“At Elland Road, I get the odd person from Northern Ireland who says hello or recognises me, but at Solitude, there’s maybe 2,000 people and I think I know at least half of them.”

Tim McGarry is a football fan, at home and in Leeds, but the nature of his fame means that his matchday experience can differ greatly. His double life as a fan was never more evident than on Boxing Day at Solitude, the home of Belfast’s Cliftonville FC. Ten days earlier, he had been at Elland Road to witness an anti-climactic draw with Coventry and had enjoyed his day in relative anonymity. Back in Belfast, barely thirty seconds passed without a conversation with other Cliftonville fans.

For anyone from his homeland, Tim McGarry is a household name who has graced TV screens, theatres, arenas and comedy clubs for almost three decades. From part-time radio work came The Hole in the Wall Gang, the comedy group/theatre company he is part of, who created the sitcom Give My Head Peace, which satirises the major players in the conflict known as The Troubles. Now, he hosts The Blame Game, a comedy panel show and The Long and the Short of It, an Irish history show.

A lesser-known fact is that he started out as a lawyer, most notably at the Fair Employment Commission in the early 1990s, taking cases to fight against sex discrimination, a time that shaped his path into political satire and television. Still, none of this predates his first love, football.

The pertinent question that non-Leodensian fans like Tim and myself have always faced is, Why Leeds? “I’m a man of a certain age, a child of Billy Bremner,” he says. “I first became aware of Leeds in 1970 with the FA Cup final. My cousin supported Chelsea, so I chose Leeds. In ‘73, I was in my full Leeds kit as we were ready to massacre Sunderland, and I can still remember Bob Stokoe running onto the pitch at the end. I had seen Leeds win the Cup the year before and lose it twice, so I thought I’d stick with them, and I’ve done so ever since.” It is a familiar story of irrational, immediate loyalty to a team from a place you have never been. A strange set of emotions only football could evoke.

Supporting Leeds from across the Irish Sea looked vastly different in the 1970s. There were no streams, nor instantaneous Twitter highlights, and certainly no fan media. Supporting Leeds meant Match of the Day, the radio, football result papers like Ireland’s Saturday Night, or sitting down for The Big Match on a Sunday.

“Match of the Day was a big thing in our house. My dad was a big football fan and my wee brother, bizarrely, is a Derby fan, so we were allowed to sit up and watch it on a Saturday night.”

It was also in the seventies that Tim’s love affair with Cliftonville began. Ireland’s oldest club, formed in 1879, they remain one of the Irish League’s most strongly supported clubs despite struggling to replicate the success of their early years.

Like any romance, it has had its fair share of ups and downs. “Back when I started going to Solitude, I was brought as a punishment. We had a bad run called the 20th century. We were bottom of the league for a long time. If you rang to ask when’s kick-off, they’d ask, what time can you get here and if you could bring a few mates.”

Cliftonville marked their centenary by winning the Irish Cup in 1979, a key moment that could almost single handedly keep a young fan hooked for life. But for Tim, it’s also a moment that, on reflection, outlines one of the reasons why English football was so popular in Belfast.

“When I look back, there was a lot of kick-and-rush, hoofball with big defenders. One of Cliftonville’s stars from the 1979 Cup final, Marty Quinn, had a chant: ‘Marty Quinn will knock your bollocks in.’ I used to think that was his full name. Now, we like to play it along the ground. Silky football, through the lines. A bit of skill, you know?”

Irish League matches resembled amateur football for a long time, and a lot of it was, but it is enjoying a renaissance right now with rising crowds and professionalism, and long-term fans like Tim are enjoying their football more than ever now.

“We’ve been held back by everything that happened here. Since the peace process began, there’s been efforts to improve the league. There were grenade attacks on football fans and riots, and I remember there were 1,000 police for a match between Cliftonville and Crusaders. Everyone had their own personal police officer. As that has lessened, it has attracted more people to the game here,” says Tim.

The clubs and governing body have worked to reduce sectarianism at football, and while they have ways to go, it is no longer the league that prompted the book ‘Gunshots & Goalposts’. Tim is quick to point out that Cliftonville, widely seen as a ‘Catholic’ club, was once a cricket club and gentlemen’s society founded by Protestants.

“We’re proud that there’s still a fair amount of Protestants that support us, but the majority of our fans come from working class Catholic areas around North Belfast and the surrounding area. We still have fans who’ll only show up for big matches and shout about the IRA, and Linfield will have fans doing the opposite, but I would say it’s far less toxic than Scottish football with Celtic and Rangers.”

Having an ‘English team’ is almost a rite of passage for football fans in Belfast and it has often acted as a safety blanket. Growing up, it felt safer to say you supported Leeds or Liverpool than Cliftonville or Linfield, never mind Celtic or Rangers, and in the seventies, it was no different.

“To mention you supported Cliftonville was often an identifier, being the only ‘Catholic’ supported team in the Irish League. Derry City were put out of the league in the early seventies and Belfast Celtic left in the mid-fifties. Cliftonville became the team for Catholics to support in the mid-seventies and it did mark you out, so it was safer to say you supported an English team.”

Travelling to Leeds matches from abroad has always been a pseudo-pilgrimage. I remember every moment of my first trip, from leaving for the airport to standing outside the Queen’s Hotel at 4am with the fire alarm blaring, the awe of seeing players in real life for the first time, even if it was Steven Caldwell and Didier Domi. Budget airlines and online hotel booking has made the journey more affordable, as Tim’s recent experiences show.

