Three biographies and other stories
Roy Hay
Provoked by Col Ritchie I am offering this account of the end of my grandfather’s career in Association football (soccer) in the United Kingdom, and some other family stories. In 2004 my mother-in-law celebrated her 90thbirthday and my wife and I decided to put together an account of her life to present to her on the day. I was struggling to know how to start on my contribution when I realised that I had a pile of material relating to my grandfather and I decided to practise by trying to write up his story. On the field he had played with Ayr United, Celtic, Newcastle United and the Scottish national team. He also captained all four.
His career ended in spectacular fashion as the only manager in the history of the game to be suspended for life for refusing to apologise. He had accused a director of his own club, Ayr United, of trying to bribe a referee. When it came to the tribunal of the Scottish Football Association, they said you have no evidence for what you are alleging so you must apologise. On his refusal he was suspended sine die. Latin scholars will know this means with no day set for the end of the sentence.
That wasn’t quite the end of the story because the next year the director, who had also been the Treasurer of the Scottish Football Association for the past 20 years, was voted off that position. Separately, my grandfather had his suspension terminated, though he never returned to management. He did act as a scout for Newcastle but that was the extent of his involvement.
I thought this was a story worth telling so, with my wife Frances’s help (she is an editor and has a gun that fires commas), we put together James Dun Hay 1889–1940: The Story of a Footballer. It has sold quite well though I could never persuade the Celtic Superstore to take copies! It was the only bookshop we approached who ever refused to do so!
We then turned back to Frances’s mother’s story.
Subsequently we did write and publish my mother-in-law’s story which we presented to her on her 90thbirthday. Putting it together was a story in itself. It began when we were in Scotland visiting. I sat her down and got her to talk to my tape recorder about her life. When we came back to Australia, we would receive an envelope once or twice a month with the next instalment written on odd scraps of paper. We added some material from our own knowledge, and I did some research on her husband’s war career. He was a pillar of the Seaforth Highlanders, fought in France in the Second World War and, later, was the secretary of the local veterans’ association.
Catherine Wells, Frances’ mother, wrote poetry and short stories and published them in the Ross-shire Journal, the local newspaper. Subsequently she published Cathy’s Collection for Cancer which the paper noted ‘Publishing love stories in your nineties can’t be bad!’ She raised some thousands of pounds selling her books for cancer charities.
My journalism is another story. There are numerous volumes of it in the Melbourne Cricket Club Library along with that of my good friend Peter Desira who wrote the soccer columns for the Herald-Sun for many years. I took over the soccer column of the Geelong Advertiser and each Monday and Friday I had to fill a broadsheet page with everything from the Socceroos and the Matildas to the local Under-Nines. It was great fun and I had happy battles with the sub-editors as I tried to get words of more than two syllables into the columns. They would always replace my esoteric words with something much simpler, but I’d insist I wanted the youngsters to meet and find the meaning of these words. I argued I was bringing up the next generation of their readers!
Some of the books and journals to which I have contributed.
Recently my younger brother, Robin, has joined the writers. He tackled my father’s war service in France not long after I was born in 1940. My father had been a promising footballer, winning a Scottish Schools trophy with Ayr Academy. But he did not pursue a senior career, I suspect because of what happened to his father. He became a schoolteacher and retired as the headmaster of Straiton Primary School in Carrick, the southern part of Ayrshire only about twenty miles from the Antrim Hills in Northern Ireland.
My mother had kept all his letters from France, so this gave Robin his main source, though he did a lot of research in England and France.
One way and another the Hay-Wells families seem to have been involved in writing, research and publishing. My own academic output at Oxford, Glasgow, East Anglia and Deakin Universities and Frances’s editorial work at Deakin, where for a time the university was the largest academic publisher in Australia, plus the work we have done for others has virtually concluded. I do appreciate the Almanac still gives me a chance to ride my hobby-horses now and again. If they decide to publish this diatribe the responsibility lies with Col and John. I thank them both.
More stories by Roy Hay can be read Here.
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Thanks for this, Roy.
I cannot believe that Celtic were not interested in your grandfather’s story. How disappointing.
It was the shop rather than the club, Smokie. It may have been a commercial decision or a fear it might have an impact on other things they were trying to flog at that time.
Frances says that I should tell the Almanackers that Ange Postecoglou had a copy of the Dun Hay book on his desk when he was manager of the club!
What an incredible and interesting family you have Roy! Thank you for sharing on the site.