Barney Mulrenan: 1912-1995

03/05/2022  -  12.14

John Sanderson

Introduction

My research on Bedouins identified three main areas from which Bedouin players were drawn - the universities, the military services and local players from Cheshire and Liverpool. University students were the largest group. A number of this group went on to have illustrious careers outside football. One of only two Bedouin victories I found, at St Austell on Christmas Eve, 1932, involved a team that included two players who both went on to become Fellows of the Royal Academy and to be awarded CBEs in the 1970s.

It is, however, another player that caught my eye. Bernard (Barney) William Mulrenan was named in one Bedouin pre-match team to face Ramsgate on 20/04/35, a month after he had won his one England Amateur International cap v Scotland. Had Barney played in that match he would have been only the second player confirmed to have played for the triumvirate of not dissimilar clubs - Bedouins, Corinthians and Casuals. Barney did not play at Ramsgate. At the time of the match he was playing for the Yorkshire League v the Northern League over 300 miles away at Shildon, County Durham. But in establishing this fact, I uncovered a remarkable career of involvement in sport.

Early Years

Mulrenan’s grandfather, Thomas, came to England from Roscommon, Ireland, in the mid-19th Century. Barney Mulrenan was born at Bolsover, North Derbyshire. His family subsequently moved to Sheffield where he attended De La Salle College, a direct grant grammar school, and went on to Sheffield University. At University, Barney’s principal sports were football and athletics but he did also play rugby and cricket. He married a Sheffield girl, Patricia D. Henry, in 1941.

University Sports

Football

As an 18-year-old, Barney Mulrenan had started playing for Hallam in September 1931 and in November went straight into the Sheffield University team. At the time, Sheffield were one of the most successful university teams in the country. In 1933, he was a member of the Sheffield University team who were the Universities Athletic Unions’ (UAU) Football Champions. He was also in the Sheffield team that retained the title in 1934. Not only did Sheffield University play intervarsity football and occasional friendlies but they also competed in the Yorkshire League. The experience gained from regular league football may have been a factor in their success in UAU competitions.
In October 1934, Mulrenan made an appearance for Rotherham United Res and in March 1935, the week before his England Amateur International debut v Scotland, he signed as an amateur for Sheffield Wednesday. He was one of at least 3 of the successful Sheffield University team that were amateurs at Wednesday.

Source: British Newspaper Archive

Mulrenan was in the UAU team that represented Great Britain at the University Games in Budapest in August 1935. He scored twice in a 5-3 victory over Latvia and once in a 2-2 draw with Germany.

Athletics

Mulrenan was just as enthusiastic at competing in athletics as he was playing football. He competed in all distances up to 1 mile. In his last year at secondary school he won the 100 yards, 220 yards, 440 yards, half mile and throwing the cricket ball at the annual Sheffield Secondary Schools Championship. In 1932, at the Athletic Sports, an annual Whitsuntide meeting between Sheffield University, Sheffield United Harriers and Hallamshire Harriers he finished second in the final of both the 100 yards and 440 yards. 440 yards was to become his most regular event and probably that at which he achieved most.

Apart from competing in Sheffield University’s athletic meetings and intervarsity competitions, throughout the summers of 1932 to 1935 he competed in local athletics throughout the West Riding - at ‘Sports Days’ often organised by the local collieries’ sports and social clubs and at open meetings of Athletics Clubs such as Hallamshire Harriers. Mulrenan was a winner at a number of meetings, most regularly at 100 and 440 yards. He was a top County athlete at a time when Yorkshire had a surfeit of middle distance runners. In 1933, he was beaten on the tape for the 440 yards title by one of his big Yorkshire rivals, Keiser of Leeds University, in the Yorkshire Championship at Goole.

Mulrenan appears to have been just short of winning titles at national competitions. In 1932 1933, 1934 and 1935, Mulrenan competed in the UAU’s annual athletics championships at White City, reaching the final in the 440 yards in 1932 and 1934 and in the 880 yards in 1933 In 1933, he also competed in the first UAU’s Northern Counties Athletics Championships in Manchester, finishing third in the 440 yards. In 1935, he went one better, finishing second in the same event.

