“This is a good one, you’re going to laugh at this,” says Father Joe Young. “I said, ‘Could I speak to Sam Allardyce? This is Father Joe Young in Limerick.’ He told me to eff off.”

In the summer of 1991, Sam Allardyce was at a crossroads. That January he had been sacked, along with Brian Talbot, as a coach at West Bromwich Albion after a particularly embarrassing defeat in the FA Cup to Isthmian League side Woking. Work back in football was tough to come by. He was doing some coaching at Bury for expenses, but the rest of the time was spent behind the bar at a pub he co-owned and was trying to keep afloat in Bolton.

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Even with his desperation to get back into the game, the power of the wind-up in football endures, and Allardyce, not unreasonably, assumed that the man on the other end of the line, purporting to be a priest from the west of Ireland offering him a job as manager of Limerick FC, was one of his old pals attempting some banter.

Father Joe was determined, though. “After a while, it became obvious to him that this wasn’t a joke, that I was seriously trying to get his support to come as our manager. And, believe it or not, he said yes.”

Assumption of pranks aside, you can see why Allardyce might have thought the phone call was a little fishy. After all, what was a priest doing running a football club?

“I was a priest in an area in Limerick that had a very high unemployment situation,” says Father Joe. “It was probably one of the worst in the country and we had a lot of problems, particularly regarding our youth — many of them were entering into the world of crime.

“One of the things that became very apparent to me was that they were all big Manchester United or Manchester City fans. I suppose this was kind of a lifeline to a different world. So my goal was to set up a soccer academy, and through that, I’d hope it would distract them from a world of crime.

“To do that, I was asked would I become chairman of Limerick Football Club. Now, that was the last thing I wanted to do.”

Father Joe was mainly reluctant because the business of running a football club is clearly quite a task, one that requires experience, contacts and knowledge of the game. Mainly for things like finding a new manager.

Allardyce’s name was on a list that the PFA had circulated of coaches and former players looking for work as managers. That list found its way to Father Joe, a West Brom supporter, who recognised Allardyce from his days at The Hawthorns. So he picked up the phone and thus began the managerial career of Sam Allardyce, essentially from a priest’s hunch.

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Both sides were taking quite a leap of faith: Father Joe had appointed a manager based on recognising his name on a list of players looking for a coaching gig, while Allardyce was taking his first managerial job in a semi-professional league he knew nothing about.

“What did I have to lose?” wrote Allardyce in his autobiography, but it still must have taken some persuasion to get him to take the job. What did Father Joe tell him about Limerick?

“Ah, that’s for confession,” says Father Joe, with a laugh that is up there with the all-time great cackles, rasping but warm. “Maybe I was a little bit extravagant (with what I told him). I’ll be honest, right: when he came off the plane in Shannon, I brought him to the rugby ground in Thomond Park, which is where Munster plays. He thought this was great.”

And rightly so: back in the early ’90s Thomond Park, while not exactly a sporting palace, was an 18,000-capacity stadium that had terraces on all four sides with a seating area above one of them. A very respectable place for someone to start their managerial career. But Father Joe then fessed up: “I said, ‘Sam, this is the ultimate goal. I’ll show you what we have.’”

Markets Field, where Limerick played, was a little less salubrious, described by Allardyce in his autobiography as a “low-grade semi-pro ground” that had “a social club at one end with the dressing rooms attached, a crumbling wall around the pitch, and a grass bank with some terracing next to it”.

“He said, ‘Jesus, Father Joe — are you serious?’ I said, ‘Look, nothing is impossible to those who believe. Maybe this might be the turning of the tide for all of us.’”

Mild subterfuge aside, the two men got on famously. “Joe was a treasure and I wanted success for him as much as anyone,” wrote Allardyce, and Father Joe himself talks with a wistful fondness about the manager who only stayed for one season in Limerick, but left an impression that has lasted much longer than that.

“He was so inspiring,” says Father Joe. “So inspiring. His presence in the dressing room was phenomenal. His presence with the team from an inspirational point of view was incredible. The only other time I got the opportunity of feeling so inspired by somebody like that was meeting Jack Charlton. He was just wonderful.

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“I suppose the moments that I cherish most looking back is Sam in the dressing room, as opposed to being in the dugout. I remember one player, who the night before a game, Sam found out that he had gone out and had a few drinks. I remember him pulling him to the window of the dressing room. And he said, ‘Look over at there, that elderly man. He has paid out of his social welfare to come and see you. And is this the way you show him respect? Take off your jersey.’ Sam demanded absolute discipline.

“He did deserve the name ‘Big Sam’ — he was a big character, you know, not just in physique and size, but also in his vision. And he did impart to Limerick Football Club, at the time, a vision and a future. And if that same vision that he had had been responded to by the business community and all and sundry in Limerick, I think when we went back to the Premier Division, it would have been an incredible season. And God only knows what the outcome would have been.”

Money became a problem, in that it ran out completely on a few occasions. But when it did, Father Joe had a fundraising plan that not many other football club chairmen had available to them, as Allardyce recalled when speaking to the Oxford Union in 2020.

“I saw the power of the collar. When we didn’t have enough money to pay the wages, we jumped in a car and he’d ring up some people, there would be some cash passed through the window, which I had to count. Once we got enough, that was it: we could pay the players after the game on a Sunday.”

Allardyce guided Limerick to promotion back into the Irish Premier Division, winning the First Division handily only a year after they were relegated. But partly because of the financial problems and partly because Allardyce was splitting his time between Limerick and his home back in England, which eventually took its toll, he left after one season.

Father Joe, though, is just happy they had any time together at all.

“One of the true hallmarks of a Christian is to be able to acknowledge and to have a sense of gratitude. And I just want to say my gratitude, my love for Sam Allardyce will always be with me.”

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This interview with Father Joe Young is part of The Making Of Big Sam, the latest edition of Beyond The Headline, a podcast by The Athletic. All three parts of the podcast are available to download now from wherever you get your podcasts or ad-free on The Athletic.

(Top image – West Bromwich Albion coach Allardyce circa 1990-91 season, before he left for Limerick. Photo: Allsport UK/Getty Images)