Former Hammer Frank O’Farrell has died at the age of 94.
Frank spent eight years with the Hammers between 1948-56, making 213 appearances in and playing an important role in the establishment of the Academy of Football.
He was capped nine times by the Republic of Ireland, played for his hometown club Cork United and Preston North End before managing Leicester City, Manchester United and Torquay United among others.
“I’ve been blessed and I can have no complaints about the opportunities that life has given me,” he once said.
“My father drove steam locomotives on Ireland’s railways and I’d spent a few years as a fireman standing on the footplate, hurriedly shovelling all the coal into the firebox. Football was easy after that!”
In early 1948, after being spotted by scout Ben Ives he joined West Ham for a £3,000 transfer fee, and initially played in the reserve team, making more than 50 appearances at that level before breaking into the first team under new manager Ted Fenton two years after arriving in east London.
After making his debut in outgoing manager Charlie Paynter’s Testimonial against Arsenal in September 1950, O’Farrell made his Football League bow at Notts County in November of the same year and became a regular starter.
O’Farrell missed just one Second Division match in each of the next two seasons, 1951/52 and 1952/53, scoring his maiden goal at Blackburn Rovers in December 1951.
Away from the pitch, he and innovative teammate Malcolm Allison began laying the foundations upon which the Club’s long-awaited return to the First Division in 1958 would be built.
O’Farrell, Allison and teammates, including his fellow Irishman Noel Cantwell, Dave Sexton and John Bond, would go for lunch at the Denmark Inn – paid for by the Club – before spending their afternoons talking tactics and devising coaching methods at Cassettari’s Café in Barking Road.
“We’d all sit there moving cups and saucers around the table like players on a pitch,” O’Farrell once said. “They were good times and I’ve got very happy memories of my days at West Ham and I’ll always look back and remember the place with fondness.”