Tranmere Legends: Part Two
By Matthew Jones
May 26 2010
As summer progresses, Total Tranmere brings you the second of a ten part "Tranmere Legends" series, with an indepth feature on record appearance holder Ray Mathias
After covering goalscoring hero turned Premiership beating manager John Aldridge last week in our first Legends Feature, today Total Tranmere covers another terrace hero, former manager and player Ray Mathias.
Perhaps some might not see Mathias as a real Rovers legend, but as the clubs all time leading appearance maker, the man born and raised on the Wirral must certainly be up there.
Born on 13th December 1946, Ray Mathias was first spotted by Tranmere Rovers playing for Ellesmere Port at the age of 15. He was signed up by Rovers in 1964 although he had to wait four years for his debut, a 1-1 draw at Scunthorpe United.
This was to be the first of over 600 appearances made for Tranmere in an 18-year playing career with the club. Quite a record, and one that will almost certainly never be broken. Indeed, missing only a handful of matches over his career, Mathias managed to play five seasons for Tranmere without missing a game. An ever present season though these days is something long forgotten, as managers all too often look to rest players against so called "lesser opposition".
Starting his Rovers career as a midfielder, Mathias was soon converted to full-back and over his 18-year stint with the club he played under five different Tranmere managers; firstly the legendary Dave Russell, who now has a function room named after him at Prenton Park and not only converted Tranmere to play in white kits, but also installed the flood lights at Prenton Park, before Mathias played under Jackie Wright, Ron Yeats, John King and finally Brian Hamilton.
In 1984, Mathias, aged 37, retired from professional football. He had made 637 appearances for Tranmere, a club record, with only eleven of those appearances coming from the substitutes bench. His total of 637 appearances six more than Harold Bell, who made 501 consecutive appearances for Tranmere (a national record) and thirteen more than Steve Mungall's 624.
However, despite playing 567 league games for the club, Mathias netted just five league goals. Perhaps he was the Robbie Stockdale of his era!
Over his 18-year playing career, success for Tranmere Rovers, as it has so often been in their history, was few and far between, with Mathias winning just one promotion with the club as a player. This was in the 1975-76 season, when Rovers won promotion from Division Four and Mathias being an ever present in this season.
After retiring as a player, Mathias turned his hand to coaching, and he has been in the game as a coach pretty much ever since.
Following the death of Eddie Robertson, Mathias was appointed assistant-manager to Brian Hamilton at Prenton Park and following Hamilton's sacking in February 1985, Mathias was given the caretaker managers role at Tranmere for the first time before Frank Worthington was given the job on a permanent basis.
Mathias soon though was to move to Wigan, another club he would have a long affiliation with. In 1986, Mathias was appointed manager of the Latics and remained there until 1989, even guiding the club to an F.A. Cup Quarter Final appearance in 1987, which they lost 2-0 at home to the mighty Leeds United.
In 1989 though, Mathias returned to Tranmere after a poor season at Wigan. A coach under John King, in 1998 Wigan came calling again and Mathias again accepted the job, this time taking the club to Wembley where they won the Football League Trophy and to the Division Two play-offs, but this wasn't enough as in 1999 he was sacked.
Again, Mathias returned to Tranmere, this time as assistant-manager to John Aldridge, after John King and his assistant Ronnie Moore had left the club in 1996.
It was then that Mathias was with Tranmere through the glory years - firstly as they broke up the Football League under King in the late eighties and early ninetees, this culimating in several Wembley appearances, a Football League Trophy win and, of course, three unsuccessful play-off attempts to reach the Premier League, as well as part of the set-up that got to two F.A. Cup Quarter Finals and amazingly the Worthington Cup final in 2000 under John Aldridge.
Aldridge left the club in 2001 and he was replaced by Dave Watson, but after Watson was sacked in the summer of 2002, Mathias was, at last, given the job he had been waiting for - Tranmere Rovers manager.
Despite losing the likes of Hill, Yates, Henry, Parkinson, Murphy and most importantly Koumas over the summer that he was appointed Tranmere boss, Mathias still managed to guide Tranmere to their highest ever points total in one season - 80. This though, quite remarkably, wasn't enough for Rovers to secure a play-off place, as they finished seventh in Division Two, the most points a team has ever accumulated to finish outside the top seven.
During that season, a year in which Tranmere had well established players such as John Achterberg, Gary Jones and Gareth Roberts, but also saw the real emergance of Ryan Taylor and Iain Hume, Rovers also went on a run of 15 games without defeat until the end of the season, a run extended to 18 games at the start of the next year. This is a club record for the amount of consecutive games without defeat and Mathias, along with his assistant for most of this run, David Kelly, another Tranmere legend, quite rightly took great credit for such a run.
However, poor form at the start of the 2003/04 season saw Mathias dismissed as Tranmere manager, something that certainly didn't please Rovers fans, a number of whom protested against the clubs board for such a move.
In 2004, Mathias had an unsuccessful stint as Chester City caretaker manager and was briefly at Bury in 2005 before moving back into football as the assistant manager to Paul Ince at Macclesfield Town in the 2006/07 season.
Increadibly, the pair saved the club when they looked dead and buried at the foot of League Two on their arrival, and when Ince moved to MK Dons at the start of the 07/08 season, he took Mathias with him. Their success together continued, as The Dons won the Johnstone's Paints Trophy and League Two, leading to Ince being appointed manager of Blackburn Rovers, with the former England captain again taking Mathias with him.
Ince's reign at Blackburn didn't last long, but when he was sacked, Mathias was briefly in charge of the first team until Sam Allardyce was appointed full-time manager.
When John Barnes was sacked as Rovers boss in October, Mathias, who is still regularly seen at Prenton Park on match days, was linked once again with the Tranmere hot seat, though these were only rumours that appeared to be unfounded.
With an appearance record that speaks for itself, Mathias will always be fondly remembered at Prenton Park, as a player, coach and manager.
A real one club man, Mathias always had time for the fans who were willing to speak to him and he still holds the club in high regard to this day.
Sadly, very few "one club men" remain in the game today, like they did in Mathias' era, but Ray was certainly one of these, and it would be great to see such a player come through the Tranmere ranks and do as Mathias has done. Perhaps though the closest we will come to his like nowadays is John Achterberg or Ian Goodison.
Don't forget to check back to Total Tranmere next week as we bring you another feature on a past Rovers hero, whilst you can read Tranmere Legends: Part One by clicking on the link below this article.
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Mathias is a really nice fella and was a decent Manager with us. Left too soon in my opinion.
Who will be the final three inducties? For me, Warwick Rimmer has to be there!