Eddie May, RIP

The death occurred recently of Welsh football manager and general character Eddie May. The article is a tribute of sorts. It was written from the point of view of Dundalk FC, one of his many ports of call. It first appeared in the Dundalk FC Matchday Magazine in 2010.



To paraphrase a famous quote there are three types of lies- lies, damn lies and Wikipedia. With that gem of wisdom in mind The Spectator nonetheless feels obliged to share a journey he took recently, starting at that most esteemed dumping ground of unregulated information, Wikipedia.
For some reason, that escapes his addled mind, The Spectator was having a look at former Dundalk managers. Not the obvious ones like McLauglin, O’Connor and Keely or the nightmare inducing ones like Gannon, Murray and Trev** Ande**** (stars included to prevent spontaneous combustion of self-respecting paper) but those interesting intermediaries John Dempsey, John Hewitt and Eddie May. Ah yes, Eddie May! Edwin Charles May (born 19 May 1943) managed Dundalk for the final ten matches of the 96-7 season, successfully negotiating the promotion/relegation playoff with Waterford.
May began his playing career at Dagenham in the 60s then played over 100 games at the back for Southend. He’s quite the legend at Wrexham, our Eddie, where he scored a healthy 35 goals “all with his head” it says here, in 334 league games. He ended his playing career with Swansea and began an extraordinary Bora Milutinovic-esque itinerant managerial career. Things began sensibly enough with assistant manager jobs at Leicester and Charlton, before his first exotic sojourn in 1986. May spent some time managing Ak Hahda in Saudi Arabia before heading to Kenya and then, naturally, on to Iceland where he managed the mysterious ‘KS’. Briefly. Within a couple of months he was back in Wales, in charge of Newport, but left them and their financial turmoil almost immediately in favour of the bright lights of Lincoln. Within a year he was off to the Norwegian Second Division before returning to inspire Cardiff to the coveted Third Division-Welsh Cup double in 1993. From Cardiff he moved to Torquay for most of a season, managing them out of the league in 1996. That was the kind of performance that earned his a shot at the Dundalk job in 96-7, which he happily dropped in favour of Brentford days before the start of the 97-8 season. The Brentford job lasted almost three months. May disappeared off the radar for a year but made up for lost time in the latter half of 1998 agreeing to manage Welsh side Haverfordwest, but instead going to Finland, only to return a couple of weeks later as Director of Football at Haverfordwest, before leaving to manage Merthyr in December... for all of 24 hours before returning to Haverfordwest for a third time in four months.
The following year May was poised to take over as manager of the Pakistan national team. May obviously relished the challenge of working with poor infrastructure and a lack of local support in a hostile environment... because he became manager of Drogheda United instead. When he realised what he’d done May soon hot-tailed it out of north-east Meath, embarking on a whistle stop tour of some of Africa’s most mediocre clubs. He went from the Jets in Zimbabwe to Bush Bucks in South Africa, from Express in Uganda to Telecom Wanderers in Malawi to Highlanders in Zimbabwe, where he surprised us all, and probably himself, by winning couple of championships.
After all that insanity Eddie May had the good sense to jack it all in to run a B+B in Cardiff. The lure of top class football was too much though, and May spent three months of last season in the glamorous surrounds of Lock Lane with Porthcawl Town in the McWhirter Welsh Football League Division Two.
Where is he now? Nobody knows. Does Eddie May actually exist? There are no pictures on his Wiki page. Perhaps Eddie May is the Keyser Soze among the usual suspects of international football, living in the shadows, but pulling the strings.