dheis De go raibh a anam, was Principal.

The advent of the McGuigan entourage was indeed a timely one and reflected good judgement from the team management.

This thinking was a feature of the Down attitude to pre-match provision in earlier years when its teams were facing important encounters in Championship competitions.

Frank McGreevy, Ar dheis Dd go raibh a anam, the Newry Town masseur made an invaluable contribution to the overall levels of fitness and mobility of the trail-blazing Down team of 1946, when winning the All Ireland Junior title that year. Mickey McMahon and Owen McManus of Newry performed a similar role with Down Senior teams of the forties and early fifties.

The All Ireland semi-final of 1960 would require the utilisation of every fibre of muscle, nerve and mental capacity to dispense with the Offaly challenge. It is well documented that at this juncture Peter McDermot of Meath was invited to join with the team and management to complement an all-out thrust for Championship victory.

Paddy McGuigan at this stage was of the opinion that he could only get the best out of his team and himself by performing on his "home ground".

As a result the Down players were invited to Celtic Park on the Donegal Road, Belfast to avail of the facilities that existed in the players' changing area under the main stand. All available players were to attend every Thursday evening until the end of the Championship.

I was particularly animated at this prospect; not only to be present in the stadium itself but to enjoy the same  facilities used by those legendary heroes with whom I had empathised as a young boy when listening to my brother's  week-end chronicles. The stadium was in a sorry state of decay. This was a source of some discomfiture but what could one expect after eleven years of terminal decline. The terracing uneven and broken and in many places overgrown with grass and weeds; the stand and covered terracing rusting, bereft and abandoned.

Clusters of people were huddled in both sides under the covered areas cheering and shouting as greyhounds sped around a perimeter track chasing after an electric hare. A baleful voice intoned, "winner all right". My sense of disillusionment was complete.

One beacon illuminated the gloom; the playing surface, the focal point of any arena was above reproach, obviously attended by a solicitous groundsman, it was perfection itself, verdant and even.

Our introduction to the Board Room was also a gratifying experience but with elements of melancholy at every turn. The Charity Cup, which Celtic had won outright, was gleaming in the glass panel cabinet surrounded by several other shields and minor trophies. Polished mahogany panels incised with gold-leaf lettering bore the names of the club's past chairmen and members of the various Boards of Directors as well as proclaiming the role of honour of competitions won  and the names of the winning teams, for posterity.

In all forty two major trophies were won in the forty eight seasons of activities since its foundation in 1899/1900 until  its demise at the end of 1948/49. Photos of all the successful teams adomed the walls as did a selection of the International caps won by the club's players

The substantial boardroom table with a full complement of appropriately heavy chairs were still in position and obviously still in use.

We then proceeded to the changing quarters of the "Home Team".

It was a spacious room of spartan furnishing and decor and poorly lit.

At one end of this area were the washing and bathing facilities; six shower heads and six flat baths with hot and cold at all outlets. Wooden planking at knee height around the walls was the only seating and at intervals above this was a series of clothes hooks. Two adjustable physio couches occupied the middle of the floor space while Paddy and his assistants were preparing for the onslaught upon the athletic bodies which would absorb their labours during the following three hours.

The six flat baths were brim full of steaming hot water, well laced with what Paddy referred to as his special formula After twenty minutes of being submerged to the neck and half a stone lighter one was assisted onto the couch. Paddy whose nimble hands and fingers had accelerated proficiency because of the use of copious amounts of olive oil pummelled, stretched and massaged every known muscle, and many that weren't, ligament, sinew and joint. Every weakness, old injury or ailment came under close scrutiny. Anything that slipped past the initial analysis by hands and head   was soon exposed when Paddy produced his box of "electrical therapy aids".

He placed great store on this aspect of healing having himself  been an alumnus of the Swedish institute of Massage and Electricity, the illuminated scroll which testified to this fact occupied a place of honour on the wall of his private surgery in his Sevastopol Street home.

Once the electrodes were attached to the body, Paddy went to work with a vengeance to determine one's maximum tolerance. The control was then turned one notch higher.

Limbs, muscles and torso lashed about in an involuntary and macabre sort of way to an accompaniment of shouts and pleas for mercy. This was the climax of the session and generally signalled its termination. Paddy's sons Pat and Sean removed the chastened "patient" from the couch and only after a period of rest and a shower did one robe.

During the succeeding days, Friday and Saturday, a great surge of strength and well being built up in the system and by the time Sunday arrived the mind and body felt as if it could overcome any challenge with absolute confidence.

