Heroes of Hong Kong’s footballing heyday remembered

In the 1970s our social orbit expanded to include a small but highly specialised group of expatriates in Hong Kong. They were footballers, who delighted local crowds in the glory days of the game and whose experience of life in the city was unique among the foreigners who have called it home.

Among them was an aspiring writer named Bernie Poole. When my father Jack Spackman took on the editorship of Media magazine in the 1980s – with Your Girl Reporter as production editor – he gave Bernie a job as features writer.

I remember him encouraging Bernie to write about the gypsy footballers and finally, in 1985, he did. The subsequent article is all I have of Bernie’s work, but it’s a great example of his talent and a record of a remarkable group of men who found undreamed-of opportunities in Hong Kong when their playing days came to an end.

Bernie always did have a good eye for an opening shot, and the piece he wrote for the local TV & Entertainment Times is typical:

“When Walter Gerrard goes out for lunch, he does it in considerable style. A table at an expensive restaurant, a bottle of the best wine and a cigar of distinction are all part of his way of life. But he is the first to admit that it wasn’t always so.”

Gerrard arrived from Scotland in 1970 to play two years of professional football for Rangers. Like his team-mates Derek Currie and Jackie Trainer, he had barely travelled beyond his hometown. Very much like the Spackman family, he had no plans to settle in Hong Kong.

As Boy Reporter Bernie put it, straight from the airport they were whisked off to their new home – a cramped Wanchai flat shared with a dozen local players and a family of scavenging rats.

“We were thrown in at the deep end,” Gerrard said. “The average expat coming to Hong Kong has a period of adjustment and is well looked after. Not us.”

Once the Hong Kong season started, Gerrard and Currie, newly christened Big Water Buffalo and Jesus by local fans, became household names. Fans flocked to see Rangers every week – and the gweilo invasion of Hong Kong soccer was underway.

I don’t know when Jack met them, but my first memory of the footballers ranks as one of my greatest experiences. Dad took me to a match at the Hong Kong Football Club in Happy Valley, to see a friendly game between them and a visiting side from Germany.

We stayed for the third half and Your Girl Reporter was entranced as they began to sing. The visitors opened proceedings with a German folk song and their hosts responded with one of their own. Back and forth they sang, and some of the tunes from that night remain my favourites to this day.

Gerrard and Currie’s success led to their appearance in a television commercial for another Scottish import, whisky. And that, Gerrard said, opened his eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.

“That was the beginning,” he told Bernie. “That’s when I realised I didn’t have to go back to my old job as a carpenter in Glasgow once my playing days were over.”

Back row, from left: Dave Allison, John McGunnigle, Bernie Poole, Duncan Waldman, Hugh McCrory, Derek Currie, Alan Venables. Front row, from left: Colm McFeely, Dave Anderson, Walter Gerrard, Ronnie Doctrove, Billy Semple. Picture: TV & Entertainment Times

He got a job as a part-time liquor salesman, going on to become Hong Kong’s “Mr Whisky” as sales manager for Ballantine’s. He set an example that Bernie and many of the others were soon to follow.

It wasn’t long before Currie, too, was making his first moves towards a future career, writing a football column for The Star newspaper and going on to become public relations manager for Carlsberg, after phasing out his football career with part-time stints at Bulova and Eastern.

Trainer, third of the original trio, did not thrive in Hong Kong. At just 17, he was the youngest of the three Rangers imports and found it difficult to adjust. According to Bernie’s article, he had an intermittent local career over the next decade and, in 1985, was working as a warder at Manchester’s Strangeways Prison.

Many of Gerrard’s and Currie’s business contacts took place in the bars, pubs and restaurants around town, where they would often run into colleagues and opponents from their footballing days.

John McGunnigle, ex-Caroline Hill, Kwong Wah and Urban Services mid-fielder, went on to open the Traps bar and restaurant in Happy Valley. He retired, disillusioned, from the game at the early age of 28, but said the experiences he gained as a footballer were invaluable to his business development.

“The overseas footballers have a unique angle on local life,” he told Bernie. “For years, we worked alongside and shared accommodation with working-class Chinese lads. There’s not many expats can say that.”

Bernie: “When Currie was popping in the goals with one of his many clubs, Seiko, Billy Semple was often the man setting them up. Now he sets them up behind the bar of Annie’s Bar and Grill, the Tsimshatsui country and western bar he owns in partnership with his wife, Anne.”

The Semples’ first venture into the bar trade was Rumours Wine Bar in Causeway Bay, one of the favourite haunts of Your Girl Reporter About Town, which was managed in succession by two more ex-footballers – Colm McFeely and ex-Eastern goalkeeper Duncan Waldman.  

Bernie Poole and his wife Alice in Hong Kong, sometime in the 1980s. Picture courtesy Tom Banks

McFeely, a fully qualified FIFA coach, had high hopes of staying in the game and steered his team Harps from the obscurity of the local district leagues to the first division, before a boardroom coup left him out in the cold.

