RIP Frank O Farrell
I remember watching Frank play for us. I wonder if the media will acknowledge his time with us? Good player. RIP Frank and sincere condolences to any close family and friends.
Way before my time, but R.I.P Frank
Very sad day for Preston North End football club.
Would I be right in saying that Frank was the oldest living ex player before he passed away?
Would I be right in saying that Frank was the oldest living ex player before he passed away?
I think you are probably right there. Very good player.
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I've a picture of the 58-59 team in my office. Just checked and he's on it.
RIP Frank.
RIP Frank.
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- Jul 21, 2010
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- 39,317
118 appearance and 3 goals for PNE. Can anyone on here honestly remember any of those three goals?
Frank was in the first North End team I saw at Deepdale RIP Frank.
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In the first 16 games he played for North End we didn’t lose a game. Signed from West Ham in exchange for Eddie Lewis. Formed a terrific half-back line of Docherty-Dunn-O’Farrell. North End finished 3rd and 2nd in his first two years. Halcyon days!
I'm far too young to remember him, but until i read this thread i didn't realise he was an ex PNE player, all the reports about him are that he was a former Man Utd manager, even though he was only there a year and spent far longer playing for PNE
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When I got into football, Frank was managing Leicester City. RIP Frank.
That's exactly what I was alluding to. If he'd gone for a look round at Old Trafford they would mention that and ignore his superb contribution to (one of) our best half back lines ever.
R.I.P. Frank,
Never saw him play but my dad always spoke highly of him.
Never saw him play but my dad always spoke highly of him.
I think he was John. I'm sure I read that somewhere today. Rest in Peace Frank & Thank You for being a North Ender X
My Dad met Frank whilst working at the Footy Museum.
There was an event going on once and my Dad introduced himself and made him a cup of tea - ended up sitting down with him for over an hour whilst Frank regaled him some fantastic stories.
My Dad said he wished he had wrote it all down it was that brilliant!
RIP Frank.
There was an event going on once and my Dad introduced himself and made him a cup of tea - ended up sitting down with him for over an hour whilst Frank regaled him some fantastic stories.
My Dad said he wished he had wrote it all down it was that brilliant!
RIP Frank.
Likewise (I think)
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- Nov 5, 2004
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- 1,315
It was the impossible job: to inherit the dishevelled Manchester United empire bequeathed by Sir Matt Busby and return it to former glories. Frank O’Farrell did his best, but 18 months after he had agreed to undertake the task in 1971, he was sacked. It would be another two decades before Alex Ferguson inspired the Red Devils’ renaissance.
Busby’s shadow loomed large over Old Trafford in the wake of his retirement in 1969, which he had briefly interrupted to retake the reins when Wilf McGuinness proved unequal to the task of replacing him, and there was a sour taste from the start of O’Farrell’s tenure thanks to an act of petty deception.
“Busby offered me £12,000 a year, plus bonuses, to take over from him,” O’Farrell recalled. “I thought it was a little stingy.” But O’Farrell was keen to make the move, and met Busby and the club’s chairman, Louis Edwards, in the back of Edwards’s Rolls-Royce in a lay-by. Busby repeated the terms of the offer.
“And Edwards said, ‘Oh no, Matt, that’s wrong, it’s £15,000’,” O’Farrell recalled. “It got us off on a bad note, me and Busby. He knew that I knew he wasn’t playing it straight. The trust was damaged from the start.” Matters deteriorated further once O’Farrell got to work, when he found that the manager’s office was still being occupied by Busby, who even had his name still pointedly displayed on the door. “I told him, sorry, he had to move,” O’Farrell said.
Although United experienced an initial surge under O’Farrell, going clear at the top of the table by ten points, it was obvious that Busby could not let go. “He was always about somewhere where the players could find him,” O’Farrell recalled. “After one game, he told me I shouldn’t have dropped Bobby Charlton. Obviously he said the same to Charlton, because the player was moping round the place.”
