Soccer mum Anne is taking her music to the stage

Reporter David Medcalf found that music as well as sport was on the agenda when he called to the home of the Ireland goalie Darren Randolph's parents in Bray

© Bray People

Meet Anne Randolph, singer, former banker, psychotherapist and, of course, soccer mum. She laughs at the last of these but insists she is fine with the description. She admits that she used to shout and roar from the side-line at underage Ardmore Rovers games, along with all the other parents. She was there because her eldest son was on the pitch in Bray at Ballywaltrim or the People's Park.

He is still very much on the pitch but these days Ann and husband Ed have to go to the likes of the Aviva Stadium or the Riverside to catch up with their Darren. The number one choice between the goalposts for the Republic of Ireland, he has some good sporting genes. Ed Randolph grew up in Florida but came to prominence as a basketball player on the college circuit in Rhode Island. He came to Ireland to play professionally with a series of clubs in this country and has stayed to coach the sport ever since.

Among the first to benefit from his passion for the big ball game were his two sons, who received the benefit of his wisdom in the family's back garden. While Darren, now 30 years of age, has gone on to make a good living in a different code, brother Neil has stuck with the basketball. The younger Randolph clocked up more than 1,000 points in four years with his college team in the US before returning to start with the all-conquering Templeogue club.

'I'm not really sporty,' admits Anne, a Mayo woman who played a little basketball herself while a student in school at Kiltimagh. After sitting her Leaving, she successfully applied to join AIB Bank and was dispatched to Ennistymon in County Clare. It was there that she, star of the local musical society, met Ed Randolph, main man with the Claremont Admirals national league basketball team. Afro-Americans were thin on the ground in Ennistymon at the time, so she was well aware of him before they became friends. He became aware her after coming to her aid when she injured a foot while playing badminton and romance bloomed - this in the mid- to late-eighties.

'He had a lovely personality and he blended in so well.' The basketball brought the dashing professional sportsman to Dublin and Anne obtained a transfer to the capital. However, they chose to live in Bray and were resident at Seapoint Court near the Harbour Bar when the lads were born. They later moved to Putland Road, renovating an old house there before settling in their current home off Killarney Road, which they moved to in 2005.

Their boys consider themselves Bray to the core, products of the Presentation College, though these days Darren spends little time in the town. He is represented at the moment by his lovable Staffordshire bull terrier called Sky, who is staying at the house. The handsome dog is in their care, explains Anne, until Darren finds a home in Middlesbrough in the wake of his transfer from West Ham.

The soccer mum recalls that he was good at all the range of sports he sampled as a youngster. He loved the basketball, in keeping with paternal tradition, while he also tried his hand at Gaelic football and rugby with equal success. He started soccer outfield with Ardmore but was switched to goal after club mentor Donal Egan spotted a different potential during a Rovers trip to Sheffield. He was about 11 at the time and the change of course brought him to the attention not only of FAI youth coaches, but also of Charlton Athletic in England. He was signed as an apprentice professional, departing to The Valley in South London.

'As his mother, I was the one asking all the hard questions,' remembers Anne as she looks back at the negotiations surrounding his recruitment as a footballer at the age of 16. She wanted to be sure that he would be safe so far away from home and that arrangements would be put in place to allow him continue his education. The young Irish recruit was duly enrolled to study for English A Levels but never finished the course as it was clear he had a career in full time sport.

'We both said "let him follow his dream",' says Anne. The journey was fated to take the future Ireland keeper on loan to places such as Bury, Hereford and then Motherwell. While on the books of the Scottish club, the side reached the 2011 cup final, so she has memories of being a crowd of close to 50,000 at Hampden Park to watch her boy losing 3-0 to Celtic. Further moves brought him back south across the border for spells with Birmingham and West Ham before signing his current four-year contract in England's soccer mad North-East.

The star net-minder's mother is at pains to stress that her son is no overnight sensation, having worked his way up through the various age grades with Ireland. She characterises him as laid back, though not so calm and content when keeping a seat warm on the bench. She insists he reacted as though picked for a five-a-side when Irish manager Martin O'Neill turned to him as his regular last line of defence in 2015.

'If he looks after himself he can go on until he is maybe 40,' she ponders, noting that her son eats a lot of vegetables. She does not glamorise Darren's lifestyle which revolves constantly around the routine of training, resting, training, resting, playing, with little time for any of the comforts of domesticity.

'They don't get much time off. It's a very fragmented life.'

While not in the same financial bracket as Wayne Rooney or Neymar, he has earned good money as a footballer. She reckons her son, who own houses in both London and Birmingham, is smart enough to ensure that the money will last him long beyond his playing career.

When in Ireland on international duty, he stays with the team in Castleknock rather than in Bray. He usually heads for somewhere warm with some of his fellow professionals during the off-season, though he always makes a point of spending a few days in his home town.

These days, his dad works as a basketball coach, notably with the Dublin Demons and with St Joseph of Cluny school in Killiney, still a passionate promoter of his chosen sport. Anne was laid off by the bank following the Celtic Tiger crash and has since taken up an alternative career as a psychotherapist.

Trained by the Blackfort Adolescent Gestalt Institute, she works at the Bray Counselling and Therapy Centre on the seafront where she specialises in helping teenagers. And all these years after seeing her older son depart for London to follow his dream, she is now poised to pursue her own long latent ambition. The next few days promise to be full of excitement for the Randolph family, and not only because the Republic plays in Georgia on Saturday, September 2, followed by a home clash with Serbia on Tuesday, September 5.

'Mammy always gets tickets,' says Anne, looking forward to the Lansdowne Road fixture. Two days later, it will be her own turn to step into the limelight at the 200-seater Mill Theatre in Dundrum on Thursday, September 7. She knows she has a good voice and now she is ready to present her talent to an audience, with the assistance of a high class four-piece band.

Her previous foray into the world of music was decades ago with a group called Tanglewood featuring singer-songwriter Harry Monson. They performed in Ireland and Germany but her commitment to showbiz foundered on the demands of work and family.

Now it is her name which is top of the bill at the Mill, with a programme of Irish melodies from both sides of the Atlantic covering the range from Thomas Moore to Joan Baez. She has benefited from coaching by opera singer Liz Ryan though her own style is more folk than aria.

Anne is determined that the gig will not be the last: 'I'd love to do some more singing. I do not see this as a one-off. The concert will be recorded.' Being let go from the 'human resources' department of AIB she counts as a blessing, a feeling she reports as common among many of her former colleagues.

'Everyone seems to have blossomed since we left the bank and we have done some lovely creative stuff.' A fresh career beckons.