INSIDE STORY: From the farm to the football field

INSIDE STORY: The sad story of many Irish emigrants who reluctantly left the green sod due to economic necessity is one often told. But few are as fantastic as the tale of a Kilnaleck native who went from working on the family farm and playing for Cavan in the Ulster Minor Final to make a new life for himself in the UK. SEAN SHERIDAN went on to becoming one of the top men in the Vauxhall plant in Luton and also was a legendary scout for Spurs FC. Reporter SEAN MCMAHON caught up with him on a recent visit home...

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Born in Corner House pub in Kilnaleck on September 16, 1939, Sean Sheridan was back in Cavan recently to celebrate his 80th birthday at a wonderful family re-union celebration at the Lakeside Manor in Virginia.
In his early days, Sean’s near neighbours in Kilnaleck were All Ireland winners Peter Donohoe and Mick Higgins. The family moved to Munterconnaught in 1944 when Sean was aged just five years.
He was delighted to be back on home turf recently to catch up with friends, family and old neighbours and also to attend the Virginia Show, which ironically is where Sean’s tale really started. It was at the show, in 1953, when Sean’s father, James, purchased a new Porsche tractor to do tillage work on the family farm. But it was that very same tractor that proved a noose around their neck when the market for potatoes to England collapsed and the family was forced to emigrate. His father could not keep up the repayments on the tractor and, while there was sadness for the family at the time, a new chapter opened many new exciting doors over the years across the water.
Sean takes up the story: “In September, 1953, I was at home and looking forward to returning to St Mel’s College for my third year, when my father James returned from the Virginia Show in a very merry mood. Taking my mother Bridie and I to one side, he stated that he had purchased a new tractor at the Virginia Show and he wanted me to leave college and drive this machine.
“He had been a committee man on the Machinery for Sale stand that day and encountered this lovely German man selling these wonderful Porsche red tractors, air cooled and powerful.
“After visiting the bank manager and borrowing most of the money against our farm and, following a visit to a local hostelry of Eamon Mathews with this German man, a deal was done.
“He had a lot of tillage that year, mostly potatoes and corn and had done very well, especially with potatoes for export to England, but he was also having a lot of problems with the old TVO tractor,” recalls Sean.
At that time in the early ‘50s, most farmers had, or were in the process of, getting rid of their working horses and tractor owners were working night and day and making good money.
“Many of the farmers with tillage were reliant on the British demand and prices to continue,” explained Sean. His father doubled potato production but then came the big shock - England stopped importing potatoes and corn.
“My memory is of our hayshed and every available space stocked with Hessian bags full of potatoes and none of them could be sold and most rotted in the bags. Then the bills went unpaid, the bank kept pressing for repayments and the diesel tank went empty,” remembers Sean vividly of those dark days.
“It was decided to sell part of the farm and also sell the tractor to pay off the debts and both my father and myself headed for England.”
That was in 1955. Two years after Sean became established in the Vauxhall plant, the entire family followed to England after selling the remainder of the farm and bought a house in Luton. 
A hard worker, Sean was made foreman at the age of 22 years and went on to become a supervisor for a further 20 years.
“I got on very well in there with a lot of very nice people and things progressed favourably and I was also very lucky,” he says.
“I have met so many great Irish people in England over the years,” he adds. 
“The Porsche tractor was the main reason for our emigration, but it opened another new chapter in our lives, which enabled the family to find partners, while in England, from counties Leitrim, Cork, Louth, Roscommon, Galway, Laois and Bedfordshire, USA and China,” says a philosophical Sean.

Love
Sean met the love of his life, Teresa, a native of Ballinamore in County Leitrim. They were married and reared a family of five. Today, they are blessed with 12 grandchildren.
“I have six sisters - Eileen, Lorna, Olive, Breda, Frances and Bernadette - and I had four brothers – Seamus died when he was 49 from a heart attack, Martin in America who owns the second oldest pub in Lower Manhattan called the ‘Ear Inn’, Noel and Declan in England.”
His eldest son Philip, speaking at the birthday celebration on the night in the Lakeside Manor, fondly recalled: “When we were growing up, dad was always into sport. I remember him as a coach and as a player and he also had a little spell as a referee.
“Dad looked after a lot of youth football teams and he has touched the lives of literally hundreds and hundreds of lads.
“One of the first people to send me a text wishing dad a happy birthday was Kingsley Black, who went on to play for St Joseph’s and Luton Town and Nottingham Forest and played for Northern Ireland. Kingsley knows that, only for dad’s influence, he would never have made that transition.”
The death of Sean’s brother Seamus in 1990 was a devastating blow to Sean, according to his son Philip.

Played in Ulster Minor final
“I sometimes look back on 1955 as a very sad time for the family but then, in other ways, it wasn’t bad for me. I had played for Cavan minors in an Ulster final against Down in Clones, in a year that both the Seniors and Minors reached the final,” he recalls of the highlight of that year.
Coincidences of life
“Coincidentally, many years later, my eldest son, Philip went to university in Coleraine (UUC) and met a girl from Downpatrick, fell in love and got married. Having noticed a photograph in her father’s house and, asking about it, it turned out that her father, Hugh Killen, was playing right back for the Down Minor team I played against as a 15 year old and I played the last 10 minutes against him as a sub!”
And the tale doesn’t end there: “We could not believe the coincidence and now our shared two grandsons, Conor and Jared, have continued the sporting tradition, winning two gold medals for Great Britain in rowing and a gold medal in the Junior Rowing World Championships!”
In more recent times, a friend of his, John Sheridan from Scotland (no relation) who was the physio for Tottenham Hotspurs asked him to become a scout at the club, after he recovered from a bad car accident.
Sean had started a soccer club called St Joseph’s and five of the young people he had inspired in the club became professionals, including Kingsley Black. “We built up the St Joseph’s Club to be one of the biggest in the South of England, with 11 youth teams. I brought them to play in Dundalk eight times,” recalls Sean.
“I spent two and half years up at Tottenham as a scout when Ardeles was the manager. I had three players as apprentices with him at the time. Three of my brothers-in-law were fanatical Arsenal people,” he adds.
Any regrets? One perhaps: Sean had a good friend in Watford back in 1955 by the name of Brian Smith and, as the years went on, they lost contact. If any reader has any information on this, Sean would like to hear from them.