No Turkish delight for Finn Harps in European adventure: 50 years on

On arrival at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, Gerry Murray was sought out by the natives.

A posse of local officials and media met Finn Harps on their touchdown for European Cup Winners’ Cup action.

‘The number one goalkeeper’ was swiftly picked out for a photograph with officials from Bursaspor FC.

Patsy McGowan, the Harps manager, spotted Murray holding “strange looking beads”. One of the locals with a grasp of English told McGowan that they were “lucky charms”. 

Murray appeared as bemused as his manager as they headed for their hotel.

The possibilities were a mix of the exciting and the unknown when Harps took their place in the draw. The list read in some parts like a who’s who of European football. In others, it read as a ‘who?’

Among those in the hat for the first round draw, which took place in Geneva were Liverpool, Real Madrid, Red Star Belgrade, Dynamo Kyiv, PSV Eindhoven and Benfica. The draw sent Harps officials anxiously scrambling for an atlas and a travel agent.

Bursaspor weren’t actually the cup winners, but Fenerbache, who beat them in the Turkish Cup final, were also the Süper Lig champions and instead headed for the more luxurious surroundings of the European Cup.

Bursa, an old Ottoman city on the slopes of the Uludağ mountain, beckoned for Harps – just over five years since their entry into the League of Ireland in 1969.

McGowan quickly got to work in plotting the takedown of the Turks. He obtained assistance of Brian Birch, a former Manchester United player who had just concluded a spell as manager of Galatasary, and Jack Mansell, another Englishman who took over.

Through his contacts in Turkey, McGowan hoped to arrange a friendly with Galatasary to help offset the cost of the trip, but a match at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium never materialised. 

McGowan was confident as Harps boarded the plane in Dublin. 

After a four-hour stopover in Geneva, Harps touched down in the searing heat of Istanbul. 

Some closed their eyes as the airbus nosed to the ground.

“If we had been a couple of feet closer to the water on the approach to Istanbul Airport, we would not have needed the return tickets,” McGowan recalled in his autobiography, The Strings Of My Harps.

The 10-hour trip to Istanbul from Dublin was followed by a 150-mile bus journey to Bursa the next day. 

“It was like a run on the bumping cars,” McGowan reckoned.

“There must’ve been something wrong with the handbrake on the bus,” Brendan Bradley says. “Any time the bus would stop, this fella who was sat beside the driver would get out and stick this big wedge at the wheels – it was like a do-it-yourself handbrake.”’

“I thought he was a conductor or something at first,” says Jim Sheridan, the then Harps captain. “He had this block of timber, six-inch square, and out he’d go to the back wheel. We christened your man ‘handbrake’.”

Jim Sheridan challenges for the ball against Bursaspor

Birch told McGowan of how the Turks would go to great lengths – any lengths, in fact – to win. McGowan heard of food being doped, loud music being played and other such dark arts undertaken by opposing teams.

After checking into their hotel, Harps were treated to a lavish meal.

“We didn’t order so we had to try to take what we got,” Sheridan says. “They brought out these plates of fish to us – and they weren’t small fish, they were maybe a foot long – and I can still see the dead eye looking up at me. Nobody ate it. The fish went back and, after Patsy finally got things explained through the language barrier, we got served something close to what we’d be used to.”

After some haggling, Harps managed to train twice on the pitch at the Bursa Atatürk Stadium, but on the eve of the game disaster struck.

Sheridan was rooming with goalkeeper Gerry Murray. He can recall something of a haunting whoosh and then the thud of Murray slipping on the bathroom floor. He was out of action.

So much for the lucky charms. . . 

As a result, replacement net-minder Joe Harper was thrown into the furnace the next evening. The game kicked off in weather that was as hot as the atmosphere of 15,000 fanatical Turks.

“The running track was lined with police, their riffles pointing at the crowd,” McGowan remembered. “We had six armed policemen beside our dugout.”

Bradley saw riot police daily in his native Derry, but this was different. 

“I’ll always remember the white riot helmets they wore and me thinking: ‘God, it won’t be the Harps supporters causing the trouble anyway! The crowd made a lot of noise, but they weren’t hostile at all.

“You see all these boys looking at you and police with helmets on. There was no trouble, but it was a big change from running out at Finn Park on a Sunday afternoon.”

“All I can say is they didn’t intimidate me anyway,” says Sheridan.

 Ali Kahraman fired Bursaspor ahead, but Charlie Ferry drew Harps level with a goal he lists as his best in Harps’ colours.

Bursaspor score one of their goals against Finn Harps

Sinan Bür (the present day club chairman) and Turan Karadoğan opened up a 3-1 lead. Bradley reduced Harps’ arrears only for Karadoğan to give Bursaspor a 4-2 advantage after the opening leg.

Harper had to play through the pain barrier in the second half. 

“He fell on a bone-hard pitch and got badly damaged ligaments in his shoulder,” McGowan said after the game. “As a result, he was playing the second half unable to raise one of his arms and he was beaten by two long-range shots simply because he could not go for them.”

Harps’ goalkeeping woes paled into insignificance to that of Osman Uçaner. In July ’74, while on vacation with his family in Limassol, Cyprus, Uçaner and his family captured and taken prisoner by the Greek National Guard Army. They were held for 94 days and were only released after the intervention of Bursaspor and FIFA officials.

