page_title: Terry Conroy
section_title: Stoke City
hierarchical_section_title: Terry Conroy / Club career / Stoke City
caption_attribution_description: English: Football League Cup trophy at the Old Trafford museum
context_page_description: Gerard Anthony Francis Conroy is an Irish former professional footballer. A Winger and forward, he scored 74 goals in 372 league and cup appearances in a 14-year career in the English Football League from 1967 to 1981. He also scored two goals and won 26 caps for the Republic of Ireland in a seven-year international career from 1969 to 1976.
  Raised in Cabra, Dublin, he began his career at Home Farm, before spending two years with Glentoran from 1965 to 1967. With Glentoran he won the Steel & Sons Cup and Irish Cup in 1966, and helped the club to win the Irish League title in 1966–67. He was sold to English First Division club Stoke City in March 1967 for a fee of £15,000, and went to on to help Stoke to win the League Cup in 1972. In total he spent 12 years with Stoke, scoring 67 goals in 333 league and cup appearances. He was a popular figure with Stoke fans due to his creative flair and dribbling ability, as well as his distinctive pale skin, bright ginger hair and sideburns.
  He moved to Hong Kong to play for Bulova in 1979, and returned to England the following year to join Crewe Alexandra in the Fourth Division.
context_section_description: Conroy had played for Home Farm in a friendly match against Stoke City at the age of 17 and impressed City manager Tony Waddington, who continued to track Conroy's progress via his local scout George Eastham, Sr. However Fulham initially agreed a fee with Glentoran, but Waddington took the same train as Conroy after he left negotiations at Craven Cottage and successfully talked Conroy into signing with Stoke. This approach was actually an illegal approach according to FA rules. Conroy turned down a printer's apprenticeship after his talk with Waddington and moved across the Irish Sea in March 1967 for a fee of £15,000 (£10,000 plus two conditional bonus payments of £2,500). In the summer he was registered with the Cleveland Stokers, Stoke City's United Soccer Association franchise team, and in his own words "played a handful of games without making too much impact".
  After taking the place of winger Gerry Bridgwood in the first team, he made an instant impact on his debut on 6 September 1967, by scoring the winning goal in a 3–2 victory over Leicester City at the Victoria Ground. Though Conroy only made nine league appearances in the 1967–68 season, he was present on the final day 2–1 win over Liverpool which kept Stoke out of the First Division relegation zone. He was again registered with the Cleveland Stokers – now in the North American Soccer League – in the summer of 1968, but did not play a first team game for the club. He started to become a first team regular for Stoke in the 1968–69 season after scoring against Liverpool at Anfield on 20 August, and went on to score in four consecutive games over the Christmas period. Waddington did though sometimes prefer to play John Mahoney to Conroy, using Mahoney as an extra defensive midfielder to make Stoke more solid defensively. Conroy also damaged cartilage in his knee after being challenged heavily by Manchester City's left-half Alan Oakes in a 3–1 defeat at Maine Road on 29 March, and was ruled out of action for five months. After recovering he went on to make 33 appearances in the 1969–70 campaign, and got some measure of revenge over Manchester City at Maine Road on 17 January by scoring the only goal of the game after dribbling past three defenders from the half-way line.
  He scored 14 goals in the 1970–71 campaign, the highest tally he ever recorded, including one in a 5–0 victory over Arsenal on 26 September that came third in the BBC Goal of the Season competition. The goal came after he played a one-two with Peter Dobing before striking a first-time shot into the net from 25-yards. Stoke reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup for the first time since 1899 in 1970–71, where they lost 2–0 to Arsenal after a replay; in the original tie Stoke had led 2–1 before conceding an equaliser five minutes into injury time. Conroy played in 19 of Stoke's 21 FA Cup and League Cup games in the 1971–72 season, as they reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup and the final of the League Cup. In the League Cup Stoke defeated Southport, Oxford United (after a replay), Manchester United (after two replays), Bristol Rovers and West Ham United (after two replays) to reach the Wembley final against Chelsea. Conroy was a key figure in the semi-final decider at Old Trafford against West Ham, as he won a penalty in the first half and then scored the winning goal on 49 minutes with a 25-yard volley. He also opened the scoring in the final itself, as he converted a simple header after five minutes, and helped Stoke to go on to secure the first trophy in the club's history with a 2–1 victory. Stoke also reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, again losing to Arsenal, though Conroy missed this game as he was sidelined for the rest of the season after he injured his cartilage again in a defeat to Leeds United on 8 April.
  Stoke's League Cup success won them qualification into the UEFA Cup for the first time in the club's history in 1972–73, and Conroy scored Stoke's first goal in Europe on 13 September, a 3–1 victory over German side 1. FC Kaiserslautern at the Victoria Ground. However Kaiserslauter
caption: The League Cup trophy, won by Stoke City in 1972
exif: {"Image Make": "Sony Ericsson", "Image Model": "K800i", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Paint.NET v3.36", "Image DateTime": "2009:02:19 16:20:44", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "286", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Manual", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Image SubjectDistanceRange": "3", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "642", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4595", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/8", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:02:19 16:20:44", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:02:19 16:20:44", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536"}