‘I turned up in a Rolls-royce when I signed for Newcastle’
Malcolm Macdonald is a hero at St James’ but says he learnt the game with today’s visitors Luton
As he celebrated the second of three goals on his home debut for Newcastle United against Liverpool, Malcolm Macdonald heard 50,000 Geordies singing his name to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar and knew he had made the right decision to leave Luton Town, but he also remembered a promise made to his dying father.
It was a song that became synonymous with the long-haired, side-burned Macdonald as he became one of English football’s most feared centre-forwards. “Supermac, Superstar, how many goals have you scored so far…” would ring around St James’ Park during five prolific years on Tyneside before the England international returned to London with Arsenal in 1976.
Macdonald, now aged 67 and struggling with the nagging pain of the knee injury that ended his career at the age of just 29, was one of the pin-up boys of the Seventies, a poacher with a burst of speed that, had he chosen a different path, could have made him an Olympic sprinter. Today, he will be a guest of honour as Newcastle take on Luton in the third round of the FA Cup.
If Macdonald achieved fame at Newcastle, it was at Luton where he learned the most, inspired by a challenge thrown at him before his first game for the club.
“They called me Super Mouth when I signed for Newcastle because I said my target was to score 30 goals in my first season,” he says. “I turned up in a Rollsroyce. It wasn’t mine, I’d been driven up by one of the directors from Luton, but it made an impression, that’s for sure.
“I remember one of the members of the press, the late Bob Cass, piping up, ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen a player turn up in his signing-on fee’. They weren’t sure about me. I’d turned up in this flash car, and when they asked what my target was for the season, I said I wanted to score 30 goals.
“The next day, the papers were saying ‘Who do you think you are?’ This kid from Luton who had never played in the big league, claiming he would score 30 goals for a club like Newcastle. The song – and I’ve never quite understood how everyone knew the lyrics so quickly, it was if they had handed out the lyrics – came from that.”
Macdonald was not being conceited. He was merely repeating the challenge he had been given at the start of his career at Luton in the old Division Three.
Having dropped out of grammar school at 15, with the blessing of his father Charles after a row with the headteacher who had stopped him playing a game for Barnet in the Southern Counties League, Macdonald was a full-back with amateur side Tonbridge when his dad passed away 18 months later.
He had asked for one thing of his son when he quit school – “take your football as far as you can”.
Spotted by Bobby Robson’s chief scout, Harry Haslam, Macdonald signed for Fulham, where he was transformed into a centre-forward by the future England manager, but left soon after Robson was sacked to launch his career at unfashionable Luton. “I can still remember that team meeting at Luton before the first game of the season. It was something that motivated my entire career,” Macdonald says. “It was taboo in those days for a manager to talk about promotion before the season, but Alec Stock said to us, ‘The good people of Luton are going to come out in their droves to support us, the least we can do is win promotion. Now, I’m going to tell you how we’re going to do it’. “Alec went to every player, giving a goals target and I remember him stopping at the No 9, Laurie Sheffield. ‘You’ve had more clubs than Jack Nicklaus and you’re getting on a bit now, but you can still run a bit, you can still jump a bit and you can still score goals. Your target is 18’.
“I thought that was reasonable for a centre-forward. Alec looked at me and said, ‘Now then, young ’un, you’re unproven and you’re new to the club. Your target is 30’.
‘I promised I would score 30 goals. The papers said: Who do you think you are?’
That was it, he moved straight on without another word. I couldn’t believe it. Laurie turned to me and just said, ‘Good luck with that’.
“I didn’t score in the first game, but I set up two. I was distraught afterwards, even though we won,
but the goals came. I scored 29 and Luton were promoted. I spoke to Alec after our final game of the season at Mansfield and said sorry.
“He asked what for. When I told him for only scoring 29 goals, he said, ‘That’s OK, old son. You owe me one next season, so you’re target in the second division is to score 31’. He didn’t laugh either.
“I did though. I was on 29 again going into the final game of the season and scored a hat-trick against Cardiff City. I told Alec the second goal was the one I owed him and the third was for luck. He replied, ‘You’re going to need it, old son, because I’ve sold you to Newcastle United’. It was the summer of 1971.”
He did not stop scoring in the North East. He was Newcastle’s top scorer every year, averaging 28 goals a season, won the Golden Boot in 1975 and is fifth on the club’s all-time top scorers’ list. “I’m very proud of that,” adds Macdonald, who still lives in the North East after a successful career in local radio.
“All the players above me spent at least eight years at Newcastle, I was only there five.
“I have regrets. We should have won the FA Cup final in 1974 when we lost to Liverpool, but we decided to change formation. I lost again with Arsenal, to Sir Bobby Robson’s Ipswich in the 1978 final, but you can’t have everything.”