A FEW DAYS BEFORE my father’s death in 1987 I sat through the night with him in his hospital ward. He awoke during that long hour when the Earth seems to have stopped rotating and it feels as if one is stuck on the dark side of the Moon. We began to reminisce. I asked him what his happiest memory of me was. I was surprised when he told me it was the night he brought me, aged 6, to see The Magnificent Seven. I remembered it vividly, sitting beside him in a now demolished cinema in Derry, my eyes agog at this new wonderland of giant Technicolor cowboy heroes and villains.

He then asked me what mine was of him. It was a beautiful intimate moment that working-class fathers and sons seldom have. There were so many to choose from. But there was a magnificent one that dwarfed all others.

“The day you brought me to meet Gordon Banks.”

“Yes,” he replied, a big smile dawning across the memory of it. “That was a great day. He was a very nice young man. Wasn’t he?”

“He was my boyhood hero,” I said.

“I know!” he responded. “That man could fly. If anyone deserved to meet him, it was you.”

I walked to the window to hide my tears. A beautiful dawn was breaking over the patchwork quilt of fields and hedgerows that blanketed the hushed foothills of the Sperrin Mountains.

We had made it through another long night.

I COULD never have had a better sporting idol than Gordon Banks. I came from one of Northern Ireland’s most troubled areas, the Creggan Estate in Derry. Unbeknown to both myself and my parents then, I am dyslexic, something I discovered just more than a decade ago at the age of 38. My memories of a dyslexic childhood are filled with low self-esteem, crippling self-doubt and poor co-ordination.

The 1966 England World Cup tournament was televised, allowing many youngsters to see in action great soccer stars such as Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Moore, Eusebio and Pelé. Wanting to imitate them we’d gather by a low wall beside the field that lay between Leenan Gardens and Melmore Gardens.

The two best players would pick their teams. The last two boys left sitting on the wall had only one option: goalkeeper. That’s how it all began.

Not long after the 1966 World Cup final, Gordon Banks became my all-absorbing interest. As a young Irish boy I didn’t understand history or politics. I wore a yellow goalkeeper’s jersey and found a crest with three lions, which my mother sewed on. I practised, practised, practised. My game began to improve and eventually the boys in the street realised that a good goalkeeper was equal to a good striker. From being a very timid kid, through goalkeeping and Gordon Banks, I discovered a talent and an identity.

Dyslexic children need an interest to help them sustain and develop their reading skills. Every picture, article and drawing I could find on Gordon Banks was carefully cut out and taped into an old wallpaper book, given to me by Tom and Jim Canning, who owned a local paint and decorating shop. To this day my Gordon Banks scrapbook is a treasured possession. In reality, my first major piece of investigative journalism.