How ‘Jesus’ saved Hong Kong football – Derek Currie writing his memoirs, with golden stories from on and off the pitch
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Derek Currie had just scored an equaliser and set up the winning goal as a League XI shocked favoured Swedish visitors Djurgaardens 3-2 in November 1970 in front of 28,000 fans at the Hong Kong Stadium.
Exiting the stadium, Currie felt his feet leave the ground. Around 100 fans had gathered, a few of them lifting their hero and carrying him to the bottom of Caroline Hill Road, shouting “Ye So!”, before they put him down near the Lee Gardens Hotel.
The next day’s newspaper headline read: “Jesus saves Hong Kong”. “And the name stuck since then,” said Currie, whose Biblical long hair and beard, and star status on and off the field has made him a true icon of Hong Kong football.
Currie is writing his memoirs of an era when the game was an intrinsic part of Hong Kong life, when crowds overflowed at the 28,000-capacity Hong Kong Stadium and the territory pioneered the concept of domestic professional football in Asia.
For Currie, though, the anecdotes go beyond the field. As the soccer-playing “Jesus” and then high-profile PR guru for Carlsberg, Currie was a star and often reluctant socialite who was on first-name terms with celebrities from the sports and entertainment world.
Currie had been in Hong Kong seven weeks before the Djurgaarden game. With Pope Paul VI due to bless the gathering at the Hong Kong Stadium, one local newspaper cartoonist decided to have some fun.
