Pulling Our Socks Up

Sunday the 13th of June, 1965 was a momentous day for Waterford FC. It was a critical juncture when the club could have gone out of existence, but instead, prompted a fightback that would see the Blues crowned league champions just ten months later and begin a period of complete dominance of Irish football. 

That Sunday in June was the Annual General Meeting of the League of Ireland in Merrion Square, Dublin. Waterford were in trouble and received what Leo Dunne, writing in the Waterford News and Star, referred to as “a headmaster’s admonitory warning” from chairman of the league Sam Prole. The famous sentence which went down in club lore was “Waterford need to pull their socks up”, accompanied by a threat of expulsion from the League of Ireland. 

 

The 1965 Blues - Vinnie Maguire, Paul Morrissey, Monny Nolan, Harry Hale, Noel Griffin, Dick Ryan. Peter Fitzgerald, Buddy Purcell, Robbie Walker, Shamie Coad, Shamie Casey.

 

Waterford had finished bottom of the twelve-team league in April 1965 with just two wins from twenty-two matches. The previous season wasn’t much better with three wins meaning they finished one place off the foot of the table. The bottom two teams each season had to apply for re-election. Their places could be given to new applicants instead and Home Farm had been pushing for a league place for many years so the Blues were in real jeopardy.

Shelbourne chairman Mister A. Byrne proposed that Home Farm be given a place instead of either Waterford or Limerick, but he failed to receive a seconder. Already, five of the twelve clubs were from Dublin – Drumcondra, Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians, Shelbourne and St Patrick’s Athletic. Home Farm and Transport both applied to join the league, but with both being from the capital, it was decided that it would be wrong to extend the league to fourteen clubs with two more Dublin clubs. Home Farm were told they would have to wait until a provincial club applied to enter the league alongside them. 

 

League of Ireland and Drumcondra Chairman Sam Prole

 

While Waterford were granted a reprieve, the club was still to receive a dressing-down from the hierarchy. Prole, chairman of Drumcondra and of the league as a whole, proclaimed that “The delegates feel you could do better and they ask for more effort.” That was the line that was reported in the national newspapers, but a more arrogant scolding was said to have gone along with it, including the “pull their socks up” reprimand.

Michael Bolger, Honorary Secretary of Waterford, was the club’s representative at the meeting. He stated that nobody liked to lose money, but Waterford had been badly hit with injuries. However, he struck an ominous note about the club’s future should they finish in the bottom two again the following year. “We hope for better things. If not, we may not be applying again next season.”

When news of the AGM filtered back to Suirside, it was met with relief, fear, shock and outrage. Legendary football writer Dunne couldn’t hide his feelings about bias in the condescending manner of the warning given to the provincial club. “Personally, I could see little reason why Waterford should be told they need to do better. For nearly two decades we watched Bohemians, Sligo Rovers and Transport occupy the lower regions of the league table and I can remember no instance in which any of them was told they would have to do better.”

 

 

It was a turning point for the Blues – probably the biggest in the club’s history. Thirty-five years after joining the league, with results and crowds having slumped in the ‘60s after the title challenges and glamorous football of the ‘50s, it was time to act. Now or never. Chairman Frank Davis and others got their chequebooks out to add some key acquisitions to the talent that was already there. John O'Neill, Mick Lynch and Al Casey were brought back to the club, Jimmy McGeough was signed in December and a teenaged Johnny Matthews came on loan in the Spring to help them over the line. 

Waterford won a record thirteen games in a row from December to March. They blitzed everyone with free-scoring, sumptuous, attacking football and finished two points clear of Shamrock Rovers to win a first ever league title. They had more than pulled their socks up and left the rest of the league in shock at the twelve-month turnaround from bottom to top. 

 

Vinnie Maguire raises the League trophy alongside Chairman Frank Davis in 1968.

 

The league wasn’t extended to fourteen until 1969 and it was two provincial clubs, Athlone Town and Finn Harps, who joined. By 1971, it was Prole’s Drumcondra who were applying for re-election in back-to-back years having finished bottom twice and, a year later, the club was taken over by Home Farm, never to return to League of Ireland football. Meanwhile, Waterford added five more league titles by 1973 as well as the Shield, five Top Four Cups and some unforgettable ties in Europe.