When Derek Currie was pulled off the field at Douglas Park one afternoon in Glasgow, the last thing he expected was an offer to play football in Hong Kong. What clinched the deal was the promise that he would have an opportunity to play against Pele, who had just dazzled the globe with his performance in the 1970 World Cup.
The Brazilian superstar was coming to Hong Kong in three months’ time with his club Santos and Currie was assured he would have a good chance of qualifying for the League XI team they would face.
“Where do I sign?” was the only question he really had for Ian Petrie, a controversial figure in Hong Kong football but without whom the glory days of the local game may not have been quite so glorious.
It was Petrie who successfully lobbied for the expansion of the league and who brought Currie, Walter Gerrard and Jackie Trainer to Hong Kong in September 1970, paving the way for the local game’s most exciting years.
Currie eventually played five games with Pele – four of them in Hong Kong. International stars were regularly attracted to the city, which boasted an electrifying football culture in the 1970s and 1980s.
Seiko v New York Cosmos in Hong Kong, 1978. Result: 3-3. Derek Currie is front row, extreme right. Leaning against him is Johan Neeskens, one of the greatest Dutch footballers of all time, who played for The Netherlands in the side that came second in the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. Also pictured are two World Cup-winning captains – Franz Beckenbauer (Germany) and Carlos Alberto (Brazil). And non-footballing Hongkongers will remember A. de O. Sales, who famously confronted the terrorists at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Picture courtesy Derek Currie
The game has been in a sad and slow decline here in Hong Kong over the decades since, but in those days it had a huge following among the Chinese community. Most people were savagely poor, few had television and, for many, football and the movies were the only affordable entertainment.
It was also a brutal game, born of the concrete spaces set aside for recreation – often outside the local temple – where ball and kung fu skills were practised in equal measure, often at the same time.
Many were the weekend afternoons Your young Girl Reporter spent on Cheung Chau, dividing time between the tiny cinema and watching the kick-about outside the temple. Later, when I started attending matches with my dad, the professional games were played in the same fast, furious and fearless style.
At any moment, an altercation between players could turn into a most impressive fight
The kung fu on the footy pitch was picked up from the movies and the cross-fertilisation among the city’s youth was part of what made local matches so exciting. At any moment, an altercation between players could turn into a most impressive fight.
Currie’s first match, for Petrie’s Hong Kong Rangers – named, of course, for his beloved Glasgow team – was at the Boundary Street ground in Mong Kok.
“The stadium’s capacity was about 12,000 and they were on the stands and in the buildings behind, and on the hillsides there must have been another 5-6,000, and they were standing three deep, almost up to the touchline,” Currie said.
Capacity crowds at all of Hong Kong’s stadiums were a regular occurrence and they were thrilled by Currie and his fellow Rangers recruits.
Off the pitch, Derek Currie lent his star power to the clean-up Hong Kong campaign in 1973. Picture courtesy Derek Currie
At a training session on Shek-O beach, the day after Currie scored the winning goal against Hamburg to end 1-0, an elderly man came over and said the whole village had been watching the game. “And when you scored that goal, we all got drunk,” he told Currie, who had quickly been christened Ye So – Jesus – by the fans.
Petrie’s Rangers didn’t hold the new recruits for long and Currie joined new team Seiko – the Watchmen – in 1972. Serious sponsorship had arrived and brought some big name glamour to the local game.
It was around this time Your Girl Reporter’s footy-mad Dad started taking me to matches. It was all Seiko v South China in those days – the cashed-up new boys and the hardscrabble heroes determined to stick with their Chinese-only policy on the park.
A chance encounter at the bar in the Lee Gardens hotel in 1974 with Ron Wood and Rod Stewart of The Faces led to a kick-about the next day among the kids at the Happy Valley racetrack playing fields with Derek Currie and a few friends. Derek was definitely the biggest draw that day. Picture courtesy Derek Currie
They were always the most exciting fixtures, with Seiko capturing at least one championship each season and South China forever snapping ferociously at their heels.