In 1932 and 1933 he also competed at 440 yards in the Amateur Athletic Association’s Northern Counties Championships, a ‘qualifier’ for the AAA’s national Championships but he did not proceed to the final.
Who Mulrenan competed for and against is just as incestuous in athletics as it was to become in football. He represented the UAU at 440 yards against the AAA’s Northern Counties in meetings in 1932 and 1934, finishing second and third respectively. This was a regular meeting for the four years 1932-35, the Northern Counties winning on each occasion.

In April 1934, Mulrenan was in the UAU’s team for ‘the Great Relay’, an international event on the streets of Paris over a distance of 25 km and including 50 legs of varying lengths between 135 metres and 1,850 metres, the distances between or across bridges on the Seine that acted as changeover points. The UAU won the event, the win being the first of three consecutive victories. Mulrenan was selected by the UAU for the same event in March 1935 but he subsequently withdrew after being selected for the England Amateur Football International v Scotland to take place the day before.

The prospect of playing football at the forthcoming University Games in Budapest in August does not appear to have affected Mulrenan’s 1935 athletic season much. Earlier in the season he had competed in his usual Sheffield University, Hallamshire Harriers and local ‘Sports Days’ such as Denaby, Mexborough and Goole. He appears to have entered more 100 yard and 220 yard races than in previous years, winning one or both of the sprints on at least four occasions. A notable feature of the 1935 season was Mulrenan captaining a team of present and past Sheffield University students against a team of Sheffield and District Athletes. The latter won the meeting convincingly by 85 points to 39 points.

Following an injury whilst playing football in February 1936 which prevented him playing for the rest of the season, he curtailed his athletics but was still a regular attender at meetings in the West Riding of Yorkshire, often fulfilling the role of PA. Cricket seems to have become his occasional summer sport.
It is interesting to note that in both football and athletics, Mulrenan’s sporting activities had been a mixture of competition at and amongst universities and competition outside of university. Encouraging the two and interaction between them became a recurring feature of his career.

1935 - 1938

After University, Mulrenan took up a position of Sports Master at Chesterfield Grammar School in the summer of 1935. The school’s magazine reports his hands-on approach to sport and physical training. He would supplement the rugby XV and cricket XI when necessary. 

Source: British Newspaper Archive

In the Autumn of 1938, he began attending training courses at Carnegie College of Physical Education, Leeds, and in December 1938 he was given 12 months leave of absence by the school to attend Carnegie full time. He did not return to Chesterfield GS as in June 1939, Mulrenan was appointed as a Lecturer in Physical Training, Hygiene and Education at Cardiff University. 

Source: British Newspaper Archive

Mulrenan’s appetite for football was not diminished. On joining Chesterfield GS he joined Chesterfield FC and made his only Football League appearance for them, Perhaps, he became impatient with Chesterfield Reserve team football as he began interspersing these appearances with ones for Yorkshire Amateurs and Corinthians. In Autumn 1936, he played at least two games for Sheffield United Res and in 1938 represented Carnegie College but, during this period, it is Saturday trips to London by train that became the most regular feature of his footballing activities, playing for Corinthians and subsequently Casuals as well. He went with Corinthians on their Tour of Germany, Easter 1937, a tour not looked on favourably in all quarters. Mulrenan played in the first ever league game of the merged club, Corinthian Casuals, on 02/09/39.

Barney Mulrenan continued his ‘international’ career when selected to play for the Universities Athletics Union representing British Universities v Germany Universities at Wembley, on 07/01/37. His next game after that was behind the Coach and Horses at Dronfield, the first of a series of six he played for Norton Woodseats. Apart from the UAU, other representative teams Mulrenan had played for included, the Yorkshire League, Sheffield and Hallamshire County FA, West Riding County FA and FA Amateur XI.

Before the Second World War resulted in the suspension of regular football, he made an appearance for Cardiff City Res v Lovells Athletic. 

1940 - 1945

Despite holding the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Sherwood Foresters when training Chesterfield GS’s Army Cadets, Mulrenan joined the RAF Voluntary Reserve in July 1940 and was assigned to the Administrative and Special Duties Branch where he was responsible for the physical training of recruits. In 1942, he became a Flight Lieutenant but I have not found any report of his subsequent wartime duties.

