Monday 24th August 1998 – Newry Town welcomed the mighty Manchester United to the Showgrounds in a friendly fixture organised to help aid the funding of a new stand at the ground.

United had a vital Champions League preliminary round clash with FC Lodz in Poland two days after the game against Newry, so it was left to United’s fringe players and Reserve team to generate excitement amongst the 7,000 spectators who paid into the game. Incidentally, United won 2-0 on aggregate against FC Lodz to qualify for the group stages of the tournament that season. The rest as they say is history!

Back to the Showgrounds and Newry’s goalscorer supreme Dessie ‘The Hawk’ Gorman stunned United fans in the Showgrounds when he gave the Town an early lead after he was quickest to react in the six yard box following a flick on from Stuart McLean. Then on 21 minutes, McLean’s long free from his own half caught the United defence unawares and sent The Hawk through on goal and the Dundalk native calmly fired past Gibson to double the host’s advantage.

Paul Teather finally gave the United fans something to cheer about when he reduced arrears on 32 minutes, heading Michael Clegg’s pinpoint cross past Town ‘keeper Paul Straney.

In the 46th minute United striker Erik Nevland was pulled down in the box by a Newry defender and Northern Ireland International Philip Mulryne made no mistake from the resulting penalty kick to square the game up at 2-2.

Newry took the lead once more in the 59th minute. Left back Alan Hall broke forward and finished a terrific Newry move initiated by Alan Byrne. But just six minutes later, Chris Casper drew United level after he headed in a corner from Terry Cooke.

You could be forgiven for thinking United would kick on from here and win the match but this resilient Newry team had other ideas. Substitute Any Myler’s brilliant solo effort 16 minutes from time proved to be the winner for The Town. Myler battled his way past United defender Danny Higginbotham and ‘keeper Paul Gibson before slotting home to give his team an unlikely victory over their illustrious opponents and give the Newry faithful a night they would never forget.

Here are photos from the big match below. Click the thumbnails to view larger images.

Do you remember the match? Feel free to share your memories in the comment box below!

Former Newry City youth team coach Barry Trainor is holding a Coffee morning next week to help raise funds for his charity work in Zambia.

For those who don’t know Barry, he is a Social Worker who has voluntarily given up his time to work with orphaned street children in Zambia over the past seven years. This work is done through the “Friends of Africa” organisation where Barry engages the young people in therapeutic work through the mediums of drama, art and sport in an endeavour to rebuild their health and wellbeing.

Any money raised from the Coffee morning and any other fundraising events that Barry runs are used to buy food, medicine, clothes, educational resources, structural repairs, blankets and mosquito nets for the children.

The Coffee morning is in Grounded Espresso bar in Newry this Tuesday, 10th March from 9am until 11am. However, if you can’t make the Coffee morning but would still like to contribute, you can leave donations with Barry Johnston in Grounded and he will pass them onto Barry.

Round 4 of this year’s Last Man Standing Competition seen just 3 fallers from the competition with West Ham and Southampton being the teams who failed to grab 3 points over the weekend just past. Patrick Higgins was sure Southampton would get a result against West Brom, but that win failed to materialise.

Chris Taylor and Paul Lyons both fancied their chances backing West Ham at home to Crystal Palace. However neither could have predicted the 3-1 demolition the Hammers were to recieve and both bow out.

Going into the Fifth Round of the competition, there are only 9 participants. Six of which had confidently backed Manchester United to get a win at home to Sunderland, and they weren’t let down. Also into the next round is Kevin Taylor who was able to predict West Brom’s 3-1 win over West ham.

Joining Kevin in the Fifth Round is Martin McLoughlin and Philip Wilson who had gambled on Stoke to steal the victory against Hull. Round 5 sees some midweek fixtures with this coming weekend being FA Cup duties for some teams.