All language subtitles for One-Armed.Wonder.The.Extraordinary.Story.Of.Jimmy.Hasty.2023.1080p.WEB.H264-CBFM

INTERVIEWER: Looking back on your
life Jim Malone, have you any
regrets?

I would say no, I have no regrets.

The only thing is I would love to
have been a great footballer.

And when I say a great footballer,
I mean a player of the calibre of
the late Jimmy Hasty.

Jimmy to me was the be-all and
end-all, both on and off the field.

His memory will live in Dundalk and
in Oriel Park for many, many years.

#

In Dundalk, Jimmy Hasty is a god.

Jimmy Hasty is their Maradona.

He made people sit up and take
notice of Dundalk football club.

We all had our doubts what he could
do.

Extra, extra people arrived at
Oriel Park to see this phenomenon.

The gates went up... It was the
making of the club.

Jimmy loved football and he wasn't
going to let any disability get in
his way.

His story is extraordinary on so
many levels.

And I have hairs on the back of my
neck standing up even thinking
about it.

In the 1960s, Belfast was one of the
biggest port cities in the world.

There would've been maybe 30,000 men
working there every single day.

And Sailortown was a really thriving
part of the city at that time.

2015, I was a Radio Ulster producer.

A student called Ryan Mallon
approached us with a really lovely
story about Sailortown.

As part of that, he mentioned this
footballer called Jimmy Hasty.

But there was no audio and
absolutely nothing in terms of
television pictures.

Once we started looking into this
story, it just took on a life of
its own.

My father just left school on the
Friday and then on the Monday he
went to work in Jennymount Mill.

He was only in the job a couple of
hours,

when the sleeve of his shirt got
caught in a machine,

and his arm was pulled in it.

He spent many weeks in hospital and
they had to amputate him,

just leave a stump on his left
arm.

That was his first day at work,
aged 14.

I met him in Sailortown, where he
lived.

I wouldn’t have known him, never
heard a tale of him until I met
him.

He just seemed to take life as it
came.

Losing his arm didn't seem to take
over his life.

I remember the stories from old
folks saying about my dad.

Somebody said something before
about George Best.

My dad was with a tennis ball, and
George best is meant to have turned
round and says,

“what he could do with a
tennis ball, I couldn't do with a
football.”

Going to Dundalk was a big thing.

We never even went down to Dundalk.

He didn’t have it in his head that
he was going to be a big star
footballer or anything like that.

He went and enjoyed, I think, the
football more.

My father's name was Jim Malone.

He was an accountant in Dundalk like
myself.

I'm still in the same rooms that he
was in in 1950.

He was involved in the club from a
very early age.

You name it, he did it.

He went onto the board in June 1955.

The club hadn't won anything apart
from three cups in the previous
thirty years.

Dad heard about Hasty and went down
to Newry to have a look.

And just couldn't get over the fact
that this one-armed player
dominated the whole match.

Dominated everything.

We had a board meeting in Market
Street.

The reason for calling the meeting
was that this player in Newry was
available,

approach him.

Of course, once I mentioned that he
had only the one arm,

a lot of people pooh-poohed it and
said, “oh, no, no,
no, no, no.

We can't have anything...”

So eventually I said, “look, if I
pay the transfer fee,

"will you agree to sign the
player?”

The news went around the town like
wildfire.

“Jesus, Dundalk signed a guy with
one arm.”

I genuinely think the fans
thought Mr. Malone was a nutjob.

Completely, you know?

#

I became a Dundalk fan in 1958.

At first, most of the club was run
from the Great Northern Railway
which wasn't far away.

The steps on the stands were made
from railway sleepers,

dressing rooms were railway
carriages.

Nothing fancy, no showers or
anything like that.

Jerry McCourt, whom I knew very
well, was manager, physio,
everything.

Jimmy used to travel up from
Belfast on he train on a Sunday
morning.

Jerry would pick him up, bring him
down for his breakfast.

On a Sunday morning, I would be
sent off for the Sunday papers.

And this particular Sunday morning,
I headed off, got the papers,

and Jerry McCourt pulled up on his
car,

“good morning, Kevin,” he said.

“I'd like to introduce you to our
latest signing, our new centre
forward, Jimmy Hasty.

"You’re the very first supporter to
meet Jimmy.” I was chuffed with
that.

When he came, it was like somebody
put the switch on.

The first match was against Cork in
Oriel Park.

There was a lot of curiosity to see
what was to some a freak show.

They came up more to have a laugh
than to see anything else.

