Soul First

Niall McNamee walks into the room with his backpack over his shoulder, soaked wet through. There’s a familiarity about his demeanour as he immediately sets about drying off and charging his phone. “I just beat the storm, I think,” he says, referencing Storm Amy, which covers the Irish Sea for the next day like 2019 Kalvin Phillips, ensuring nothing could cross it safely.

That’s the life of a travelling Leeds fan. One minute you’re putting your belt into a little tray in Dublin Airport, barely awake. The next you’re praying to whatever deity will listen that the last functioning plane from World War II will get you safely over to England just to watch Leeds lose at home.

Niall’s an actor and musician who — at the time of speaking — is excited about the TV show he’s filming in Dublin and his debut album ‘Glass and Mirrors’, which was released on all platforms on October 10. Without putting words in his mouth, I’d say he’s most excited about his show at Oporto in Leeds on November 28, especially after I pointed out that it has recently added a Guinness bar in the gig room.

“Well, maybe my agent’s cleverer than I thought then,” he says. “Yeah, he must have known that. It’s the first time I’ve played Leeds. I’ve wanted to before, but it’s only in the last couple of years that things have started to kick off properly, and I had an agent and a manager, so I didn’t know venues in Leeds.

“I know that Leeds fans are very loyal and stuff, and so you get a helping hand, and everyone’s good in that sense. I’m excited. There’s certain dates that stick out more than others, and Leeds is one that I’m really looking forward to, and we have a few days off after that so you kind of look at that to go, ‘Well, let’s enjoy the next day then.’ We’ll probably watch Man City away that next day somewhere.”

He even has enough time off to hang around for Chelsea at home the Wednesday after, where you might see him in the West Stand with his dad. When he’s not filming in Dublin, Niall’s normal base is London, like so many Irish artists, so he’s more used to the M1 than the runway.

“Living in London when we were in the Championship, it’d be easier to maybe grab a ticket to see us at QPR or whatever,” he says. “But it’s becoming increasingly difficult so I’d say I get up maybe half a dozen times a year to Elland Road now. My dad goes to every game, home and away. It’s a hell of a dedication. I don’t know if I could, but I’d love to.”

Time wouldn’t allow him to anyway. When Niall’s not gigging around Britain and Ireland, he’s pursuing an acting career that began with Jackie Chan putting him through a glass table in ‘The Foreigner’, a role that came to him while working on a building site in London.

“When I auditioned for that, they didn’t tell me anything about it, so I got one scene,” he says. “It’s one page roughly based on something in the movie. But I was the last one, and they said, ‘Sorry, we are running a bit late, and it’s the last one of the day, so while you’re doing your audition, we’re going to be packing up, but we’ll be filming it, so don’t let it bother you.’ And I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ So, I didn’t think I’d have it.

“My agent said, ‘You’ve got that thing.’ I asked what it was and she then just read the script of me fighting Jackie Chan. It took me a while to realise it was Jackie Chan. Because, you know, it’s the IRA versus Jackie Chan. It doesn’t sound real.”

At the risk of spoiling the film, it involves Pierce Brosnan acting as a current/former IRA man and he’s dressed awfully like — but in no way imitating — a certain politician known for suing people, so I’ll just let you Google that one for yourself.

“My agent said I had to tell my foreman that I was getting taken in a car the next day. I spent three weeks in a gym with Jackie Chan and a stunt team to learn the fight.”

The lads back on the building site never believed him because it took more than two years for the film to come out.

“When they were introducing someone new, they’d say, ‘That’s Niall and he’ll tell you he’s been in a film with Jackie Chan, but he’s harmless.’ I never got that moment, because I wasn’t there by the time it came out. I was off the site by then, but they definitely thought I was just a fucking lunatic.”

Niall’s greatest big screen moment to date came this year, playing the role of former Sheffield United goalkeeper Alan Kelly in ‘Saipan’, the film about Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy’s massive fallout at the 2002 World Cup that prompted Keane to walk out of the Ireland camp before the tournament even started.

“Me and my dad have followed the Irish team around quite a lot. Bosnia, Gibraltar, just all over the place. So being in something about a football team I support is unreal. I remember when ‘The Damned United’ came out, so I was always obsessed with that idea of a football movie, playing a real person, anything.

“I was thinking, ‘Right, who would it be?’ It’d be like Robbie Keane or Damien Duff? And then I thought, no, because they were like 21. So you’re going to play someone who’s about to retire. And I feel like a young man, at least until I’m having to play a footballer. So it was great. And I’m a big Alan Partridge fan as well, so being on set with Steve Coogan (playing Mick McCarthy) and Eanna Hardwicke, who’s playing Roy and is one of my mates, can’t beat it.”

