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He was a star with a
wonderful 'Blues' team that tied for the League title with Cork United
but the season ended disastrously and in controversy when the Waterford
players refused to play (in a dispute over bonus payments) in a once-off
game against Cork to decide the Championship. Cork were declared
champions and a few weeks later they defeated the 'Blues' in the Cup
Final after a replay. Coad signed for the famous Dublin club Shamrock Rovers
in 1942 and it was with Rovers that he became
a legend in his own lifetime. He transformed play in the League with his
tremendous skills; his passing of the ball and his overall generalship
showed other clubs the way football should be played and he was
responsible, almost single-handedly, for a general rise in standards.
Every team tried to match Rovers in the new way forward.
After he was made their coach, in 1949,
Rovers became the dominant force in Irish football. Coad was the
master-general and it was said of him that he did every thing at the
club but drive the bus. He was known, primarily, as a maker of
goals but he did score 126 League of Ireland goals and 41 FAI Cup goals in his career. He won three
League Championships with Rovers (1954, 1957 and 1959); four Cup
medals (in 1944, 1945, 1948 and 1956) and three Cup runners-up medals
(1946, 1957 and 1958) and he was selected eleven times for Ireland between 1946 and 1952. He played in twenty-four representative games for the League
of Ireland, the last in 1955. Coad reserved one of his greatest
performances for the European stage when, in 1957, he dominated the
European cup tie against Manchester United at Old Trafford. His display
that night had to be seen to be believed and it was described as the greatest by an Irish player in England up to that time. And remember -
he was 37 years old.
He
returned to live in Waterford and in 1965/66 he coached and managed the
'Blues' to their first League of Ireland championship. Coad is regarded as the greatest Irish player never to have
played in England but there are many, in Dublin as well as in Waterford,
who will say that there never was anyone as good as Coad. He was a true
legend.
International appearances (11);
1946, v.England; 1947, v.Spain, Portugal; 1948, v.Poland, Spain,
Switzerland; 1949, v.Belgium, Poland, Sweden; 1951, v.Norway; 1952,
v.Spain
This is
the 1937 Waterford A.F.C. team that Coad joined when aged 17
Back
Row (L to R); McPherson, "Fatty" Phelan, Wynn,
Willie Walsh, Tom Arrigan, Duff Front Row
(Lto R); Paddy Coad, Kennedy, Carr, M. Walsh, Milligan |
Paddy was born in 1920 and was sent to De La Salle school, Stephen
Street. His first sporting distinctions
were earned at Hurling and Table Tennis; indeed he became a champion of
Munster at the latter sport. His great love however was soccer and
he joined the local junior club Corinthians, based primarily on the
Lower Yellow Road area. His exceptional talent was quickly realised by the local League of
Ireland team and he played his first game for the 'Blues' in
1937 when
he was only seventeen years old (see photo below). He moved to the Northern Ireland club Glenavon in the following year but he was
there only a short while
when WWII broke out and Paddy returned to Waterford.