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Two games, one assist and champagne football – Frank Worthington’s brief but memorable League of Ireland sojourn

The late Frank Worthington is action for Galway United against St. Patrick's Athletic in 1989. Picture: Matt Walsh Expand

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The late Frank Worthington is action for Galway United against St. Patrick's Athletic in 1989. Picture: Matt Walsh

The late Frank Worthington is action for Galway United against St. Patrick's Athletic in 1989. Picture: Matt Walsh

The late Frank Worthington is action for Galway United against St. Patrick's Athletic in 1989. Picture: Matt Walsh

Aidan Fitzmaurice

ONE deft touch, one point and champagne in the dressing room afterwards.

The League of Ireland debut of Frank Worthington, who has died at the age of 72 after a battle with dementia, was memorable but that Irish career was brief, just two outings for Galway United in 1989. Yet the legendary forward made his mark on those who watched him play and played with him.

"I'd seen him on the TV, he was a player who you'd see on Match of the Day so for me, as a 20-year-old playing for my hometown team to line out alongside Frank Worthington really was something," says former Galway defender Peter Carpenter, a team-mate for Worthington's outings in Ireland.

"I played at left back that day and what I remember is this suave, interesting character with a touch like velvet, he was unbelievable, he would make you look good with his touch. I didn't see a 40-year-old, I still saw the superstar I'd seen on the TV as a kid."

Worthington was 40 and had most recently been playing for Stalybridge Celtic in the English non-league scene when his former team-mate Seamus McDonagh, then player/manager at Galway, brought him to Ireland in 1989.

Galway were in a bad way, just three points off the bottom in the Premier Division and had been knocked out of the FAI Cup in the first round, so they needed a lift.

And McDonagh looked to England for that lift as three imports - Worthington, Paul Jones and Darren Pitcher - came into the side for a league game away to St Pat's, in mid February 1989. "We needed players, it was as simple as that," says Carpenter.

Mark Ennis scored a penalty to put the Saints 1-0 up but nine minutes into the second half, Worthington earned his keep with a clever pass to Pitcher, who beat Dave Henderson in the Pat's goal for an equaliser.

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The Irish Independent's match report said the "not very mobile Worthington contributed little except a few deft tricks but he did give a perfect pass for Galway's lone goal".

Carpenters's memory backs that up. "He wasn't running channels and chasing balls but he helped us get a result that day, a point we needed," he says.

"We didn't train with him before the game so the first time we met him was in Richmond Park that day. There were stories that there was wine and champagne in the dressing room after but I can't be sure that's true. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be with the three lads that Seamus signed, they were good lads to be around. Frank wasn't some big-head, he didn't dictate what we had to do, he was a likeable lad."

England to Ireland was a well-worn path by the time Worthington played, as three of England's World Cup winners (Geoff Hurst, Bobby Charlton and Gordon Banks) had already played in the league, while the early and mid 1980s saw big names like Terry McDermott and Trevor Brooking (Cork City), Mick Channon and David Fairclough (Finn Harps) arrive.

But the importing of players on short-term deals like Worthington was not a popular one, and a move by Cobh Ramblers around the same time in 1989 to sign former England man John Hollins, at the age of 43, created something of a crisis. The players' union, PFAI, made their views public. "Their presence only prevents young players coming through the ranks and the League of Ireland has nothing to be ashamed of in the present quality of players," PFAI chairman Tom Conway said at the time and the union asked for "medical checks" on players coming into Ireland like Worthington.

Carpenter says the anger at imports was not merited: "We were in danger of relegation at the time so the team clearly wasn't good enough, and if that's what it took for us to get out of trouble then so be it, we were struggling to survive and the players at Galway had no animosity towards them."

After the draw in Inchicore, Worthington played for Galway United just once more, an away defeat to Shelbourne,and it seems he played for and then left Galway without ever setting foot in the city.

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