You wouldn’t imagine that Ireland’s third-choice goalkeeper would have any speaking roles in the film, but you’d be wrong. Niall couldn’t go into detail, but he did share one off-camera moment.

“I have certain friends who, if I’m talking to them for five minutes, I will reference The Office, Father Ted or Alan Partridge,” he says. “Someone hit a screamer past me while I was in goal. And I said, ‘Shit, did you see that? He’s got a foot like a traction engine!’ And I only met him the day before so I was worried, but he didn’t hear it, thank God. But yeah, it was class.”

For any Ireland fan old enough to remember 2002, their last World Cup, the story of Saipan is infamous, but the tournament itself brings back some good memories.

“It was class and putting on the jersey. Unless I do Eurovision, which I won’t, I won’t be able to represent my country in any way. It was so cool. I only found out they were making it when I had the audition for it. And immediately I’m like, ‘I would rush to go and see this film.’ So to get a chance to be in it was incredible.”

Niall’s story for getting into supporting Leeds sounded very familiar with mine and many other fans from that side of the Irish Sea.

“My da brainwashed me,” he says. “There was no hope. I don’t remember making a decision, you know, I see supporting Leeds and being Irish as the same things. I never questioned it really.”

You never really do remember it happening, mainly because it seems to occur during that period of brain development before the age of five. Your earliest memories involve Leeds United and, at that point, you’re better off just accepting that you’re snookered, or you sack football off entirely and get into something more calming like birdwatching instead.

“You are Leeds, that’s the thing. I am a Leeds fan. It is a funny thing when you think about it. I’ve met people, girlfriends in the past who aren’t into football at all, and you try and explain why you care so much about eleven millionaires running around a pitch but then when you say specifically Leeds, it’s harder to make sense of it to them.”

Being asked why you support Leeds often prompts many responses, with derision being a popular one, but now there’s an element of the hipster football fan about it. But it wasn’t always like that.

“I just remember this feeling of loyalty with Leeds that no one who was supporting Man United or Liverpool could possibly understand. Even now you meet someone and ask who they support, and they’ll say, ‘Oh Arsenal, unfortunately.’ You’re only in the Champions League! It’s all relative I suppose, but come on.”

The complicated relationship of supporting Leeds from Ireland can sometimes leave you feeling a sense of otherness, that you don’t truly belong, but that’s almost an inferiority complex because you see how diehard the club’s support home and away is, and more importantly was during the dark years.

“You still sort of feel like an armchair fan throughout all that despite the fact that you’re taking up your Saturday afternoon to watch Leeds and fucking Northampton. I remember bringing a few lads who were all mixed up with Liverpool and Man United for my birthday. We drew and they loved it actually. But I never liked it when a Man United fan said that they had a soft spot for us. I thought that’s the sign of a fake fan, or that we needed to do better.”

The traumatic feeling of futility watching Leeds get tanked 4-0 by Cardiff on Sky as a kid washed away when you grow up to watch Marcelo Bielsa’s team and the centurions of last season, proving it was worth ignoring the incessant questioning from those simply unable to comprehend why you’d throw yourself soul first into a football club like Leeds United. When you’re in Ireland as a Leeds fan, it feels like you’re part of some clandestine cult, so much so that when you come across another Peacock acolyte then you immediately have something to talk about.

“Ardal O’Hanlon is a massive Leeds fan,” says Niall. “He’s in a football movie coming out called ‘Fran The Man’ as well. I met him when I was playing Dougal in the Father Ted musical and I thought that’s so funny that we’re both Leeds fans from a similar part of the world as well. Risteard Cooper was playing Ted and he’s a Leeds fan. The writer, Arthur Matthews, is too, so we just sat and talked about football.”

Maybe it really is a cult if three well known media personalities are all Leeds fans. If this weekend pastime is the footballing equivalent of the Illuminati, then I’ve got to ask: could we not be a bit better?

Niall talked about his music pal Louis Dunford, an Arsenal fan who wrote the song ‘North London Forever’, and how he had been asked to do something similar for Leeds by someone in the industry.

“I don’t know, I don’t think I could be so earnest,” he says. “It’d have to be something truthful, miserable.”

It’s fair to say that he’s very aware any prospective Leeds United song is at heightened vulnerability of having the piss taken out of it. They say it takes one to know one about a lot of things, and without doubt that applies when it comes to Leeds fans and music. I’m fairly confident if Niall does sit to pen the millennial Marching on Together that it might incorporate the modern realities of football, or something topical like a stale pint of Amstel and meeting your mates outside Billy’s statue.

If you ask nicely, Niall might tell you what he has in mind when he plays at Oporto on November 28. Tickets and other dates for his gigs are available at niallmcnamee.com/GIGS ⬢

This article is free to read from The Square Ball magazine issue three, 2025/26 — get your copy here.