In 1950, Jimmy Hasty lost his left arm in an accident at the Jennymount Mill in Belfast. He was 14 years old and it was his first day at work. 13 years later, Hasty was the top goal scorer in Dundalk Football Club and a key player on the first ever Irish team to win an away match in Europe. Oliver Callan spoke with Paddy Malone about this extraordinary journey, a new documentary on the footballer's life and legacy and Paddy’s personal memories of Jimmy Hasty.

Paddy says every kid growing up in Dundalk during the 1960s idolised Jimmy Hasty. He had a personal connection to his hero through his dad, who was director of Dundalk FC. Having seen him play in a junior match in Newry, Jim Malone put up his own money to sign Hasty on the spot, without asking permission from the club’s board of directors. At that time, it was the board and not the coaches who picked the team. On hearing about the new signing, there was huge resistance to signing a player with one arm. Jim Malone stuck by his decision and his faith was vindicated in Jimmy’s 1961 debut:

"20 minutes into the match, one of the directors puts his head around the door and says 'Jim, whatever you’re owed, take it out of the gate. He’s scored one, made a second – he’s unplayable. The opposition don’t know what to do with him.’ Within 20 minutes they had shut up. He was incredible."

Jimmy Hasty never played for a UK team, as no insurance company would cover him to play, but he went on to help bring Dundalk FC to a historic victory in 1963. The European Cup (predecessor of today’s UEFA Champions’ League) had never seen an Irish side win an away match on the Continent. That was about to change. In the 1963 tournament, FC Zürich beat Dundalk 3-0 in Dalymount Park and were confident of a similar result at home. There were a few injured players on the Dundalk team that travelled to Switzerland and Paddy says no-one at the Letzigrund Stadium on the 25th of September 1963 saw them as a threat:

"This was the champions of Ireland, and this was the way they arrived: One with an elbow in his sling, one with a crutch and one with one arm."

Jimmy set up a goal for Dundalk 20 minutes in, then put one in the back of the net himself at 57 minutes. After an attempt by Jimmy hit the crossbar, Zürich snuck in the goal that would bring them through the tournament on aggregate. But they had lost 2-1 to an Irish team against all odds. Paddy says it was a stunning victory:

"Dundalk still, North or south, Linfield, Glentoran, Drumcondra; and just shows how far we’re going back now, Shamrock Rovers: nobody had ever won a match away from home. And here we are. And the man who scored the second and made the first was a one-armed player from Belfast."

Jimmy ranks as the 6th highest goal scorer in Dundalk’s history and went on the play briefly for Drogheda, before retiring from the sport in 1967. Paddy says he was a brilliant athlete:

"His balance was incredible. His height was, he was a very tall man, he was over 6 foot 2. He had a natural ability with both feet. So he was the all-round footballer. Very quickly it became known that to beat Dundalk, or even to tackle with Dundalk, you had to take on Hasty."

UEFA TV have recently released a documentary about Jimmy Hasty called One-armed Wonder: the Extraordinary Story of Jimmy Hasty. The filmmakers couldn't find archive footage of the legendary player, as broadcasters in the 1960s regularly recorded over tapes and re-used them to save money. The day before the completed documentary was due to be screened, a Swiss TV station got in touch to say they had found some footage of Jimmy Hasty from the 1963 game in Zürich. Paddy says he heard the story from Paul McClean, producer of the documentary:

"We found two and a half minutes of tape, because it was such an unusual story, Swiss TV ran it in the news, not in the sports news, and that’s why it survived; that’s why it was kept. It was that match in Zürich, where we won 2-1."

Paddy says the quality of the footage has been improved and the agility and the bravery of Jimmy Hasty as a player is there for all to see:

"Fear didn’t enter into it. That’s what I was talking about in the attempt against St Pats. He feared nothing. He used the strength. He didn’t ask for any quarter and he certainly didn’t give any quarter."

Players on opposing teams treated Jimmy with caution at first, Paddy says. But they learnt pretty quickly that he was a force to be reckoned with:

"The players got to know him very quickly, that he was the star player. I remember somebody asked me what did I make of his disability? It got to the point where there was no disability. What disability are you talking about?"

Tragically, Jimmy was murdered in an alleged reprisal killing by a group affiliated with the UVF. He was a married man by then with two sons, aged 2 and 7. He was shot at point-blank range on a Belfast street on his way to work. As Jimmy lay dying, a 25-year old man called George Larmour stayed with him. Larmour was deeply affected by the incident and went on to suffer his own loss in The Troubles on the same date, exactly one year later, which you can hear more about in the full interview, linked below.

The ultimate praise for Jimmy Hasty’s incredible ball skills came from his fellow Belfast native George Best. In the UEFA documentary, Jimmy’s son Martin quotes the man considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of football, speaking about his Dad:

"George Best is meant to have turned around and said: ‘What he could do with a tennis ball, I couldn’t do with a football."

You can listen back to the full interview with Paddy Malone about Jimmy Hasty here.

The film One-armed Wonder: the Extraordinary Story of Jimmy Hasty is available to watch free on uefa.tv.