Bursaspor were managed by Abdulah Gegić, a Yugoslav who led FK Partisan from Belgrade to a European Cup final in 1966, which they lost 2-1 to Real Madrid. The Turks’ line-up including Kahraman, who scored 26 goals the previous year and a variety of internationals.

Harps were confident as they made the arduous voyage home.

“It wasn’t a bad result – and we actually thought we were still in with a chance,” Bradley says. “We thought we could catch them in the return leg.

“We didn’t know much about them before we played, but we knew ourselves that we had a good side and could give them a game.”

“I knew nothing only that they were from Turkey and had 11 players on the field,” Sheridan says. “We were looking forward to playing them in Ballybofey. I would have been full sure that Bradley and the boys could have scored two against anyone in Ballybofey, no problem. Away goals were very valuable in those days and we had scored two in Turkey.”

Harps were given a £500 prize from Beamish for winning the FAI Cup, which gave their coffers a timely boost for the Turkish trip.  Each player was sponsored, at the sum of £100, for the away leg. 

Bursaspor stayed at the Central Hotel in Donegal Town. For the second leg at Finn Park, Harps fixed admission at £1 which caused a stir. 

“By bringing the game to Ballybofey, we are giving the supporters a chance to see European football at home,” McGowan said as he defended the price in the run-up to the game. “If we had taken the game to Dublin or any other neutral venue, just think what the expenses involved would have been.”

A match programme from the Finn Harps v Bursaspor game

McGowan was bullish about his side’s prospects in the second leg: “We will beat Bursaspor and go into the next round of the competition.”

Harps found the Bursaspor goalkeeper, Rasim Kara, in excellent form with Bradley, Ferry and Hilary Carlyle all denied by the Turk. At that stage Uçaner was still being held captive in Cyprus. 

Late in the game, played before a crowd of 2,766, Kara brilliantly saved from Carlyle who was picked out by a Tony O’Doherty cross.

“Their goalkeeper was inspired,” says Sheridan. “We didn’t play well in Ballybofey, though. We gave a good enough account of ourselves, but we didn’t do enough. The fourth goal was a killer in Turkey. If we had held it to 3-2 even, it might have been different. Having said that, we were in with a big shout, but the goalkeeper did have a wonderful game.”

McGowan left Paul McGee unused for the second leg in Ballybofey after he reacted badly to being left out of the starting XI in Bursa, but Murray returned in goal. 

Finn Park was not up to scratch and with the dressing rooms in the ground not up to European standard the two teams used the facilities at the new centre at the Sean MacCumhaills GAA club – something that would have the Ulster Council demanding answers the following week. 

“Visitors to Ballybofey might have been a bit surprised to see two teams parading ip through the Main Street of Ballybofey heading in the direction of Finn Park,” one newspaperman reported.

“Back in those days, Finn Park was a great atmosphere,” Bradley says. “Before games, we used to stand up and look out windows and you’d see the ground filling up. You could just feel the atmosphere. If Cork Hibs, Waterford or maybe Shamrock Rovers were up, you could really sense it. 

“The European games were a different feeling. You just knew that it was different. 

“It was amazing because we were only new in the League and there we were in the middle of a European tie, but we had a great team. t was a great experience and to play in a place like Turkey in a European competition was just fantastic. If only we had got an early goal in that return game I do think we could have knocked them out.”

In the media the following week, McGowan blasted seconds of the Finn Park crowd who he branded as “hooligans who are not wanted” after some Bursaspor players were spat on. “We realise that these people are not our full-time supporters, only hooligans who do not seem to understand the game.”

Some years later in his book, McGowan reflected further: “The apathy or inferiority of these people was unbelievable. They just refused to commit themselves to the cause, lest they be disappointed.”

Bursaspor reached the 1974/75 Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-finals, bowing out at the hands of the eventual winners, Dynamo Kyiv.

FIRST LEG – Bursaspor 4 Finn Harps 2

Bursaspor: Rasim Kara, İhsan Kavak, Vahit Kolukısa, Gürol Arkan, Orhan Özselek, Kemal Batmaz, Cemil Kezer, Sedat Özden (Ismail Tartan), Sinan Bür, Ali Kahraman, Turhan Karadoğan.

Finn Harps: Joe Harper, Jim Sheridan, Peter Hutton, Declan McDowell, Paddy McGrory, Sean McLaughlin (Gerry Doherty), Tony O’Doherty, Hilary Carlyle (Paul McGee), Brendan Bradley, Charlie Ferry, Jim Smith. 

SECOND LEG – Finn Harps 0 Bursaspor 0

Finn Harps: Gerry Murray, Peter Hutton, Declan McDowell, Jim Sheridan, Paddy McGrory, Tony O’Doherty, Gerry Doherty (Gerry McGranaghan), Brendan Bradley, Jim Smith, Charlie Ferry, Hilary Carlyle. 

Bursaspor: Rasim Kara, Ismail Tartan, Yusuf Çavdar, İhsan Kavak, Vahit Kolukısa, Sacit Karaba, Gürol Arkan, Cemil Kezer, Ali Kahraman, Turhan Karadoğan, Baykal Tüysüz.