He went from wearing Belfast Celtic’s hoops to serving as Ireland’s Minister for Defence. Before his death. Oscar Traynor was a 1916 veteran, former political prisoner, former government minister, President of the Football Association of Ireland and Belfast Celtic Old Bhoy, playing in the early 1900’s. Born in north Dublin in 1886, Traynor led an incredible life. His stay with Belfast Celtic coincided with the Home Rule crisis, as Carson’s volunteers mustered on hillsides and on the horizon loomed the dreadful atmosphere of European slaughter.

Belfast Celtic scooped the inaugural Gold Cup and Charity Cup in season 1911-12, taking trophies as the Titanic sloshed off the slipway at Queen’s Island. A record breaker, the 3-0 Charity Cup win against Cliftonville raised an incredible £166 for good causes. Second string football was also delivering success, as Celtic’s reserves lifted the Steel and Sons cup, beating Glentoran 3-1.

And so Celtic’s directors, never short of ideas, took the team to Europe – the first time a club from these islands toured foreign shores. And it was a success, as Belfast’s ‘Stripes’ won five games in the central European city of Prague, drawing the sixth. It still rankles that in Celtic’s drawn game, the referee never left the corner flag area, denying Celtic six of the best!

Between the sticks was the dependable Oscar Traynor, with fellow Dubliner Louis Crowe joining him in the side at Centre Forward. A team picture snapped in the current capitol of the Czech Republic shows Traynor at the top of the group in a different jersey to his team mates - normal for any goalkeeper. Except, this jersey was significant - it was the Hoops, more associated with Celtic’s Glasgow cousins, making Traynor the first Belfast Celt to wear the famous jersey now known around the world.

Sadly, just four years later, he found himself not between the sticks, but behind the wire. As barricades rose in Dublin and Pearse read the Proclamation at the GPO, a column under the command of Traynor occupied the strategically important Metropole Hotel on O’Connell Street. The rising’s generals had identified him as a leader, assigning him to capture a key city building. Before Easter 1916, he was tackling strikers from Linfield and Distillery – now Traynor was tackling the British Empire!

He later chillingly recalled watching shells from the gunboat Helga raining down on Dublin, destroying the central thoroughfare, then called Sackville Street. He recalled; "Some time on Thursday a barricade which stretched from the Royal Hibernian Academy to a cycle shop - I think it was Keating's - on the opposite side of the street, took fire as a result of a direct shell hit. “It was the firing of this barricade that caused the fire that wiped out the east side of O'Connell Street. “I saw that happen myself. “Then Hoyt's caught fire and the whole block up to Earl Street became involved and I saw the fire spread from there to Clery's…and the Imperial Hotel”

Traynor tried to tell others of the spreading fire, revealing; "Before that happened those of us in the Metropole made tremendous efforts to warn the garrison in the Imperial Hotel of the grave danger which menaced them. “If our messages, which were sent by semaphore, were understood they do not appear to have been acted on, as the eventual evacuation of the Imperial Hotel appears to have been a rather hurried one.” Harrowingly, he remembered; “…seeing the huge plate-glass windows of Clery's stores run molten into the channel from the terrific heat."