Bernard McNally column: Ken Mulhearn was the life and soul of the Shrewsbury Town party

I had the privilege of being a 16 or 17-year-old young player as Ken Mulhearn was coming towards the end of his Shrewsbury career, writes Bernard McNally.

He was still a great goalkeeper and is a real Town legend.

I smile because of the antics I remember he got up to. He was the life and soul of the party and dressing rooms.

I can think of so many things that he did in training and after games. He was there to lift spirits when they needed to be.

In my early years I remember doing pre-season under Graham Turner in the middle of July and it was seriously hot. The ethos was always hard work at Shrewsbury and in pre-season we had about 10 days solid running up hills in areas like Church Stretton.

I remember it being boiling. We’d been running for two hours and Ken had been injured – he was in charge of the squash!

When we got to the top of wherever we were after about two hours we expected to have two of those gallons of bottles full of squash.

We’re thinking ‘great, we’re almost there’. We got to the top and he’d drunk three-quarters of a gallon that was meant for all of us.

The likes of Jake King and Ian Atkins were giving him some grief, asking ‘what’s going on?’ and, typical Ken, he turned around and smiled saying ‘what? It’s absolutely boiling. I got very thirsty’.

He had that smile about him where the lads shook their heads in disbelief. He had that kind of banter, his sense of humour was phenomenal.

Aside from that he’d had a great career. He was part of the 1968 top-flight title-winning side with Manchester City and played about 400 games for the Town.

He was part of that legendary side of 1979. He deserves his part in that.

In typical style of Shrewsbury’s goalkeepers that I’ve known, they have to be a little bit crazy!

When we went to training you were thinking ‘they must be crackers, with us smashed the ball at them’. But they wanted to stay out to face more shots.

There was Ken the Bob Wardle, Steve Ogrizovic, Steve Perks. In my experience they do work extremely hard and Ken was no exception.

It is just a little sad that he couldn’t have hung on a little bit longer to see if these guys can become legends for Town if they continue as they are and get promotion again. It is a little bit of a pity, but that is life.

You would have to have a laugh with Ken otherwise you would not be able to chat with him. He was part of that group of players I was brought up with, and hopefully I transferred it too, where you do not think of yourself too highly that you don’t go and speak to fans.

Look at Ken and all of those players, they passed on to us that you need to be nice to people on the way up because you will need them on the way down.

He was a great cricketer. He owned a few pubs in his time and people knew what he was like from his time as a landlord. It’s a sad loss for fans and his family.

They will have fond memories and I’m sure in years to come they will tell stories of him with a smile on their face.