Legend of Mad Dog is forever at Alty

MARK MADDOX 1973-2023

 

CLUB HERO: Mark Maddox earned legendary status at Altrincham and receiving his NGA Award in 2013, inset

IT was often said Mark Maddox didn’t have motor neurone disease, rather motor neurone disease had Mark Maddox.

The 50-year-old Non-League and Altrincham legend passed away this week having lived with the incurable diseasee for more than 12 years.

“He always said that: this thing won’t beat me, I’ll beat it – it’s just typical of the man, the way he was,” former Altrincham chairman Grahame Rowley tells The NLP.

“His biggest challenge came after his career rather than during his career and I think he won that as challenge as well. We’re so proud of him. There are so many things that have been said about Mark, but I think they all come down to the same thing – he was a 100 per cent committed bloke in everything he did. He’s a massive loss to the football world.”

His beloved Liverpoolol FC posted a message on social media about his passing amid an outpouring of love for the defenderer known as Mad Dog.

“That’s the thing thatt is most amazing, people are just not accepting of it and that’s a clear sign of how strong he came across,” Alty co-chairman Bill Waterson says. “Even when we saw him in the later days when he was wheelchair bound, you could still tell there was that indomitable spirit in him. You could seee it in his eyes there was still a strong person in there.”

Maddox joined the Robins in 1996 from Sunday League in Liverpool and went on to make 326 starts over the next ten years. His forthright approach to the game endeared him to many – including referees.

“Graham Heathcote told me a story this week from a pre-season friendly against Marine, the last game before the season started,” Rowley says. “Graham said to all the players, ‘Whatever you do, we’re in Merseyside, just play the game, don’t get involved in any problems, we’ve got a big game on the first day’. “Within ten minutes Mark had been sent off – he basically laid out the centre forward.

“Graham says as Mark came off he asked him, ‘What didn’t you understand about what I said? Mark went, ‘He wound me up, he wound me up!’. That was the person he was, you couldn’t tell him to hold off.”

Waterson says fans loved that about Maddox, who also played for Barrow, Leigh RMI and Vauxhall Motors before managerial spells at Leigh Genesis and Formby.

“There’s so much love for“There’s so much love for him amongst our supporters,” Waterson says. “Even the younger ones who haven’t seen the glory days of the 70s and 80s, Mad Dog was a hero to many of them because he was such a character, such a leader. He was always there with a kind – or harsh – word for the teammate. He had different ways of motivating and he wouldn’t hold back. I think everyone who played with him respected him massively for that.

Big occasion

“He was an awesome player. I remember his goal against Darlington in the FA Cup second round. He only scored 11 times but in that game he scored the match-winning penalty against Kettering in the FA Trophy. He rose to big occasions.”

The Kettering penalty helped seal another goal for Maddox – seal his place in the legends section on Alty’s website.

“My brother and I would put the club legends on the website,” Rowley says. “He always used to come up to me and say, ‘When am I going to become a legend?’

“I remember in January 2003 we played in the Trophy against Kettering. The previous game I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, if you score the winning goal against Kettering, you can become a legend’. He went, ‘Right, OK’.

Awareness

“We drew and it went to a penalty shoot-out. He took the fifth penalty – and scored it. As he came off the pitch he came up to me and said, ‘Well, am I a legend then?’ ‘Yes, you’re a bloody legend’.

“We put his piece up after that. He became a legend after that either way because he played for another three years after that.”

His approach to his MND diagnosis was even more impressive. Refusing to be cowed, he set about raising awareness and money of the life-limiting condition.

He took part in a clinical trial searching for a cure and became the first person with MND to complete the London Marathon and performed gigs with his band Last of a Dying Breed.

“He was always looking on the positive side of things – it’s an example to everyone else,” Rowley says. “One of his proudest moments was seeing his son Sonny on his 18th birthday.” Maddox is survived by wife Jane and their three children, Sonny, Vinny and Bo and Altrincham celebrated their hero at yesterday’s National League game with Chesterfield.

His final visit to Moss Lane was in 2018 for a sports dinner where one of his boxing heroes Frank Bruno spent 30 minutes chatting to him one-on-one.

By then the disease had left him in a wheelchair but he continued to inspire for five more years, his legacy starting a conversation about the then barely understood MND.

Waterson says: “I look at what he’s done after he retired and think, ‘There’s no way he should have been able to do that’.”