Source: British Newspaper Archive

Sporting Activities Post-War

It took time for sport to re-establish itself after the war. Mulrenan was active in providing the structure in which sport could flourish in schools and universities. In 1949, he became Chairman of the Welsh Association of Physical Training which was involved in promoting the former and he was a member of the Welsh UAU involved in promoting the latter. He was also the UAU’s lead in establishing an annual football match between the Football Association of Wales and the UAU in Wales. In 1957, he helped establish a new amateur team in Cardiff, the Draconians, with the objective of promoting amateur football in the principality. He was Club Secretary and described the team as ‘similar in purpose to the old Corinthians’. Its modus operandi was very similar to that of Bedouins.

Mulrenan furthered his broadcasting/reporting activities. In March 1954, he co-commentated with Kenneth Wolstenholme on the first football match ever to be broadcast on television in Wales. Not exactly an audience puller - the South Wales Amateur Football League v the Worcestershire Football Combination from the Maindy Stadium Cardiff. Later that year he also co-commentated on the Welsh AAA Championship. He had a spell as sports commentator/reporter on the weekly news magazine programme ‘New Extra’ on the Welsh Home Service and, in 1962, he partnered Ron Pickering in the radio commentary on the Welsh Games, a weekend athletics meeting trying to rekindle the spirit of the Empire Games.

Mulrenan was never far from football. In March 1958, at the age of 45, he returned to the Sheffield University team to play against Reading University in the final of the UAU Championship. Mulrenan was one of five players from Sheffield University’s successful team of the 1930s, players now in their mid to late forties, including former Bedouin’s players Ernie Fish and J. P. Allinson.

In 1962, the British Universities Sports Federation was created to take over organising competitions for sports not covered by the UAU and for universities not in the UAU. In 1966, the BUSF established a Championship and Match Sub-Committee under the Chairmanship of Barney Mulrenan. He was instrumental in establishing a Football Tournament featuring university teams of the four home nations. The winners of the Tournament were to receive the Bernard Mulrenan Trophy.

In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s Mulrenan was on the Selection Committee for the England Amateur Football Team and in that role watched matches across the country.

Later Years

Mulrenan retired to Brighton. He was a Director at the FA and, one of his few non-sporting activities, also of a Property Management Company in Brighton. He died at Brighton General Hospital in November 1995. His ashes were interred in the grave of his mother’s family, the Walsh family, at St Michael’s Cemetery, Rivelin, Sheffield.

Conclusion

Barney Mulrenan’s generation is probably the last to produce those all round, amateur sportsmen so typified by Barney. He spent a life-time participating in and promoting sport and physical training but especially football.

Note

The UAU’s selection of ‘national’ teams is interesting. They were responsible for the selection of the following three teams. Mulrenan played in the first and third of these games.
1. The team for the University Games in Budapest in 1935 was described as a UAU team representing Great Britain and consisted entirely of players from the UAU English member universities.
2. The team that played v German Universities in Frankfort in 1936, was described as a British Universities team and consisted of 10 players from English universities within the UAU’s membership, i.e. there were no players from Oxford or Cambridge, and an 11th player, right winger T. H. Souter from Glasgow University.
3. The British Universities team for the reverse fixture at Wembley in 1937, went beyond the UAU’s membership to include five Oxbridge players but consisted entirely of players from English universities.
The UAU’s membership included four Welsh University Colleges and Queen’s University, Belfast. I think Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland had reason to be aggrieved at their under-representation in British teams.
This article is sourced from the British Newspaper Archive and UAU Handbooks of the period plus R. F. Kerslake’s ‘Fifty Years of Student Sport, 1919-69’, at the Sydney Jones Special Collections and Archive, University of Liverpool. My thanks also to Michael Joyce at ENFA for his patience in answering my emails and his contributions to the Barney Mulrenan story.

Biography

John Sanderson is a Sheffield United fan from the age of eleven but never one so partisan for it to inhibit a broader and long standing interest in football, its competitions, clubs and their players. Proud to be from the home of modern football. He has been resident in London since 1979, which has helped develop a keen interest in non-league football. John finds the history, depth and competitiveness of non-league football in London and the South East fascinating. He has always been interested in what he would call the socio-geographical setting of football. Now retired, John can pursue mainstream and quirkier aspects of football as they take his fancy.