Currie represented Hong Kong in the 1979 World Cup qualifiers in Bangkok and finished his local playing career with Eastern in the 1981-82 season, when former England captain and World Cup winner Bobby Moore was manager.
But it was after he retired from the game that Currie made his greatest impact on Hong Kong football. He joined Carlsberg as its marketing manager. The company had just opened a local brewery and already had a keen involvement with football, in its home country of Denmark.
“Mr Carlsberg”, second from right, with a combined force of local sports journalists and footballers – including George Best, fourth from left, who played in Hong Kong in the early 1980s for See Bee and Rangers. He was also a member of the Presstuds darts team, pictured here, courtesy Derek Currie
As Hong Kong’s “Mr Carlsberg”, Currie was responsible for sponsorship and it was under his watch that Hong Kong’s traditional Lunar New Year Cup became a tournament between local and visiting international sides.
As The Carlsberg Cup, from 1986, it was an annual showcase of Hong Kong’s great talent, competing against – and sometimes beating – some of the world’s best.
Paraguay were the champions that year and in 1987 the competition featured club sides from Denmark and China, along with the Hong Kong representative team.
Off-pitch, in-key, with Middleweight World Champion “Marvellous” Marvin Hagler and Stevie Wonder at the Hongkong Hotel. Currie joined them for a party, which included a singalong. When he got home, Currie told the maid he’d been singing with Stevie Wonder. “You’re drunk. Go to bed,” was her response. Picture courtesy Derek Currie
In recent years the competition’s fortunes have dwindled, along with the city’s love for the game, until this year when it was abruptly cancelled because of the rapidly worsening coronavirus outbreak.
The tournament had already been reduced to a strictly local competition – after months of Hong Kong’s anti-government protests – but its decline has been steady since Carlsberg withdrew its sponsorship in 2007. Whether it returns in 2021 remains to be seen.
In 2019, Currie was interviewed by the South China Morning Post and put the decline of the event down to costs.
“I think the cost factor of transporting teams to Hong Kong is the main reason why the tournament has declined in recent years,” he told the Post’s Chan Kin-wa. “Hotel costs, appearance money and then the cost of hiring the stadium makes it difficult, to what was achievable in the 1990s,” he said.
At the Azteca stadium in Mexico City covering the 1986 World Cup. Picture courtesy Derek Currie
Currie also became a regular fixture on local television, covering four World Cups and four European championships. He was part of the ESPN broadcasting team in Singapore covering Championship League and World Cup games.
He was a football pundit on local broadcaster ATV and also a racing tipster for the South China Morning Post. Currie owned two racehorses in Hong Kong and devoted a lot of his time to good causes in the city. He won the first marathon ferry crossing race – a gruelling charitable 20-hour long event – despite two fractured ribs.
These days, he spends most of his time in Thailand where he keeps talking about writing a memoir. Please join Your Girl Reporter in a little gentle persuasion for him to get on with it.
© Maria Spackman 2021
With grateful thanks to Derek for sharing some of his memories – these are just a fraction of some of his wonderful stories, scantily told. For the full story, including the rise and fall of Ian Petrie, and a truly wonderful anecdote about helping Rod Stewart choose a silk dressing gown for Britt Ekland, there’s a two-part podcast for that called ‘When Jesus came to Hong Kong’.
James Legge, co-host of the Hong Kong Football Podcast, interviews Currie and some of the other legends of the time and, I tell you what, it brought back so many memories of going to the footy with my dad and watching these guys in action. Enjoy!
When Jesus came to Hong Kong: The Derek Currie Story – Part 1
When Jesus came to Hong Kong: The Derek Currie Story – Part 2
Further reading:
Lunar New Year Cup: a history of stellar sides, superstars, sporting gestures and a royal wedding – by Chan Kin-wa, South China Morning Post, February 1, 2019
A. de O. Sales, ‘Father of Hong Kong sport’ died aged 100 on March 6, 2020. You can read his obituary in the South China Morning Post here
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