But they came up.

And within a couple of minutes
Jimmy had scored, made a second,

and that was the beginning of the
Hasty legend.

#

Off we go.

It's been a long time since we ran
out here, hey Francie?

It sure is.

Do you remember the game we played
here was against Cork Celtic?

Big John Coughlan came over to me
after the game and he says, "hey
Murphy,

where did you get that one-armed
bandit?

Will you give him a message?

Tell him the next time I play him,
against him,

I'll pull the other
arm out out of him,

because he gave me the
hardest game of football I got for
a long, long time."

#

Jimmy joined in the season
‘60/’61.

And in that time Dundalk wasn't a
prominent team.

We were more down the bottom than
we were towards the top.

If you ever see any photographs of
the team,

you’ll always see him by
Christy Barron

where he always sort of hid
the left side in photographs.

But he certainly didn’t hide out on
the football field, sure he didn’t?

The impact was tremendous.

Oriel park was full every home game
to see what this one-armed man was
like.

People soon forgot about the one
arm because he was doing his
business on the pitch,

and he didn’t look for sympathy.

Jimmy obviously was the star player
on the team.

I was amazed at some of the things
he could do.

I have to admit that I was guilty
of being sceptical,

of all the things I was told about
Jimmy Hasty.

The Dublin papers were writing it
up as well as the local papers here.

You know, “we just can’t believe
what’s happening here.”

The sub editor of the Evening Press
gave a one-arm Jimmy Hasty, a
second arm because the

photograph had to be wrong.

And he just painted in an arm.

And everybody in Dundalk looked at
it saying, “well, that's not
Jimmy.”

The '62/'63 season, we started to
reap the benefit of Jimmy Hasty.

The last time Dundalk won the
league was 1933.

And it was exactly 30 years later
that we won it, 1963.

Jimmy was just the right piece at
the right time, and they just took
off.

Since then they won 12 league
titles.

Jimmy was the missing piece that
lit the touch paper and then off
they went.

#

This was the first time Dundalk
ever was in the Europe.

We were drawn against Zurich FC.

To say we were green, we were
really green, we didn't know what
we were doing.

No one had a clue.

We were beaten 3-0, and we went and
looked like a hopeless case for the
second game.

We just wanted to try and make up a
bit for the poor performance in the
first round.

I think that would've been the
first time he had been on an
aeroplane.

So that in itself would've been a
big thing for Jimmy.

#

Plane landed and of course you're
met by the Zurich officials.

Two of our players got injured.

And Davy McArdle limped down with a
walking stick, believe it or not!

Timmy Lyons came down with plaster
on his leg.

Jerry McCourt, he was our trainer,
he had a limp!

And the next thing was Jimmy Hasty
was one arm.

And the officials, you could hear
them!

"Is this the right plane or are they
going to Lourdes?"

We spoke to so many people and they
were giving us chapter and verse
on,

these amazing exploits, especially
the guys down at Dundalk FC.

But it still felt like we were
lacking something.

And then one evening something
pinged in from a Swiss email
account.

And I could hear audio of Dundalk
versus FC Zurich.

So I emailed back
and went, "is there a video of
this?"

And the guy went, "oh yeah, sure,
but I didn't think you wanted a
video."

I went, "mate, please send that to
me."

#

(Video plays game audio)

We'd never seen any footage in our
lives of my daddy playing football.

We couldn’t believe it.

From a wee lad in Sailortown,
playing football, losing his arm,

and then he gets to live his dream
playing in the European cup.

I feel great that he got to do
that, I really do.

Everything was true, everything.

I saw Jimmy playing.

I saw how incredible a footballer
he was.

I burst into tears.

Taking part in the first goal over
in Zurich, and then to score the
second...

...not bad for a wee Belfast boy
with one arm.
(He laughs)

He hit this blockbuster of a shot
and the goalkeeper was nowhere near
it.

And he was so unlucky to hit the
bar.

If it had a gone in, that was three
nothing we were winning,

and we were in a replay.

But in the end, Zurich scored a
late goal.

2-1 we eventually won.

It was the first win in a European
match away from home by an Irish
team.

And it still is!

Oh, whenever he'd come home, oh
god, he was all talk about that.

That was good.

Disability is only a disability if
you see it as such.

We just considered as kids that
Hasty walked on water.

There were kids running around the
place with their sleeve dangling,

and the arm inside their jumper or
inside their jersey,

because they all wanted to be Jimmy
Hasty
.

You could have seen how well he was
respected and liked down in
Dundalk.

