Wednesday 30 January 2013

Magnifico, magnifico, magnifico

I can't pretend that I read everything that Malcolm Brodie ever wrote - we were never Belfast Telegraph readers in our house - but it's difficult to imagine a journalist with a greater association with Northern Irish sport and the Northern Ireland international team than Malcolm.
It was only on reading of his death at the age of 86 yesterday that I realised he was originally from Glasgow. But he was evacuated during the Second World War and, astonishingly, he started work at the Tele as far back as 1943. My dad would have been six then.
Malcolm covered 14 World Cups in his career. Northern Ireland took part in three of them. And he continued working well into his ninth decade. I remember seeing him in the press room at Windsor Park just before Northern Ireland's disappointing World Cup qualifier against Slovakia in 2009, ready as ever to go to work.
Thinking about it, his career encompassed the entire span covered in Whose Side Are You On? From the end of Belfast Celtic to the rise of Rory McIlroy.
He makes only a passing appearance in the book. I talk of him writing about the start of the 1969 football season as if it was just another season. Within days Irish League matches were being postponed because of rioting. He saw the best and worst of Northern Irish sport then. And he never lost his appetite for it.

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