NOT far from Naples is the town of Sorrento and a few miles west of Sorrento is the village of Massa Lubrense.
Our tale begins with a romance that blossomed there over 40 years ago.
Legendary crooner Dean Martin sang about how “love is king” in Napoli.
You know how the song goes: When a moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore...
Well, Dean knew what he was crooning about.
Imagine a peaceful cove. Imagine the sun dancing on the warm waves of the Mediterranean as they lap up on the hot sand…
Imagine the contrast that was with Belfast in the late 1970s.
The city was a war zone then.
Bombs, bullets and bloodshed… Every day another atrocity and there seemed no end to it.
Little wonder Irene Dunn and her friend left Andersonstown in search of some adventure.
“There was no life here back then,” Irene recalls.
“It was a terrible time as we all know, a very dark time. We just went willy-nilly to Sorrento… I swear to God! We’d been on holiday the year before so we got a flight and went to Sorrento looking for a job.”
They hit lucky when a family hired them to look after their children. One of the perks was that the family owned a holiday home down on the beach. The flipside was that it was a long walk from the beach up the hill to the main road to get to Sorrento.
Luckily a passer-by gave the girls a lift. He introduced himself, they got chatting and he asked them out to meet him and his friend that night.
His friend was working in a hotel restaurant down at the beach and his name was Tony Cacace.
Irene adds with a chuckle: “That’s how it started - maybe it was fate? Or maybe I should have got on the next plane home! We’re still together anyway.”
…That’s amore.
A YOUNG man built for the hard road, Tony Cacace was an outstanding athlete in his youth. His training runs took him through the streets of his home town and on up into the hills where a cooling breeze blew in off the shimmering sea below.
His lungs never run emptied, his legs never seem to tire as his fighting heart pushed him on. His hard work paid off when he won the Italian junior 5,000m title in Naples aged 13. He won again the following year and the year after that.
“I did a wee bit of boxing at the wee local club when I was around 11,” Tony (now 65) explains.
“Let me see… Yeah, I had five fights as an amateur. I retired unbeaten: five fights, five wins. Not too bad! But I didn’t like to get punched in the face, so I picked up running and I was a half-decent long-distance runner.
“I was everywhere: I ran in France, Germany… I was champion of Italy for three years in my youngest days.
“Running was what I loved and I was out every day. I’d come home, get changed and go out. Run-run-run… Train-train-train… It was a passion I had, it was my life at the time.
“I started fast, got a good lead and went on from there but always the same pace – speed wasn’t my forte.”
Could he have gone on to the Olympic Games? Possibly, but like many a talented athlete he found that life got in the way. That dedication to training faded and he went down a different path.
“I started to meet the girls and stuff,” he says with a smile.
“Then a wee cigarette as well and the running got put on the backburner… Anyway, it’s a long time ago.
“Now I can’t run from here to the front door but I still love it, I watch it on TV. My health is not the best. I went out one day and did a few miles but my back packed in and I said: ‘Well, that’s the end of that’. But I still have a love for the sport.”
DIEGO Maradona signed for Tony’s beloved Napoli in 1984. Tony still watches the Napoli games but by the time Maradona had arrived in the city and the ground that is now named after him, Tony had swapped the idyllic surroundings of the Sorrentine Peninsula for West Belfast where the only ‘tourists’ wore camouflage uniforms and carried machine guns.
Little did he know that when his mate (the one who gave Irene and her friend the lift) invited him out on that double date he would end up moving to AndyTown.
“I was at work and a friend of mine came in and he said: ‘Look, I met two Irish girls, and I’m going to meet them tonight. Do you fancy coming with me?’” he says, giving his version of how he and Irene met.
“So I said: ‘Alright, no problem’. I was a young fella then! We met up and spent a bit of time together and we kept phoning each other.
“At the time there was national service in Italy so I had to go in the Army. She kept coming back to Italy every year and she said: ‘When you finish in the army you’ll have to come and see Belfast’. So, next thing, I came over.
“The Troubles were bad then. I remember talking to a friend of mine called Mario and I said: ‘Look, I’m going to a place called Belfast’. He was much older than me and I asked him: ‘What’s it like?’
“He said: ‘You don’t know what’s going on over there?’ I said: ‘Not really’ and then he told me the story. It was pretty weird when I came over and I found it hard to get used to. I was stopped in the street by the British Army and they asked me: ‘What’s your name? Where you going?’ So for the first couple of years I was not too sure I was going to stay.
“But then I made friends, I love the Irish people, they’re very friendly like the Italian people – they’re very welcoming people. The language came on a little bit and after a couple of years I started to feel like I was home. Now I wouldn’t change it for anything, I love Belfast.
“That’s life, isn’t it? You never know where you’re going to end up. I never thought I’d end up in Belfast to be honest but here I am and I wouldn’t change it.
