Friday 17 April 2020 09:39, UK
The name of Adrian Doherty might not resonate with Manchester United supporters as much as his former team-mate Ryan Giggs, but those who saw him in action believe the one-time youth sensation was every bit as talented - and that his story deserves to be told.
Oliver Kay is the author of Forever Young, a new book about Doherty's life, one cut tragically short when he slipped into a canal in The Hague. He was just 26 years old.
Kay paints a vivid picture of Doherty, the musician, the poet, the footballer, the boy and the man. We caught up with him to find out more about this unique figure…
Tony Park, who is a great authority on United at youth-team level, says he was like Ryan Giggs, Andrei Kanchelskis and Cristiano Ronaldo rolled into one.
When did you first become aware of Adrian Doherty and what made you want to tell his story?
It was early 2011. I was speaking to some former Manchester United youth-team players for a historical piece I was researching and one of them asked me if I knew about Adrian Doherty. He told me "Doc" was as good as Ryan Giggs at 16 or 17, as talented as any of those who went on to become superstars. I did actually have the vaguest memory of the name, from 20 years earlier, but I had no idea he had died. There was almost nothing on the internet. That only added to my intrigue.
I started making more enquiries, went over to Strabane to meet his family and found out a lot more about the rest of his life and his personality, which was as far from the stereotype as you could imagine - writing poems, writing songs, going busking in the city centre when his team-mates were at Old Trafford. It felt like a story I just had to write.
I suppose the obvious question that people will want to know the answer to is simple: How good do you reckon he was?
I never saw him play, unfortunately, so I've had to rely on the testimonies of others. Should I give you a flavour? Ryan Giggs calls him "incredible". Gary Neville says he was "out of this world". Tony Park, who is a great authority on United at youth-team level, says he was like Ryan Giggs, Andrei Kanchelskis and Cristiano Ronaldo rolled into one. You get the picture.
Sir Alex Ferguson calls him "the boy with the most amazing football skill, but who seemed to be happiest with his books, poems and guitar". I think Ferguson's quote probably says a lot. Everyone says Doherty was incredibly talented - as good as Giggs - but his personality and his interests were very different to the norm for a footballer. Despite that, he was being fast-tracked for the first team.
He and Giggs were neck and neck as to which would make his debut first. They were both due to be in the squad for the Everton match when Giggs made his debut in March 1991, but Adrian injured his knee the week before … and sadly never recovered. Giggs's career and life went in one direction, Doherty's in another.
Is there any footage? If not, what challenges did that represent in building the picture?
There is very little action footage unfortunately, but it's not one of those books where you're spending much time detailing on-pitch action. I've left the descriptions of his playing style and performances to those who witnessed him at the time. But one thing I did manage to get my hands on was some old Camcorder footage of him playing the guitar and messing around with his mates in Manchester.
That was the first time I'd even heard him talk and, even after speaking to so many people, it gave me an insight to his personality that I hadn't had before. And the book is more about the personality and his life than it is about describing a goal he might have scored in an A team match against Liverpool.
It seems as though you've been exhaustive in your research. Have you found that a lot of people were keen to talk about him?
Yes. Extremely keen. His family and friends were extremely helpful, as you can imagine, but I was also tracking down and getting in touch with a lot Adrian's ex-team-mates and ex-colleagues (from various walks of life), many of whom had no idea what had happened to him or couldn't begin to understand why I was writing a book about him. A lot of those whom he met subsequently in Preston and Galway, after leaving United, were shocked when I told them he had been a professional footballer. He had never told them!
With his team-mates, most said they didn't know him all that well, but then they would find themselves talking about him for an hour, remembering more and more, perhaps reflecting on his personality and his eccentricities in a way they never had done before. Very few people felt they actually knew him properly, but all of them spoke so fondly about him.
People are fascinated by lost talents aren't they? But sadly this is much more than that… a lost life too…
Regrettably, yes. I kept thinking I would love for there somehow to be a happy ending. But sadly there isn't. Adrian died the day before his 27th birthday. The chapters about his death, his funeral and what his family have had to deal with for the past 16 years were very painful for me to write.
There were times when I felt like I was writing about a mythical character, weaving a too-good-to-be-true character into a storyline that everyone knows, but then I would be standing at his grave in Strabane, or talking to his parents or his siblings or his cousins or his mates, and the reality would hit me very hard. The past 16 years have been incredibly difficult for his family and I sincerely hope that the book helps them in some way.
Were there any surprises for you (particularly in researching Doherty's later life) during the course of this journey?
Yes, I don't want to give away the whole story, but there are plenty of surprises and unexpected twists. It's anything but the typical story of a footballer who was cut off before his prime. One thing that surprised me was the quality of his writing - his poems and songs, some of which are featured in the book. He was just writing them for fun, with no great ambition, but he had a real talent and a way with words.
Another thing I found really amusing was the story of his trip to New York in the summer of 1992, performing at gigs in the East Village in the hope of landing a record deal. I dread to think what Sir Alex Ferguson would have thought if he had known about that…
And finally, what are your hopes for the book?
I would like people to enjoy it, obviously, but my main hope, sincerely, is that it helps the family. I'm not talking about 'closure'. I'm talking about taking a story that has gone pretty much untold for far too long and opening it up to a wider audience. The story is amazing. I'm not saying my book is amazing, but Adrian's story certainly is. I just wish he had been around to write it himself.