While on the same couch on my next visit to Celtic Park as Paddy was busy completing his routine my eyes started to explore the dim recesses and darkened corners of the changing room. They came to rest on a sizeable cuboid object which was in fact a wicker basket identical to the large wicker laundry baskets of forty years ago.

Having questioned Paddy about it and its contents he became slightly withdrawn and less animated than heretofore but slowly, solemnly and with reverence he told me the spellbinding story.

The basket contained the entire "skip", and by skip he meant jerseys, shorts, socks, boots and shinguards of a full panel of twenty players of the Belfast Celtic team which toured America and Canada in the Spring of 1949 with such acclaim, especially in the defeat of the Scottish National team.

There it had remained padlocked, sarcophagus like, for the last eleven years in solitary, lonely, unattended isolation

The agitation of my imagination knew no restraint.

The progress of the Down team during the rest of the 1960 championship is well documented. Paddy and his associates were more than quietly satisfied with the success of the team.

Persons of that quality and pedigree are not dispensed with lightly so the McGuigan team was retained for the following year. I was a student and teacher in Belfast during this period of the early sixties as well as being the regular 'number three' throughout the period when Down reached such dizzy heights.

Life as a full back in those days was not a place for the squeamish and it was commonplace to end up after matches with more than the normal allocation of weals and blemishes from the crunching wear and tear absorbed by a player in the square.

Because of persistent joint and muscle injuries I was advised to seek out the services of Paddy on his home territory which, as already stated was in an upstairs room of his terrace house in Sevastapol Street, off the Lower Falls Road.

His clinic was in a small upstairs room adjacent to the bathroom.

The procedure for treatment was similar to that administered at Celtic Park with some refinements added. The session was initiated in the bath, only this time it was a foam bath, quite a luxury for those days.It was a softening up process and included  the addition of another of his secret remedies.

After fifteen minutes one emerged to be swathed in white bath towels. Only the face was exposed and one lay immobile on the couch sweating profusely.

Another fifteen minutes and the towels were removed. Paddy the masseur went into action, his hands and fingers doing their blessed work of pain relief and restoration of calm.

The evidence of electrical apparatus was everywhere and his testimonials of eligibility in this field were proudly displayed on the wall.

The spac of another wall was nearly completely taken up with an outsize colour enlargement of Kevin McAlinden, the Celtic goalkeeper, at full stretch putting a ball around the post on the occasion of that famous win against Scotland,at Triborge Stadium, New York on May 29th 1949 before 15000 spectators.

J. J.Tohill refers to this result as "amazing and one that was to re-echo around the football world". The caption underneath the outstretched McAlinden was, "Oh what a glorious day".

For the duration of these sessions Paddy would recount nostalgically the stories of his Celtic years and of the "dramatis personae" involved - Elisha Scott ex Liverpool goalkeeper, later to become Celtic goalkeeper and manager, players Harry Walker, Jackie Vemon,Charlie Tully, Tommy Breen, Bertie Fulton, Norman Kemaghan, Bud Aherne, Davy Boy Martin, Billy McMillan, Johnny Campbell, Paddy Bonar and so the quiet Belfast voice went on and on.

The appointment would be nearing its completion and this heralded a short burst of infra-red heat followed by a few minutes of the ultra-violet lamp.

Having clothed and rested for a few minutes Paddy invariably insisted that for the treatment to be most efficacious and on account of the loss of body fluids one had to drink and enjoy a glass of  hospital stout - a specially matured Guinness made by Lyle & Kinehan of Belfast and which was supplied to hospitals for recuperating patients.

Going down the narrow stairway after thanks and farewell I found myself having to stop to allow the next patient access to the upper room. Many famous persons, sporting and otherwise, were to seek out the help of Paddy's heat hands going up that stairway, including former Celtic players and directors and personalities from the world of sports journalism.

Going into the cold foggy nights of Belfast one had an extra spring in the step and an inner and outer glow of well being.

My last visit to Sebastopol Street took place during the early sixties when Paddy had but a short time to live. He was lovingly attended by his wife and family as well as Dr. Philip McGarry, his ex-Celtic friend and confidante who has also sadly departed this life.Ar dheis D6 go raibb a anam.

Paddy retained his gentility, courtesy, humour and dignity for the duration of my visit and instructed his wife to make sure I had my parting libation of hospital stout. He left this life two days after that visit.

May the green sod of his country rest lightly on his mortal remains. Beannacht De ar a anam dilis.

Acknowledgement - to J. J. Tohill of Belfast for information concerning the history of Belfast Celtic Football