“Don’t get me wrong, I go home to Italy when I can, when my health permits it, and I visit my mum – she is 90 in December. I like to go home and spend a bit of time with her when I can.”
ONE by one, the Cacace children came along. First daughter Margarita, then the three boys Matthew, Anthony and Daniele and finally Sylvia.
They were all sporty. Daniele inherited Tony’s talent for running and they were all keen footballers and hurlers with the St Agnes’s club. The middle child, Anthony, was good at whatever sport he turned his hand to.
When he swapped soccer for the Oliver Plunkett Amateur Boxing Club just across the road from the family home, his coach warned: “He’ll be a better footballer than a boxer”.
The comment hasn’t aged particularly well.
After 12 years as a professional fighter Anthony (AKA ‘Anto’, AKA ‘The Andytown Apache’) is a unified world super-featherweight champion who inherited his dad’s engine and stamina and packs serious power in both hands.
Tall, athletic, experienced and fearless too, Cacace already held the IBO belt when he travelled to Saudi Arabia in May to challenge for the IBF title. He knocked out defending champion Joe Cordina and took the belt home to a joyous reception in Belfast.
Another challenge awaits on Saturday night when he faces one-time Carl Frampton conqueror, Josh Warrington at Wembley Stadium.
“I’m a proud dad,” says Tony.
“I couldn’t be any more proud of what Anthony’s achieved to be honest. I always knew he had a talent and I kept pushing him when I could – sometimes he was thinking about giving up.
“He would tell me: ‘Daddy, I’m going to quit boxing’ and I’d say: ‘Anthony, keep going, give it a bit more time, your chance will come.’
“Me and Irene kept pushing him because we knew he had talent. I don’t know where he gets it from! I’m the only one in my family who was into sport – my brother is not, my sister is not. So I guess he got it from me?”
But his wife’s family has sporting pedigree too. Irene’s grandfather Patrick Murphy – who sadly died in the Spanish ‘Flu epidemic after fighting in the First World War - was a fine footballer who played on the first Belfast Celtic team.
Anthony’s talent was never doubted but he’d admit he wasn’t the most dedicated trainer.
“His coach Patsy McAllister used to come to the house and say: ‘Where is he?’” Tony recalls.
“I’d say: ‘He’s up in bed’. They’d say: ‘Get him up! Get him over to the club!’ So we’d have to go and get him up. He got a push from his coaches and me and my wife.
“He went to America (as a professional) and it didn’t work out, then he went to Barry McGuigan and didn’t really get anywhere… He had fights cancelled and then nobody seemed to want to fight him for some reason.
“He could have given up. Really and truly although we pushed him, he has done it on his own and I always believed and hoped he would get on well. Inside me, I always believed he would go to the top and I’m chuffed for him and so proud he stuck at it. He deserves what he has achieved because it was a long time coming.
“And he’s a down-to-earth guy. Whatever he has achieved, it doesn’t go to his head – I didn’t bring him up that way.”
THE biggest crowd ever to watch boxing in England - 96,000 fight fans - will pack Wembley Stadium on Saturday night. Cacace versus Josh Warrington is the support act to the Anthony Joshua-Daniel Dubois heavyweight world title battle. The atmosphere will be next-level electric and if the fights weren’t enough, Liam Gallagher will entertain the fans before the headline act.
Tony will watch on TV. Irene finds it difficult to watch her son fight so she’s more likely to pop her head in every now and again to ask: ‘Is he doing ok?’
In May, when Anthony battered Joe Cordina to win the IBF title, Tony says the house “went absolutely crazy”.
“There were hundreds of people in my house watching the fight,” he adds.
“It was like a pantomime.
“This next fight is a difficult one. Your man Warrington is a tough wee fighter, a good fighter. I saw him fighting Carl Frampton and a few others so it’s not going to be easy but I believe Anthony has the potential to beat him.
“If he fights the right fight with the right plan he can beat him. It’s all on the night isn’t it? When he gets in the zone he’s a very determined guy and he is ready for this fight mentally and physically.”
TONY’S niece runs The Gang Caffe, a bar in his home town, and it’ll be packed with Cacace fans on Saturday night.
“They’re over the moon for him in Italy,” Tony explains.
“My brother’s daughter has a wee bar and they put his fights on the TV. When Anthony beat Cordina everybody was going mad. They went nuts! They’ll all be out to watch this fight as well.
“A wee town like that to have a word champion! I mean it’s unbelievable.”
They know Warrington will throw everything he has at their man on Saturday night. Cacace will have to come through a storm to hold onto his titles but they’ll cheer him loud at Wembley and in Belfast and across Ireland.
They’ll cheer for him in Massa Lubrense too.
“Everybody is proud of him over there – he’s like one of their own,” says Tony.
Back in old Napoli, that’s amore…
