GARY BECKETT
10 Years Delivering The Goods
I am particularly pleased that Gary Beckett had both Cups to display at his testimonial game. Taking a few moments to reflect on our players since 1985 on the way home from the FAI Cup Final, I came to the conclusion that few are as deserving of a testimonial game and adulation from the Brandywell faithful as Gary Beckett.
In addition to playing for Derry City for ten years, Gary has been a stalwart of some great Derry teams and has been one player who regularly gives 100% to the manager, the players, the team, and the club. I admire Gary immensely and am always very disappointed when he’s not in the starting line-up on match days.
His hunger for victory is always evident and this clearly transfers to the players around him. I also love the fact that Gary isn’t afraid to let his fellow players know when he feels they aren’t pulling their weight.
Beckett’s work-rate is phenomenal and his fitness is obviously of utmost importance in keeping Gary at the top of the League of Ireland game. It is a testament to Beckett that following the victory in Göteborg when he ran himself into the ground for the team, he was still chasing down two defenders and a goalkeeper in the 94th minute of our next game when the younger players around him were struggling with fatigue.
His fitness level must come at an awful price though. Having lived in Belfast for 10 years I know how hard it is to travel to every Derry match in a season. I do not, however, know how hard it is to travel long distances to every match home and away as well as having to travel very long distances three or four times a week to train with the team. Gary Beckett did that for ten years. He travelled 60 miles from Enniskillen to Derry four times a week to train and play for the team. As if that wasn’t bad enough he had probably been up before the crack of dawn each day to fulfil his Royal Mail duties.
One of my favourite Gary Beckett rumours is the one which alleges that Gary was put on the transfer list by his manager at the time but he refused to go and ended-up winning Cups with Derry long after that manager had departed. This type of determination was shown continually on the pitch over the past ten years, and how we have benefited from it. Not just a hard worker, Beckett is actually one of the most skilful, talented players in the League of Ireland. His passing during the FAI Cup Final was sublime and regularly split the St. Pat’s defence to give his fellow players chances on goal. It is highly probable that without Beckett we would not have won as many trophies as we did over the past ten years.
It’s very unfortunate that Gary has only one League winner’s medal to show for his time at the club so far but when we’ve fallen at the final hurdle so often in the recent past, it can only be expected. Luckily, though, we have a tremendous young team who benefit from the knowledge and experience of older heads such as Hargan, Hutton, Beckett, and McCallion so I am positive that Gary will be challenging with his team-mates for a League winner’s medal next year again.
Last season we lost it due to defeat on the last day of the season. This year we’ve lost it only on goal difference so I sincerely believe that Gary could pick up another League winner’s medal in 2007.
As unlucky as we’ve been at times, we have to acknowledge that we battled with 9 men to win the League Cup on penalties and battled in the FAI Cup Final to come from behind three times to snatch the FAI Cup from The Saints’ grasp, so we should realise that we came so close to winning nothing this season. Those of us disappointed at not winning the League should take heart from the fact that we have won half the domestic Cups available to us this season, have gone further than we ever have in Europe while creating records on the way, and have developed the best squad of players in Ireland.
The future’s certainly bright but on an occasion like this we will, I’m sure, all look back on a decade with Gary which included the depths such as clinging-on in Waterford on the last day of the season to give us the lifeline of a relegation play-off, and then the good times such as Gary scoring our first European goal in decades in Cyprus, and our first televised League goal which came against Shels in Tolka, and the incredible heights such as winning the League in ’97, winning the League Cup and the FAI Cup.
