Next Monday marks the 108th anniversary of one of the most remarkable achievements in Irish football: Glentoran’s famous Vienna Cup triumph.
ne of many individual stories from that incredible victory is that of David Lyner, the first winner of a European cup to play for Manchester United.
I was born and bred in the Short Strand area of east Belfast — or, as my mum, God rest her, called it, Ballymacarrett.
My mum was born in Harper Street and that is where I grew up during the late 1960s and the Troubles. However, it was only recently that I discovered that one of the Vienna Cup-winning side, Samuel Napier, used to live just five streets away from me, in Vulcan Street.
But this particular story is about one of Sammy’s teammates, Lyner, who was born in Belfast on January 9, 1893.
Lyner was only 5ft 9in tall and weighed 11 stone, but he was an exceptional winger and he began his career with Owen O’Cork before moving on to Distillery and then Glentoran in the summer of 1912.
Lyner made an immediate impact in his first season at The Oval, helping the Cock & Hens retain the Championship, but once again the Irish Cup eluded the team from east Belfast.
In season 1913-14, the League Championship was a ding-dong battle between Glentoran and Linfield, with the Blues coming out on top.
Both sides navigated their path to the Irish Cup final, which was played on March 28, 1914, at Grosvenor Park, Belfast, in front of 20,000 fans. The Glens beat the Blues 3-1 and finally the Irish Cup was proudly paraded around the streets of east Belfast.
Not long after their Irish Cup triumph, the club were invited to embark on a European tour as holders of the Irish Cup.
Burnley FC, winners of the FA Cup, and Glasgow Celtic, winners of the Scottish Cup, were also sent invitations to play games in Prague, Berlin, Pressburg (now Bratislava), Budapest and Vienna. The tournament was referred to as “A festival of football” and was organised by two Viennese businessmen.
The Glens left The Oval in the early hours of the morning on May 18, 1914, and after a brief stop-off in Leipzig, where the 13 players more than enjoyed the hospitality on offer in the beer halls, the entourage finally arrived in Prague.
Eight of the Glens’ Irish Cup-winning side were in the travelling party, including David and Roly Lyner, from Flora Street, Ballymacarrett, who worked as caulkers in Harland & Wolff, while the team was made-up of Catholics, Protestants, Englishmen and Scotsmen.
On May 21, 1914, Glentoran lost the opening match of their European tour 4-3 to DFC Prag.
The players then made their way to Berlin, where they claimed an impressive 4-1 victory over the working-class club Hertha Berlin on May 23, 1914, a club, like Glentoran, that had its own associations with ship building. The Glentoran players were heralded by the Berlin press, who claimed that it was “The best display of football ever seen in Berlin”.
Next up was a visit to the Austrian capital, Vienna, the most opulent city in Europe at the time, where Glentoran faced a Vienna Select XI side for a brand-new trophy, The Vienna Cup.
No other Irish club had ever visited the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The game ended 1-1 on May 27, 1914, at Hohe Warte, the home of First Vienna, the oldest club in Austria founded in 1894 (attendance was 6,000).
But given that a newly crafted silver trophy had been commissioned, a replay was arranged, which saw the two sides face one another again on May 30, 1914. The match was labelled ‘Revanchekampf’ (Revenge Match).
The Viennese press were very harsh in their reports after the 1-1 draw, effectively claiming that the Belfast boys played as though they were on an end-of-season jolly-up tour of Europe who had to play the odd game of football as a distraction to their holiday plans.
The press reports hurt the Irish boys and galvanised them into proving their hosts wrong.
These young men knew only too well that they were not only representing Glentoran Football Club, but that they were also representing their families, their workmates and the streets in which they lived.
The 13 players were as closely knit a group as you could find, all of them living in a 1.5-mile radius of one another close to The Oval.
On May 30, 1914, a band of brothers from Glentoran FC hammered their opponents 5-0 and won the Vienna Cup, thereby becoming only the second British club side to win a European trophy.
In 1909, West Auckland Football Club, from Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England, won the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy — considered by many football historians to be a precursor to today’s Fifa World Cup — after defeating Juventus 6-1 in the final in Turin, Italy.
Karl Hochman, one of the tournament’s organisers, was full of praise for the Glentoran players: “It was as if a miracle had happened. The Glentoran players played fabulously. The audience was fascinated. Their players completely amazed us.”
The triumphant players and directors returned to Mersey Street, Belfast, on June 4, 1914, to a heroes’ welcome not knowing that just 54 days later the world would be at war.
Sam Robinson, a lifelong Glentoran fan, and the author of One Saturday Before The War, summed up the Glens’ Vienna Cup triumph in his wonderful book: “Ireland were the Home International champions for the first time that year.
“These entrepreneurs presumed that if Ireland were this good, then Glentoran must be among the best club teams in the world. In truth, they were a group of shipyard workers from Ballymacarrett and the Short Strand who were part-time footballers.”
David Lyner joined Manchester United in August 1922 and he made his debut on September 23, 1922, in a 2-0 away loss to Coventry City in the English Second Division.
Lyner only played two more games for United, despite his versatility at being able to play on both wings: a 2-0 home league win against Coventry City and a 2-1 away league defeat to Port Vale.
In December 1922, Lyner left United and joined Kilmarnock. On December 5, 1973, David Lyner passed away, aged 80. During his playing career he was capped by his country six times, but never scored a goal for Manchester United or his country.
And so, some 54 years before a certain George Best, who was also born in east Belfast and helped Manchester United win the European Cup in 1968, David Lyner became Manchester United’s first winner of a European trophy.
John White is author of 18 Manchester United books and a Belfast Boy from the Short Strand, Ballymacarrett. www.facebook.com/Manchester-United-Then-Now-1011
