Patsy ‘Waxy’ McClean steps out of his car into the Derry sunshine.
Here, two miles from the city centre, there’s a bit of Friday evening bustle going on, locals moving in and out of a row of one-storied shops, a group of six drinkers sinking pints outside a pub.
Waxy moves slowly onto the pavement, waiting for Shona, his wife, to join him.
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A friend, passing by, stops to say hello. “Yes, Waxy,” he says, smiling. “How’s himself?” the man continues, glancing over Waxy’s shoulder at a 30-foot portrait of their famous son.
A Creggan youth club had commissioned a Dublin artist to paint the mural two years ago and while there were plenty of role models within the area to choose from, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Eurovision song contest winner, European champion boxer, the choice was unanimous.
“All the children said the same name: James McClean.”
That voice is Tony O’Doherty’s. He has his own mural across the road, positioned in between two shops. But it’s much smaller and more modest than this one of McClean, O’Doherty having won four caps for Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
“You can’t compete with 98 for the Republic of Ireland,” he jokes, before reminiscing with Waxy about the time he coached him and his Creggan Celtic team to a local league title in the 1990s.
As they speak, there is no eye contact between them, everyone subconsciously diverting their gaze towards the mural.
“There’s some amount of detail in that there; the tattoos especially," says O'Doherty. "The fact it’s a three-dimensional job, that’s what makes it stand out.``
The 3-D element is entirely appropriate. After all there are three distinct dimensions to James McClean’s personality: the patriot who has never hidden his political opinions; the philanthropist whose kindness flies under the radar; the professional who has spent his career defying expectations.
Six days from now, James McClean will become the seventh centurion in Irish football history, following on from Robbie Keane, Steve Staunton, Shay Given, Damien Duff, John O'Shea and Kevin Kilbane.
Even more impressive than that is the fact he has already won more caps than Roy Keane, John Giles, Paul McGrath and Liam Brady - Irish football’s Mount Rushmore.
You mention this to Waxy and he pauses for a second or two. He shapes to say something but for another three or four seconds no words come out.
Finally he speaks. “Man, I’m proud,” he says, speaking softly. “But pride isn’t a big enough word for how we (gesturing towards Shona) feel. You need an astronomical word that is much bigger than pride.
“You see, for me personally, growing up as a Manchester United fan, I used to love Paul McGrath. Then Roy Keane, what those men did for United and the Republic of Ireland, like, it was unbelievable. To think James has more caps than them, it’s unreal.
“But it is testament to how he lived his life. He knew where he wanted to be. There was a lot of sacrifice. His family life, he was away living in England on his own, he was missing birthdays, Christmases, anniversaries, and it was hard at the start watching him over there on his own because you could see it was hurting him.
“But that football side of his brain kept him going. It was a wee godsend then when he met Erin (McClean’s wife). That really helped him, especially when she moved over.”
One summer, after a move to Stoke, Waxy went across too with a friend to help decorate the house. James, meanwhile, was in the middle of a pre-season, which meant he had double sessions, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
By the time James arrived home, Waxy and his friend ‘were wrecked tired’ on the back of their own labour. “We took out a couple of beers; James came home, looked at us, laughed at us, then went into his back garden with a weighted vest on over him and started doing more sprints. That’s him. Totally dedicated.”
O’Doherty knows as much. He tells you about a snowy Christmas Eve, back when McClean was a Derry City player. “I was driving just up there,” he says, pointing in the direction of Cregan Heights, McClean’s home.
“This lonely figure was coming towards me. So I rolled down the window: ‘James,’ I said. ‘Get yourself in; you’ll catch yer death with cold!’ Sure, I might as well have been talking to the wall.”
“Who ya telling?” says Waxy, remembering another time when the sun was out, barbecue weather. “Even though I had the sausages on, I still had to do James his veg, his potatoes, his chicken. It had to be right eats for him. So there was no lazy days when it came to his food. He had a vision of where he wanted to be. He never stopped.”
That is all well and good now he has made it, this season being his 16th in professional football. But long before he was James McClean, professional footballer, he was James McClean, Waxy and Shona’s boy.
“I tried to get him a trade in the building game when he was 16,” says Waxy. “But he was having none of it. He just kept on repeating. ‘Da, I want to make it in football, I’m going to make it’.
“And as usual I tried to give sound advice. ‘Look not every young fella who goes over is successful here’. I was wrong. (He laughs). Sure, I’m glad I was. What he has done has been unbelievable.”
Unbelievable because no one expected it.
At Trojans, the local Creggan club that has produced a dozen Derry City players, as well as the former Sheffield Wednesday winger, Owen Morrison, they remember the day McClean first arrived up to train as a nine year old.
“He was a very quiet young fella, well mannered,” says Gerry, his first coach. “You wouldn’t have known James was there, he was that shy.”
We’re sitting in the Trojans clubhouse, Morrison’s Wednesday shirt and one of McClean’s Ireland jerseys hanging from the wall, a turnover bun, made famous by Derry Girls , offered to you along with a cup of tea.
Raymond, whose father Edmund founded this club in the 1930s, opens up the club book to show you a picture of a 13-year-old McClean in 2001. In the picture, 10 players are staring at the camera. McClean was the exception, shyly looking to one side.
“I’ve said this to James, so I’m not breaking any confidences here, but he was not a stand-out player at youth level,” says Raymond. “But what he had was the biggest heart of anyone. He was going to make it and that was that.
“I remember after he joined Derry City, Stephen Kenny was manager of us then. He pulled me aside and said, ‘Raymond, I have high hopes for James. He just needs to believe in himself’.”
That confidence came as the clubs got bigger than Trojans and Derry and recognition came from four different Ireland managers. And yet in one way the 34-year-old McClean is not that different from the 14-year-old version.
For there is another person in that photograph, Thomas Burke, who sadly passed away five years ago. Trojans hold an annual tournament in his memory, McClean contributing to the running costs of it. “He’s never forgotten his roots,” Raymond says.
“Absolutely not,” agrees Waxy. “Any time he is home, he’ll dooter around down here to the shops, and a load of weans might see him and look for a selfie or an autograph. He'll not turn one of them away.
“He might then wander off with his muckers and have a kickaround on those pitches there. He’s a Creggan boy and fierce proud of it.”
This is O’Doherty: “There’s a lot of things people don’t hear about James.
“In times of need, James is there. No fuss. You see he knows what it is like to be a kid up here, wanting a lot of things you couldn’t have. If people, say around Christmas, needed accessories for their kids, or to pay their electric, James always came good.”
A week from today they plan to hold a party for him here, in the building next to the mural, to commemorate his ascent to the 100 club.
“I still have to nip myself ,” says Waxy. “Like, I’m a big Republic of Ireland fan and to think our young fella could get 100 caps, it’s unreal.”
Except it is real.
“Look, it wouldn’t matter if James played for Real Madrid,” says O’Doherty. “The green of Ireland would always mean more to him.”
You ask why. And Raymond, his youth club, explains. “It is his environment, what he grew up in. The Creggan, I don’t need to tell you about the history of this place and what the people have come through. That is where James gets his intensity from. He is fiercely proud of Creggan, fiercely proud to be an Irishman. That is what motivates him and that will never change. You can’t knock him for that.”
The Trojan worker is about to get his day in the sun.
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