Readtime: 9 mins

Before playing against Pelé and under Dave Mackay, mechanic Tony also borrowed a European Cup winner’s boots to drive Waterford to their last league title

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Holding onto the club’s top talent has been a perennial problem for Waterford FC down through the decades. It was the same old story when Tony Macken, just voted the League of Ireland Player of the Year, moved to star-studded Derby County fifty years ago this week.

The clubs agreed terms for the Dublin-based defender/midfielder on July 19 after days of secret negotiations. The consideration wasn’t disclosed by Blues chairman, surgeon Bob O’Driscoll, but it was later reported to be £30,000 — roughly a ten-fold increase on what they paid for his services just 18 months earlier and a new record fee for a domestic player.

Needless to say, the English First Division outfit, who’d won a first-ever league title under Brian Clough in 1972, represented a much more attractive proposition for the former Glentoran wing-half who twice tasted title success north of the border, lining out in front of huge crowds.

Pocket-sized but sturdy, Macken could mix it as well as play football, specialising as a talented linkman. But connectivity off the pitch was part of the problem. Living and working in Raheny and about to turn 24, he had already indicated his unhappiness at faraway Kilcohan Park where indecent speculation about the manager’s position was constant.

Therefore, the news of his departure came as no surprise, though he’d been tipped to join a club in his native capital. However, with the likes of Bruce Rioch, Archie Gemmill, Colin Todd, Roy McFarland, Rod Thomas, Leighton James, Francis Lee, Frannie Lee, Alan Hinton on his roster — all internationals and “great players to play with” — manager Dave Mackay saw Tony as a cover signing. He ended up spending the whole of the next season in the reserves as Derby collected a second championship in four years.

Eventually, after a loan spell at Portsmouth, Macken made his Rams debut in a 2-0 home win against Aston Villa during Christmas week, 1975. But his opportunities at the Baseball Ground continued to be limited, though he was entrusted with a midfield berth after another encouraging month-long loan spell with Pompey.

Eventually, after 37 appearances in all competitions — that included a consolation goal in a 3-1 defeat by Man Utd and an experience against England winger Tony Currie of Leeds “who tore me inside-out!” — he lost his place under Mackay’s successor Colin Murphy.

Macken was signed by Fourth Division Walsall, now managed by Mackay, for £9,000 in October 1977. He would play 190 games for the West Midlands club, winning promotion in 1980.

Two years later he returned to Ireland and Drogheda United as player-coach, leading them to a League Cup and runners-up spot in his second season there after boss, the late Ray Treacy, who’d set him up with a job back home, quit.

But the Drogs were relegated from the top flight the following year and Tony stepped down. At the start of the 1985-86 campaign, he was back on Waterford United’s books with boots on, being snapped up by his old ally Alfie.

Proving a midfield powerhouse alongside the likes of Vinny McCarthy, he played 37 times in two seasons, including the 1986 FAI Cup Final defeat to Rovers, and wore the captain’s armband when Waterford hosted Bordeaux in the European Cup Winners Cup at the dog track that autumn (main photo).

Tony finished his 20-year, 430-game career where it started, as an amateur at Home Farm, after breaking his ankle in 1988. The way he threw himself into challenges, it was a miracle it remained intact so long.

Macken recently recalled his initial arrival on Suirside, having initially refused to go back up North as the Troubles escalated. There was also supposed serious interest from Sunderland but no bid, enquiries also by Shamrock Rovers, and an offer from Bohs they couldn’t agree terms on, so distant Waterford was the next best option.

As told the Rovers fans podcast ‘Tales From The East Stand’: “[Player-manager] Shay Brennan came up to Glentoran. He wanted to sign Gerry McCaffrey… and after the game he asked me would I go to Waterford.”

Finally, having come in bidding way too low, speaking what secretary Sean Power called “a different language” to the £20,000 Glens were seeking for their player of the year, the Blues doubled their original offer to £3,000 (Waterford President, Munster Express owner J. J. Walsh, guaranteeing the bulk of the fee) and Glentoran chairman Jimmy Morgan relented.

“So I went from travelling a hundred miles up to driving a hundred miles down!” Tony smiled. That was mostly just for games, mind, as it was arranged that he would train with Drumcondra. It didn’t matter a whit, as his dynamic displays were crucial as Waterford landed a sixth league title in eight years.

As to how his transfer to Derby came about, the seeds were sown the previous May. “I was playing for the Under-23s against France in Dalymount and [then Notts Forest boss] Dave Mackay just happened to be in Dublin visiting somebody and decided to go to the game.”

The great Scot was so impressed with Tony’s performance in the Irish midfield that “He asked me to go to Nottingham but with my job [as a motor mechanic] and my football money, I had a nice comfortable living here. And they weren’t offering me enough to go… so when Cloughie left Derby, Dave took over and he came back for me.”

Foremost among his career highlights, Macken made a single Irish senior appearance under Johnny Giles in a home defeat to Spain in a February ’77 friendly at Lansdowne Road; “a great day” — though it took him 10 years to get the cap from the FAI.