While Busby was undermining him behind the scenes, O’Farrell, who could seem aloof, did not help himself by failing to get to grips with a steeply declining George Best — although it is arguable whether any manager could have done better, and one of O’Farrell’s first acts as manager was to make Best the best-paid player at the club, which he had never been. “They were a difficult team,” O’Farrell recalled. “They had a funny attitude to tactics — ‘if they score four, we’ll score five’ was their attitude. That was all very well when they were 24 or 25 years old, but now the team was in its early thirties. George Best was easily our best player. He was carrying the team.”
Yet Best, and his well-documented extracurricular activities, was also a disruptive influence, and results during O’Farrell’s second season were poor. A year and a half into his tenure, in December 1972, he was sacked after a 5-0 defeat at Crystal Palace. “It was a five-year rebuilding job because of the mess Busby left and I was given just 18 months,” said O’Farrell. “When things were going well, Busby wrote in his newspaper column that I was the best signing he’d ever made. Then when I was sacked he said I wasn’t his choice.”
A nine-month legal battle was required for O’Farrell to extract the money he was owed by the club, during which he had to sign on the dole. He was worried that because many of the local legal profession were United fans he would not get a fair hearing, but his barrister told him, “Don’t worry Mr O’Farrell, I’m a Manchester City fan, I’m looking forward to getting Matt Busby in the witness box.”
Francis O’Farrell was born in Cork in 1927. His father was a train driver, and O’Farrell initially followed him into the railways as a stoker on locomotives. He began his career as a wing half with Cork United, earning £3 a week from his railway job and £3 from the club. O’Farrell followed his former team-mate Tommy Moroney to West Ham in 1948, but didn’t make his league debut until November 1950. It was while he was at West Ham that he met his Waterford-born wife, Ann, in a local church hall.
His time in East London sowed the seeds of his later career as a manager. After training he would meet with a group of West Ham team-mates such as Malcolm Allison, Dave Sexton, John Bond and Noel Cantwell at Cassettari’s Café in Barking Road. They would talk for hours about football, moving cups and saucers, sugar bowls and bottles of tomato ketchup like players on a pitch to illustrate tactical points about how to break down an opponent’s defence. All of them would go on to long and high-profile careers in football management.
O’Farrell won the first of nine caps for Ireland in a friendly against Austria in Vienna, but never pinned down a regular place in the side.
In 1956 he moved to Preston North End, with whom he finished second to Wolves in the old First Division in 1958. Three years later he became player-manager of Weymouth in the Southern League, and then, in 1965, manager of Torquay United, who he led out of the Fourth Division in his first season.
At Leicester City, where he took charge in 1968, he had mixed fortunes in his first season. They reached the FA Cup final, losing 1-0 to Manchester City, but he was unable to prevent relegation. Leicester bounced straight back, however, and O’Farrell was headhunted by Busby.
He later managed the Iran national side for two years from 1974, meeting the Shah every week to talk football, and coaching the ruler’s son.
O’Farrell returned to Torquay for a spell in 1981, first as manager, then general manager, retiring in 1983 and continuing to live in Torquay, where he and his wife ran a nursing home. A practising Catholic, he was president of the St Vincent de Paul Conference, made several pilgrimages in France and served on the altar until late in life.
For many years he was prevented by legal injunction from speaking about his experiences at Manchester United, but in 2011, finally, he published his autobiography, All Change at Old Trafford: The Frank O'Farrell Story. O'Farrell had finally had his say.
Frank O’Farrell, footballer and manager, was born on October 9, 1927. He died on March 6, 2022 aged 94
Busby’s shadow loomed large over Old Trafford in the wake of his retirement in 1969, which he had briefly interrupted to retake the reins when Wilf McGuinness proved unequal to the task of replacing him, and there was a sour taste from the start of O’Farrell’s tenure thanks to an act of petty deception.
“Busby offered me £12,000 a year, plus bonuses, to take over from him,” O’Farrell recalled. “I thought it was a little stingy.” But O’Farrell was keen to make the move, and met Busby and the club’s chairman, Louis Edwards, in the back of Edwards’s Rolls-Royce in a lay-by. Busby repeated the terms of the offer.
