Qualla: Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium

Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Johnfullerton at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Ryan McBride was 27 years old, the captain of Derry City Football Club, when his sister found him dead at his home in the Brandywell area on the morning of 19 March 2017. He had played a full ninety minutes the night before in a 4-0 win over Drogheda United. The post-mortem found a heart defect that nobody had known about. The wake at the stadium drew thousands. A year later, in September 2018, Derry City Council renamed the ground in his honour: the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, the place he had loved since he was a child living on Lone Moor Road. Above the entrance a sign now bears his number five and his name. Locals just call it the Brandywell, as everyone always has.

Image: Johnfullerton at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium: The Well of Pure Water

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY 3.0. The Brandywell name comes from the Irish 'Tobar an Fhíoruisce', the well of pure water, a spring that once fed the area south-west of the Bogside. By the late nineteenth century the open ground had become a sports field. Derry City Football Club was founded in 1928 and approached...

Image: OpenStreetMap contributors | CC BY 3.0

Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium: Banned at Home

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jamie McGonigle, Public domain. For fourteen seasons, between 1971 and 1985, Derry City could not play home matches at the Brandywell. The reason was the Troubles. The Bogside was a flashpoint, the ground sat in a republican-nationalist neighbourhood with active barricades, and both the RUC and the Irish Footba...

Image: Jamie McGonigle | Public domain

Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium: The Jungle and the New Stand

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jamie McGonigle, Public domain. Generations of Derry City fans have stood on the Brandywell terraces. The most famous section was 'the Jungle', a covered terrace that housed the loudest hardcore support until it was demolished in 2004. Many of those fans now occupy Block J in the curved cantilever New Stand, bu...

Image: Jamie McGonigle | Public domain

Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium: The Randywell

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SeanMack, CC BY 3.0. A road sign outside the stadium has at various times been altered, by unknown hands, to read 'Randywell Road'. The reason is a chant that Derry City fans have sung for decades, to the tune of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine: 'We all live in the randy Brandywell, the randy Brandywel...

Image: SeanMack | CC BY 3.0