Keith Kelly

Galway turned out in unprecedented numbers last Thursday and Friday to pay their respects to not only the greatest soccer player the city has ever produced, but also a humble, modest, down-to-earth family man who touched the lives of so many.

Several thousand people queued for six hours at the removal of Eamon ‘Chick’ Deacy from Conneely’s funeral home on Flood Street on Thursday, and more turned up in droves for his funeral Mass in the Augustinian Church on Friday, following his sudden death last Monday from a suspected heart-attack.

He was to repose from 4pm to 7pm, but people began gathering at Conneely’s from 3.30pm, and in the end it took almost six hours for the thousands of people – some of whom queued for more than two hours – to pay their respects to the city native.

The line of people – four deep in parts – on Thursday stretched from Flood Street, along New Dock Street and back around Merchants Road, and all queued patiently in the rain to say their final goodbye to a man who represented the city with pride for more than four decades on the soccer pitch.

Former team-mates travelled from all around the country, and it is a measure of the esteem in which Chick Deacy was held that four of his colleagues from his time at Aston Villa in the early 1980s – Gordan Cowans, Ken McNaught, Tony Morley and Colin Gibson – along with current Finance Director at the club, Robin Russell, travelled over from England for both the removal and funeral.

Speaking at the funeral Mass on Friday, chief celebrant Fr Dick Lyng said that in his 30 years as a priest, he had never seen a funeral as large as Chick’s. President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, travelled down from Dublin on Thursday to attend the removal, and his Aide de Campe, Commandant Michael Walsh – a Mervue man – represented him at Friday’s funeral Mass.

In a conversation Chick had with his wife Mary that married couples often have, without ever expecting the topic to have an immediacy, he had said recently he wanted a closed casket when he died as he didn’t like the idea of people looking down on him.

For more, read this week's Connaxcht Sentinel.