“And Edwards said, ‘Oh no, Matt, that’s wrong, it’s £15,000’,” O’Farrell recalled. “It got us off on a bad note, me and Busby. He knew that I knew he wasn’t playing it straight. The trust was damaged from the start.” Matters deteriorated further once O’Farrell got to work, when he found that the manager’s office was still being occupied by Busby, who even had his name still pointedly displayed on the door. “I told him, sorry, he had to move,” O’Farrell said.
Although United experienced an initial surge under O’Farrell, going clear at the top of the table by ten points, it was obvious that Busby could not let go. “He was always about somewhere where the players could find him,” O’Farrell recalled. “After one game, he told me I shouldn’t have dropped Bobby Charlton. Obviously he said the same to Charlton, because the player was moping round the place.”
While Busby was undermining him behind the scenes, O’Farrell, who could seem aloof, did not help himself by failing to get to grips with a steeply declining George Best — although it is arguable whether any manager could have done better, and one of O’Farrell’s first acts as manager was to make Best the best-paid player at the club, which he had never been. “They were a difficult team,” O’Farrell recalled. “They had a funny attitude to tactics — ‘if they score four, we’ll score five’ was their attitude. That was all very well when they were 24 or 25 years old, but now the team was in its early thirties. George Best was easily our best player. He was carrying the team.”
Yet Best, and his well-documented extracurricular activities, was also a disruptive influence, and results during O’Farrell’s second season were poor. A year and a half into his tenure, in December 1972, he was sacked after a 5-0 defeat at Crystal Palace. “It was a five-year rebuilding job because of the mess Busby left and I was given just 18 months,” said O’Farrell. “When things were going well, Busby wrote in his newspaper column that I was the best signing he’d ever made. Then when I was sacked he said I wasn’t his choice.”
A nine-month legal battle was required for O’Farrell to extract the money he was owed by the club, during which he had to sign on the dole. He was worried that because many of the local legal profession were United fans he would not get a fair hearing, but his barrister told him, “Don’t worry Mr O’Farrell, I’m a Manchester City fan, I’m looking forward to getting Matt Busby in the witness box.”
Francis O’Farrell was born in Cork in 1927. His father was a train driver, and O’Farrell initially followed him into the railways as a stoker on locomotives. He began his career as a wing half with Cork United, earning £3 a week from his railway job and £3 from the club. O’Farrell followed his former team-mate Tommy Moroney to West Ham in 1948, but didn’t make his league debut until November 1950. It was while he was at West Ham that he met his Waterford-born wife, Ann, in a local church hall.
His time in East London sowed the seeds of his later career as a manager. After training he would meet with a group of West Ham team-mates such as Malcolm Allison, Dave Sexton, John Bond and Noel Cantwell at Cassettari’s Café in Barking Road. They would talk for hours about football, moving cups and saucers, sugar bowls and bottles of tomato ketchup like players on a pitch to illustrate tactical points about how to break down an opponent’s defence. All of them would go on to long and high-profile careers in football management.
O’Farrell won the first of nine caps for Ireland in a friendly against Austria in Vienna, but never pinned down a regular place in the side.
In 1956 he moved to Preston North End, with whom he finished second to Wolves in the old First Division in 1958. Three years later he became player-manager of Weymouth in the Southern League, and then, in 1965, manager of Torquay United, who he led out of the Fourth Division in his first season.
At Leicester City, where he took charge in 1968, he had mixed fortunes in his first season. They reached the FA Cup final, losing 1-0 to Manchester City, but he was unable to prevent relegation. Leicester bounced straight back, however, and O’Farrell was headhunted by Busby.
He later managed the Iran national side for two years from 1974, meeting the Shah every week to talk football, and coaching the ruler’s son.
O’Farrell returned to Torquay for a spell in 1981, first as manager, then general manager, retiring in 1983 and continuing to live in Torquay, where he and his wife ran a nursing home. A practising Catholic, he was president of the St Vincent de Paul Conference, made several pilgrimages in France and served on the altar until late in life.
For many years he was prevented by legal injunction from speaking about his experiences at Manchester United, but in 2011, finally, he published his autobiography, All Change at Old Trafford: The Frank O'Farrell Story. O'Farrell had finally had his say.
Frank O’Farrell, footballer and manager, was born on October 9, 1927. He died on March 6, 2022 aged 94