“I went on a few trips with a supporter’s club from North Belfast in the early nineties, back in the First Division days and in the Premier League too, but when I’ve been over recently, there’s loads of people on the flight over and we stay at a certain hotel, full of people over from Belfast.” The same goes for the rest of Ireland, Norway, and everywhere in between; all lunatics spending their hard-earned cash for an uncomfortable chair in a rundown open-air theatre, and none of them would change it for the world.

Recent trips to Elland Road have been a little different than for most travelling fans, thanks to one of the benefits of Tim’s fame. “By the time I became a father, Leeds had fallen away, and my kids were looking at me and saying: ‘Leeds United? Wise up, Da.’ They were infected by their cousins who supported Man Utd. I’ve brought them to Elland Road thanks to my good friend Stuart Dallas and they’ve even pretended to support us for ninety minutes, which is nice of them.” If it helps, the two boys are primarily Cliftonville fans. Just a shame about their English team.

Tickets and the odd trip to the Players’ Lounge are the perks of doing some radio work with Dallas. “He’s a lovely man and I forgive him for playing for Crusaders, huge rivals of Cliftonville. They used to beat us every Boxing Day and he was brilliant for them before his move across the water. That awful injury he suffered last year is so sad, but he’s resilient and, touch wood, he’ll be back.”

As much as Tim is a Leeds fan, his bond with Cliftonville is such that there is little that could come between him and his beloved Reds. His uncle Kevin McGarry was one of Cliftonville’s greatest ever players, and his dad, Kevin’s brother, was the team doctor.

“That’s one of the joys of the league, it’s still very local even with players coming from down south and even England now. Cliftonville’s team used to come entirely from the local area, and we still have players like Joe Gormley from Ardoyne, just up the road from Solitude.

“The family connection is important to us. My uncle Kevin played for NI and went to the Olympics. He was headhunted by Matt Busby to join Man Utd, but his dad said he had to become a doctor, so he couldn’t go.” He stayed at Cliftonville and scored 170 goals, making him the record goal scorer until Gormley came along and became one of only ten players in world football to score more than 250 goals for a single club.

The social club at Solitude has Kevin’s picture on its wall of club legends, as well as a framed jersey in the bar. That proximity to Cliftonville adds a sense of pride for Tim, but also pressure as a fan whose family is Cliftonville heritage. “When Leeds lose, at least I’m far enough away from it, but if Cliftonville lose, there’s no escaping it. People come up to me to talk about football, and it’s really nice. The banter comes from every club’s fans, and it’s great craic.”

As a patron of Northern Ireland Humanists, Tim has appeared on a podcast with ex-Leeds midfielder Eunan O’Kane who, alongside his wife Laura, fought to legalise humanist marriage in Northern Ireland in 2018. “He’s a lovely lad. Eunan and his wife Laura have done a lot of great work for humanism here.”

Tim has also had dealings with David Healy, the current Linfield manager. “I do gigs for Linfield, who pay me, unlike Cliftonville! I would meet David and have a laugh with him about the football. All you have to do at Linfield gigs is take the piss out of Glentoran, because they hate them even more than they hate us. David’s alright for a Linfield man.”
Speaking with Tim at Solitude, I caught a glimpse of what his matchday experience is like, especially around Christmas. Every conversation is different. The community spirit at the club is strong. Every volunteer, whether working the gate, the bar or selling tickets for the half-time draw, is abuzz and has a wee joke with the comedian.

Spirits are high at Cliftonville as they sit 3rd in the league, still in touch with the top two, Healy’s Linfield and Larne, who have been heavily backed by Kenny Bruce, an investor who owned estate agency Purple Bricks. Tim bemoans the Reds’ lack of funds: “The chant is that the Reds have got no money, but we’ll still win the league. We’re doing well and playing great football since Jim Magilton took over in the summer. If we can get over the hump and start beating the likes of Larne and Linfield, you never know.”

They had to worry about Crusaders first; a Boxing Day derby between two sides separated by little over a mile. As Leeds started at Preston in the lunchtime kick-off, Tim’s two teams’ anxieties swirled in his head. “I’d love Leeds to win here, but I have to say if Cliftonville win today, it will mean a lot. A lot.” Those wounds left from the Stuart Dallas days are yet to fully heal.

“At Cliftonville, you end up meeting half the players after the match in the social club. Decky O’Hara, a great Cliftonville defender who ended up being assistant manager for a long time and briefly filled in as manager last season would be in the dugout before heading back in the social club to pull pints after. It’s hard to replicate that in the Premier League or Championship.”

Cliftonville were not at their best on Boxing Day but won 2-1 thanks to a 75th minute goal from Ben Wilson, a Derry man who arrived from Brighton last summer. The social club is bouncing afterwards, with live music that descends into a rendition of Jingle Bells with lyrics declaring what fun it is to beat the Crues on Boxing Day.

Tim is happy as I bump into him at the bar after the match. Leeds have lost at Preston, but that’s a million miles away right now, for both of us. What does he want from this season? “For Leeds, promotion back to the Premier League. For Cliftonville, I just want to win the cup and get a trip to Europe. That’ll be me happy.” ⬢