Having paired up in Drogheda, Tony, became Ray’s assistant when Shamrock Rovers won the league in 1993-94. He remembers the ex-Ireland striker and successful travel agent as “a great person.” They had also played against each other in the States during Treacy’s mid-seventies stint with reigning Soccer Bowl holders Toronto Metros-Croatia.

Tony joined the European exodus to the fledgling North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1976-77, spending loan spells with Washington Diplomats and Dallas Tornado, even taking on New York Cosmos and the great man himself, Edson Arantes do Nascimento. He also faced George Best of LA Aztecs, who “did things Pelé never done.”

There were plenty of English and Irish plying their off-season trade in the U.S. in those years. Just as Macken arrived in D.C., Blues goalkeeping great, the late Peter Thomas, was transferred to the Las Vegas Quicksilvers franchise. Manchester United legend Denis Viollet was Tony’s coach at Washington.

He already knew him from his days playing with Linfield in the Irish League and Shay had arranged a memorable and successful end-of-season tour through his Baltimore-based pal in 1973.

The Munich air crash survivor flew to Derby to convince Tony to cross the Atlantic and line up with the likes of his old Waterford sidekick, the teak-tough Tommy McConville.

Washington tried to buy him outright, but a deal fell through. “If Derby had let me go, I would have stayed [there] playing… I was happy I went out. I’d a great time in the States,” Tony says, reckoning he bided his time too long with County.

Waterford fans will feel Macken wasn’t here long enough, though the team was on the wane when he left. Having been hampered by leg injuries throughout the ’72-73 campaign, he’d limped off as the Blues stuttered to defeat by championship rivals Finn Harps in Ballybofey in the penultimate game.

However, Tony recovered to take his place as the Blues beat Cork Hibs in a crammed and sun-kissed Kilcohan on Sunday, April 15 to retain the title by a solitary point.

Coming through a pre-match fitness test, Tony was elevated to hero status when he seized on a goalkeeping blunder to head home Waterford’s first (one of 32 career goals) sixteen minutes in. Over the ninety, he produced a magical, tantalising midfield performance — and literally in Brennan’s boots!

“I don’t have rubber studs in my own boots, so I had to get a loan of the manager’s… That’s why I looked crippled most of the time!” he told Mel Moffat of the Irish Press, whose match report began: “Tony Macken, the chunkily built Dubliner, who measures barely 5’6” [but tipping the scales at 12 stone-plus] turned in a giant-sized display” of “genius” proportions.

A Johnny Matthews spot-kick just before the break sealed the result and the league’s joint-top scorer, 20-goal Alfie Hale, worked his socks off. But there was one name on everyone’s lips afterwards; the little fella with the heart of a lion.

“He was everywhere — defence, midfield, attack. His energetic bursts made you feel tired just looking at him,” the Press scribe reported, adding: “What a performance,” said the usually placid Brennan. “This boy was absolutely fantastic.”

The Irish Independent’s David Faiers observed how he “simply lorded the middle of the park… reading every situation expertly, cutting off Hibs’ supply lines and laying the ball about with pin-pointed accuracy. He was here, there and everywhere, chasing and harrying Hibs’ raiders one minute, the next sliding through tackles to put [the opposition] under pressure.”

Leo Dunne of the Waterford News & Star said Macken was the “undisputed” man of the match. “His was a terrier-like brand of tackling and tenacity… He met and matched [Hibs] at their own game and seemed to share in every dangerous Waterford move.”

As for “the wave of acclaim” that met the Waterford team when the final whistled sounded, “They deserved it all. We may not see the like again,” L.P.D. wrote prophetically.

The following season Tony gave a tour de force, his consistency claiming the football writers’ League of Ireland Player of the Year Award, pipping the favourite, Bohs’ top scorer Turlough O’Connor, even though Waterford were off the pace. He got a standing ovation at the awards reception in Dublin.

Long-time fans have fond memories of a him, as do former colleagues. “As tough as nails and he could play,” attests Kilcohan icon Carl Humphreys. “Hard as nails,” says Billy Nolan. “One of the best midfielders we ever had,” agrees Billy Cowman.

David McCarthy believes “Tony Macken would have been the best left half to have played LOI if it hadn’t been for Jimmy McGeough… probably the hardest tackler I ever saw.”

A young man who served his time learning how to fix cars, Tony was only here a year and a half, but he “left the biggest impression in the shortest amount of time with the Blues,” vouched Billy Costine.

He will go down in history as one of the main catalysts for Waterford’s last League of Ireland victory parade. Having a European Cup winner’s boots in his toolbag might have been the key.

Main photo: Captains Patrick Battiston (the French international who survived that infamous assault by West German goalkeeper Harald Schumacher at the 1982 World Cup) and Tony Macken at the coin toss as Waterford took on Bordeaux at Kilcohan Park in 1986. [Courtesy of Derek O’Neill and the Blues Community Facebook Group]