ADRIAN TEER: JIM GRACEY

Jim Gracey was a football journalist with the Lurgan Mail and Belfast Telegraph for virtually his entire working life. He started work at the Mail in 1974 before moving to the Telegraph in 1979. He later became Telegraph Sports Editor, Sunday Life Sports Editor and Group Sports Editor.

Jim and Adrian were friends for almost 50 years. Jim has penned the following tribute:

I met Adrian for the first time on the afternoon that he and his friends in the Belfast Supporters’ Group stormed the Boardroom after a heavy home defeat in 1974. I had joined the Lurgan Mail only a few months earlier. His relationship with Glenavon’s directors was, at the time, shall we say, “strained.”

But in those days, he was a powerful presence at Mourneview Park because he was a tall, physically imposing man, never missed a match and produced “Own Goal,” the popular Newssheet. He wasn’t from Lurgan, but most supporters respected him as a genuine “Glenavon man.”

When he joined the Board in 1980, I recall writing a piece in which I said that he had “crossed the floor.” He had moved from being a terrace critic to a member of the establishment.

Some directors at the time weren’t happy to see him taking his seat at the boardroom table, but he soon proved with his leadership qualities, talent and wholehearted commitment that he was the best signing the club has ever made.

We became good friends. We often met in Belfast city centre for lunch or tea.

For me, as a journalist covering Irish League football, he was a delight to work with. If anything happened at Mourneview Park I could ring him, hear the inside story and know that I was being told the unvarnished truth.

Not everything I wrote about Glenavon pleased him. When he thought that I had been unduly critical, he chided me, but we never fell out.

He enjoyed all the team’s successes, not least the 2016 victory against Linfield in the Irish Cup Final.

He was quite simply a colossus.

It was an honour to have known him.

Jim.