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The footballer Peter McParland, who has died aged 91, will best be remembered for the five goals he scored in the 1958 World Cup finals for Northern Ireland as they made progress to the quarter-finals.
He averaged a goal a game during the tournament in Sweden, including two against West Germany in a 2-2 group stage draw and another brace in a 2-1 play-off victory against Czechoslovakia that put Northern Ireland into a quarter-final against France, which they lost 4-0 as they succumbed to exhaustion and injuries. Only Pelé, West Germany’s Helmut Rahn and France’s Just Fontaine scored more goals than McParland at those finals, and each of their teams went further than the last eight.
McParland had also scored two goals in Northern Ireland’s qualification campaign for the 1958 World Cup. He was a typically energetic force in the 2-1 win over Italy in Belfast that knocked Italy out of the qualifying competition and put Northern Ireland through to the finals for the first time.
Jimmy Greaves rated McParland as “one of the most dangerous wingers I have ever seen, cutting through defences at tremendous speed and finishing with cannonball shots”. In a career that saw him win 34 Northern Ireland caps and appear in almost 300 league games for Aston Villa, McParland’s other great source of renown was
the game-changing contribution he made to the 1957 FA Cup final, in which he scored twice for Villa as they beat Manchester United 2-1.
Aside from the goals, his most telling intervention was a foul on Ray Wood, United’s goalkeeper, just six minutes into the match. The rugged challenge left Wood with a fractured cheekbone, and, in the days before substitutes, forced him ultimately to become a passenger on United’s left wing while Jackie Blanchflower took over in goal.
On 67 minutes, when Johnny Dixon crossed a low ball, McParland hurled himself to head past Blanchflower. Five minutes later, after Dixon hit the United bar, McParland drove in the rebound. Tommy Taylor headed a goal for United, but the Cup was Villa’s – the first trophy they had won since 1920.
The foul on Wood hardly endeared McParland to United’s supporters, and for many years afterwards he was vilified in anonymous letters. However, he always maintained that there had been no ill intent, and that the clash with Wood was merely the result of a mistimed header. “Ray turned into me,” he said, “our heads clashed. It was a complete accident. Ray and I have often talked about it since, and we both agree that it was just one of those things.”
Shortly after that cup final, six of the United players who had featured in the match died in the Munich air disaster of February 1958. They included Duncan Edwards, whose coffin McParland helped to carry at his funeral.
Born in Newry, County Down, on leaving school McParland became an apprentice in the rail works at Dundalk, just across the border in the Republic of Ireland. He first made his way into football at 15 with Dundalk FC, as a prolific outside-left. Fast and incisive, with an excellent left foot and ability in the air, he was still only 18 when Aston Villa bought him for £3,400. Altogether, from his first season in 1952-53, he would play 293 times in league football for Villa.
After the 1957 FA Cup win, Villa dropped down into the Second Division, but McParland’s 22 goals in the 1959-60 season helped them come straight back up as Second Division champions, and in 1961 they won the first ever League Cup. McParland was on the scoresheet in the second part of the two-legged final, when Villa overturned a 2–0 deficit against Rotherham United, winning 3–0 at Villa Park and clinching the trophy.
However, midway through the next season, 1961-62, Villa sold him to the Division One side Wolverhampton Wanderers, where things went awry. He lost his place to the younger Alan Hinton, and in the 1963-64 season, after 21 league games in which he had scored 10 goals, he was transferred to Plymouth Argyle in Division Two. Leaving them in 1964 after 38 appearances, he then had two separate spells with the non-league Worcester City.
He eventually left on a free transfer to play for two years in the US, for Atlanta, then returned to Northern Ireland in 1968 as player-manager of the Belfast side Glentoran, taking them to the Irish League title in 1970. But he left Glentoran the following year, and apart from some subsequent coaching in Libya and Hong Kong, gradually drifted out of the game.
Retiring from football to live in Bournemouth, he later helped his son Paul to run a property business, but he retained his connections with Villa, and regularly attended games.
With his wife, Carol, McParland had two sons, Paul and Nicholas.
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