I think Jimmy enjoyed life.

The years that he had, he enjoyed
them.

Explaining the politics of the
Troubles here is not a simplistic
matter.

‘74 was a particularly bad year.

You had grown accustomed to hearing
about shootings or bombings and
people dying.

(Dog barks)
(Gunshots)

We lived in Ardoyne for a while and
that was really bad.

So people were moving to different
places.

So that's how we ended up down in
Hillman Street.

Where Hillman Street was, the
neighbouring district would have
been Tigers Bay,

which would have been a
Loyalist area.

Whereas the New Lodge would have
been a Republican area.

So Hillman Street would have been
the first street over.

I would drive to work each morning,
dropping my wife off.

As my wife got out to go to her
work, she and I heard what we
considered to be a shot.

And I drove on down Brougham Street
because I could actually see that
there was

someone lying on the pavement.

I jumped out, got down on the
pavement beside him.

He was still breathing.
His eyes were closed.

I told him my name was George,
and I said that he'd be okay.

He did open his eyes and look
at me, so he knew I was there.

Then I realised that there was a
policeman beside me and his first
words were,

were, “oh my god, it's Jimmy
Hasty.”

#

I knew that there was something
wrong,

that the army might have been
raiding or something.

Nobody seemed to be telling me what
had happened.

Jimmy had an aunt who lived next
door, and it was her husband that
had come in.

And he thought I knew.

And he had said something about it.

And it was then that I knew that he
had been shot.

And...

...I couldn't tell you much
after that.

REPORTER: The victim was walking to
work along this street in north
Belfast when he was shot dead.

A gunman got out of a parked car
and shot Catholic, James Hasty,
once in the back at close range.

The shot man, who had only one arm,
then staggered across the street,

and later died on the pavement in
the arms of a policeman.

He was a married man, with two
children.

This morning’s murder came less
than 12 hours after another
killing,

in the Belfast suburb of
Newtownabbey.

An organisation called the Ulster
Protestant Action Group has claimed
responsibility for both killings.

They say they were in retaliation
for shooting incidents in Belfast
yesterday.

Our Paul was about two-and-a-half,
and I'd just turned seven on the
8th,

and father my was murdered on the
11th.

I loved my dad, so I did.

When he was murdered, it just hit me
when I hit teenage years,

that's when I started getting all
the hate.

And I just hated everybody.

And it just grew and grew and grew,
until...

...they couldn't handle me
anymore.

I just wish things had’ve been
different.

But you can't turn the clock back.

That was hard.

He didn't go out the door that
morning...

...thinking he wasn't gonna
come back again,

because he had no reason to.

You were just left to pick up the
pieces, get on with your life.

But then that didn't only happen to
me, there were hundreds of people
that happened to.

And the hardest part of it was...

...that you didn't do anything to
deserve it.

Match programmes!

(Indistinct chatter)
(Tannoy announcement)

In goal, number 1, Nathan Shepperd.

Number 2, Lewis Macari.

Number 4, Andy Boyle.

(Cheering and applause)

It was Jimmy that changed our
appetite for winning leagues.

That league win in ‘63 changed the
dynamic of the whole club.

Up on it, up on it!

Dundalk are one of the, if not the,
most successful Irish team.

I wonder sometimes, is the story so
seemingly far-fetched that people

don't actually believe that it
could be true?

This story is one of our biggest
sporting stories,

and we all know about George best,

we know about all the sporting
greats that come from Belfast and
come from Northern Ireland.

But Jimmy Hasty should rank among
them.

There should be statues of the man.

(Commentates)

#

Inside the Lilywhite Lounge Jimmy's
jersey’s on the wall.

Every time a supporter walks in,
it's there in front of them.

Everybody knows Jimmy.

He’s still an icon.

And long may he continue to be, you
know?

#

(Cheering)

Somebody asked me once, “what did
you make of Jimmy's disability?”

And my answer was, “what
disability?”

Jimmy was just the most incredible
centre forward I ever saw.

#

Did he really do that, did he
go...did a one armed man,

at 14 years of age, learn how to
play football again,

and score a goal in the Champion's
League?

Yes he did, and it was the winning
goal.

#

I feel proud at how much he's
still highly thought of.

He loved Dundalk, and Dundalk loved
him.

After all these years, for Jimmy
still to be talked about,

it's a long, long time,

for people still to be thinking
about Jimmy,

and it's nice for Martin and Paul,

to have...although they didn't see
him playing,

now they can hear plenty about
their daddy.

(Cheering)