Dave Langan Testimonial Petition
Some of you may have noticed, in the Sunday Times Football Ireland section, a short piece about some Irish-based Oxford United fans (I'm one of the "small number" mentioned!) organising a petition to hopefully persuade our club to hold a testimonial for Dave Langan - the best right back in the history of our club and a star for Ireland on many occasions too.
Sadly, Dave's post-footballing life has been blighted by the injuries he picked up while playing the game, as relayed in the two articles from Irish papers/magazines repeated below (the second appeared in The Village Magazine). I apologise for the length of this post!
Could you please sign the petition at the following link, and encourage all of your friends to do likewise.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/LanganTestimonial/
Many Thanks
Dying Breed
The Sunday Times’ Denis Walsh drew a poignant parallel between Stephen Carr’s indulgent international retirement and the sort of selfless commitment to his country’s cause that has left former Republic full-back Dave Langan registered disabled and on the breadline.
The then Birmingham defender, against his club’s wishes, forfeited a week’s wages to play in a World Cup qualifier against France in Dublin in 1981, badly injuring his knee but refusing to go off, playing on through the pain. The after-effects - including a dozen operations - have almost crippled him.
Langan recently recalled how “just playing for your country was an awesome thing. When you put on that green shirt... well, you just wanted to die for it”.
I Was Just Unlucky
Friday, 16 September 2005
'I was just unlucky. Just very unlucky. I can't just sit and mope about it. When the pain from the back gets that bad, sometimes I wish I was dead. It just goes through your mind because you're in so much pain'
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart.
– Aeschylus
The trophy cabinet is all that's left. It sits in the family home, his mother's pride, in a prominent place in the living room. There are the Ireland international caps – 26 in all, the medals and trophies from his Cherry Orchard schoolboy days, the Milk Cup medal with Oxford, the League winner's medal when they won the old Division Two and the there are the three Player of the Year trophies from his time at Derby, Birmingham and Oxford.
He was a football man, was Dave. The model pro who put football before everything. He was a footballer's man too. Gave you 110 per cent every time. Never shirked or moaned. Got stuck in and if he got it in return, well, he just dusted himself down and got back up – the pain would subside soon enough. But sometimes you can give too much. Like a boxer who's put himself through too many rounds and seen the heat of battle too often. There's only so many knocks a man can take.
And the biggest one – he thought – was giving up the game. When it's all you live for and it's taken away in a cruel injury-hit manner, what have you got left? Some try their hand at management or coaching, others for punditry and media work while some find other worthwhile parts of their life to live out.
Dave Langan, though, was caught in no-man's land. He had been in the trenches with team-mates at various clubs and various times and he had given blood, sweat and tears for the cause. But when forced to go over the barricades and face what life had to offer when the game was gone, he looked back and found the battle-field empty. His colleagues were nowhere to be seen and alone he faced up to life's onslaught, forever unable to tear himself away from what he gave and suffered in return. Life, when the game is gone, is one aching reminder of a previous life and how so much can be taken away.
The crippling joints? Sacrifice for the Irish cause. Days laid up in bed with horrific back pain? Helping to win the League Cup. Cracked veterbrae? Ensuring League survival. Feeling bone rub against bone as you struggle to the shop? More than 15 years of doing your best for the game.
Giving your all for the team and the club, making sure it was the team result that mattered and not your own personal well-being. Where does that get you? A wall of silence from the clubs when you ask for their help. Football moves on and just doesn't want to know. Some try to help in what small way they can. Former international team-mates appearing gratis at fundraiser events or the PFA giving something towards operations and rehab and medical bills. When you're a registered cripple and struggling to get out of bed it's hard enough – never mind trying to make a meagre living from caretaker work at Peterborough Town Hall.
When life kicks you in the nuts you try your best to get up again and have another go. When you have to have epidural injections because the back pain is so bad, when ice-packs have to be permanently on both your knees and when you're stuck in bed staring up at the peeling paint on the old ceiling above you, it becomes harder still to keep getting back up.
Dave Langan is only 48. But he feels as if time has been much longer for him. He's only been out of the game 16 years but it feels like a lifetime. Instead it feels like the 12th round in this fight for Dave. Not yet 50. An ex-footballer who can barely walk and barely earn a living – it wasn't meant to be this way.
Childhood was carefree and easy and he became the chosen one, the local kid picked to go to England as a footballer and who would go on to star for Ireland. Now though the carefree, happier days are gone and all that's left is anxiety and prayers.
"I think I've aged my mother years with all the worry. She's awful worried about me. She's 78 now but she goes down to Mass every Saturday to St Johns Lane where Father O'Shaughnessy gets special requests and she's always getting mass done for me you know, praying that I'll get better."
Better. We hope for better thinking we'll get a pay-rise or go on a holiday abroad. A better job or better house. For Dave Langan, better is being able to walk to the shop without pain. Or having new knees put in, or for the excruciating back pain to finally go away. But better isn't a miracle either.
Better, though, would be knowing you will have money to pay for the bills at the end of the month, or that a dignified living could be earned somehow despite his injuries.
There's the scandal of his testimonial as well. Twenty-six international caps won – one past the 25 required for a testimonial at the time. And then the FAI go and up the determinant to 50 caps and then later to 75 caps. Gone in a flash any hopes harboured for one last big day out, one last chance to say goodbye and thanks, thanks for helping pay the bills for the next few years. For most ex-players, their testimonial swan-song was an opportunity to put a little something extra into the bank account, a nice little earner before heading off into the sunset. For Dave Langan, it could make the difference between surviving past the bread-line a while longer and being able to walk without pain again by getting new knees. The FAI have helped in the past he says, and they have tried for him, but there has been no sign of them waiving the rules on this occasion.
Dave won't push them on it, "I think those days are gone. Their point was if they give one to me they'd have to give one to an awful lot more."
Dave won't play the martyr's card though.
"I was just unlucky. Just very unlucky. I have to get on it. I can't just sit and mope about it. I have to keep going. I can't just give up. When the pain from the back gets that bad, some stupid thoughts go through your head. Sometimes I wish I was dead and gone you know but it just goes through your mind because you're in so much pain. I've been laid up in bed just lying there, just thinking…"
Life was great for 15 years when Dave fulfilled a boyhood dream of playing professional football. Yet, every footballer's life must begin again when the boots are hung up. The difference was that for Dave Langan, starting again meant being a cripple and impoverished.
If you walk the streets of Ringsend, you'll hear them talk of a great local lad who went on to win cups and leagues in England and caps for Ireland. His mother could invite you in and tell you all about the football life of Dave Langan. Then you'd be taken into the living-room where stands the gleaming trophy cabinet. It's a big cabinet that his Dad bought years ago to put all his trophies and medals in and still commands pride of place in the Langan house.
But now it's all that's left for a man who lies crippled in a bed in a house in Peterborough.