It was the first division ambitions of Harps that were responsible for the return to Hong Kong of Dave Allison. The former Urban Services and Eastern utility player had returned to Manchester in 1980, where he was working as a driver when McFeely contacted him with an offer of a job and some part-time football.

Ali, as he was known, had something in common with Your Girl Reporter – a father’s shadow to work his way out from under. He was the son of Malcolm Allison, one of English football’s most flamboyant and successful characters.

Ali one night spoke to me about the necessity of making plans for life after football, and he went on to manage Traps before also taking the public relations route, for Hong Kong beer San Miguel.

From left: Your Girl Reporter, Dave Allison and my sister Alin Spackman.

Ronnie Doctrove and Duncan Waldman arrived in Hong Kong to pursue other careers, Doctrove as a computer consultant and Waldman as a draughtsman. Their amateur exploits for Hong Kong Football Club in the second division soon attracted the attention of the senior sides.

West Indian-born Doctrove had successful first division spells at Sea Bee and Bulova, while Waldman captained Eastern to a Viceroy Cup final victory. Both were also selected for the Hong Kong League XI, which was largely made up of the expatriate players.

Doctrove later returned to the second division, with Ryoden and Hong Kong Electric. His coach at Electric was Liverpool-born Alan Venables who, as player-coach, guided Electric from the third division to the first.

When Electric pulled out of the league in 1985 before a ball was kicked Venables, who had spent his entire Hong Kong career with Caroline Hill, was forced to re-polish his boots and sign for Rangers.

“I was shattered by the Electric decision,” he told Bernie. “I had no intention of playing. I was just looking forward to coaching Electric.”

From left: Dave Allison, Colm McFeely and Jack Charlton at the Hong Kong Football Club. Picture courtesy Tom Banks.

One of Venables’ predecessors in the Caroline Hill sweeper’s jersey was Dave Anderson, who arrived in Hong Kong in 1971 and later captained Bulova in their glory days of the early 1980s.

He too went on to play part-time second division football in Hong Kong, turning down full-time offers to concentrate on his trading business. The gentle Anderson was also a knight in shining armour for Your Girl Reporter About Town.

I was in the Shakespeare – yes, yet another Hong Kong bar – waiting for a friend when I attracted the unwelcome and persistent attention of an over-refreshed British soldier. At the other end of the long bar were Dave Anderson and Jack Beattie, sports journalist with the South China Morning Post.

I sought refuge in their company and had not been sitting with them long when the squaddie walked past us to the toilets down the back. Without a word, Dave followed him, and Jack patted my hand and, smiling, told me not to worry about it.

A damsel knows when she has been rescued from distress

Well, Dave returned quite promptly and picked up the conversation exactly where he’d left it, while I kept glancing nervously towards the toilets. Every time I did so Jack would smile kindly and pat my hand.

When my admirer finally emerged, it was with head down and a pause just long enough to grab his coat before he bumped out of the door and into the night. No word of the matter was ever spoken, but a damsel knows when she has been rescued from distress and I treasure the memory of sitting there between those two gentlemen, both alas no longer with us.

Hugh McCrory was another of the first wave who found opportunity in Hong Kong after football. He was 17 when he joined Rangers in 1971 and, in 1983, opened McKai’s, a butcher’s shop in Happy Valley.

When Bernie interviewed him, McCrory was confident he could play for another three seasons at the top, but said he was planning to retire at the end of his season that year with Sea Bee.

“You’ve got to make a choice some time and I’ve had a good run,” he said, in an echo of Ali’s chat to me once about the difficulty of deciding when to hang up the boots.  

Walter Gerrard died in 2014. Here’s an extract from the tribute paid to him by the Hong Kong Football Club in its magazine, courtesy Tom Banks.

By the time Bernie wrote his article for the TV Times the local game had declined in popularity since the arrival of the first dozen expatriate footballers.

“It was different when we arrived,” Gerrard told him. “The game was so popular then and had a great image. But the lads who have stayed have had to battle for all they’ve got. And I’m very happy with what I’ve got.”

Gerrard’s “lot” included a wife, two children, a spacious apartment, company car and a job he loved. Bernie, who also knew how to land a finish, ended his article with this quote from the Big Water Buffalo:

“It’s nice to drive to work listening to the stereo and thinking about lunch at Landau’s. That’s a lot better than a freezing building site and wondering if it’s going to be cheese again in the sandwiches.”

Bernie Poole, alas, is no longer with us. He died in 2012 after a long struggle with depression. It was a joy to read his words again, after such a long time, and I extend my grateful thanks to Tom Banks and Duncan Waldman for their help with this article. I will have more to say about Bernie and his fellow footballers in future posts. Hit me up in the comments if you want your own memories of these Hong Kong sporting heroes included.

Further reading:

The closure of the Excelsior Hotel in Hong Kong in 2019 prompted some reminiscing from Derek Currie on the glory days of its legendary Dickens Bar, and the footballers who frequented it. Enjoy:

Dickens Bar: Hong Kong’s sporting oasis closes its doors after four decades of hosting global stars and Sevens fans – Nazvi Careem, South China Morning Post

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