Banksy (9 page)

Today, we have millionaire Premiership players being awarded testimonial games after, in some cases, just six years of service at a club. That rests uneasy with a lot of supporters and I fully understand why. Such players are simply not in need of the
money. The decision by Niall Quinn to give to children’s charities the proceeds from his testimonial game at Sunderland in 2002 was a gesture as laudable as it was unique.

In total I played in twenty-six league and cup matches. With each game my self-assurance grew and come the final few games I was confident enough not only to shout instructions to team mates, but organize the defence in front of me. I told the full backs when to push on and when to drop back and even started to tell big Dave Blakey when to drop in and pick up. Goalkeeping apart, I felt I was making a positive contribution to the team and took heart from the fact that in the final five matches of the season, I kept three clean sheets, conceding only three goals.

My horizons at this time never extended beyond playing for Chesterfield. I had after all only twenty-three league games to my name, so it came as a big shock during the summer of 1959 when Duggie Livingstone called me into his office one day and introduced me to a dapper man with wavy black hair who he said wanted to sign me – Matt Gillies, the manager of First Division Leicester City, who had offered Chesterfield £7,000 for my services and implied the decision was mine.

‘We don’t want to sell you,’ said Duggie. ‘You have outstanding potential and we see your future here at Chesterfield. Whether you sign for Leicester or not is entirely your own decision. Here’s a pen.’

Chesterfield were, as ever, strapped for cash and the money was just too good to turn down.

My knowledge of football at the time was hardly comprehensive, but I was unsure what division Leicester played in, let alone where it was. What I did know, however, was that Leicester were a much bigger club than Chesterfield and that they played at a higher level. The very fact that Leicester were willing to pay what was at that time a decent fee for an unknown goalkeeper was an indication of their confidence in my ability and potential. I reached for the pen Duggie Livingstone was jabbing in my direction and signed.

By now Ursula and I were married and living in Treeton, a small mining village just outside Chesterfield. As I arrived home I suddenly realized I had committed my future to another club without consulting her. But I needn’t have worried, she was delighted.

‘How much are they going to pay you?’ asked Ursula.

‘You’d better sit down,’ I said.

I drew a deep breath. ‘Fifteen pounds a week!’ I said triumphantly.

Ursula clasped her hands together in joy, took to her feet and we danced around the kitchen together in celebration of our good fortune.

The summer of 1959 was memorable. BMC launched the Mini, Fidel Castro became president of Cuba. I was clicking my fingers to Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’, tapping my toes to Ricky Nelson’s ‘It’s Late’ and curling my lip to Cliff Richard’s ‘Living Doll’. This was the new music of the time and I liked it. Cliff apart, much of the British chart music took the form of crooners such as Frankie Vaughan or Anthony Newley, or the skiffle style pioneered by Lonnie Donegan. That summer the British popular music scene was invaded by the slick rock’n’roll music of America and we young people took to it in a big way. Popular music was changing and so too was my life, in particular my football career.

I was very grateful to Chesterfield for having given me my chance in League football and was therefore sad to read in the local press that summer, that my sale to Leicester had caused a great deal of discontent amongst the supporters, many of whom were of the mind my fee of £7,000 was too low. I felt flattered. They had had only half a season in which to judge my worth as a goalkeeper. Many believed my sale was unnecessary, given that the Chesterfield Supporters’ Club and Sportsman’s Association had donated over £16,000 to the club at the end of the season. The board, needless to say, disagreed with the supporters’ views on my departure, and snubbed the supporters’ association’s suggestion that the financial support they gave the club merited representation on the board. The Chesterfield chairman, Harold Shentall, described the idea as ‘ridiculous’ – when he was asked by the
Sheffield Star
to say how much he himself had contributed to the club in the previous year, Mr Shentall declined to comment.

I was further saddened to learn that Dave Blakey, who had
been one of my best pals at the club, had slapped in a transfer request. Dave had given fine service for over a decade and had been granted a testimonial by the board in recognition of his loyalty. The trouble was that Dave had yet to receive the proceeds from his testimonial match – hence his transfer request. Dave eventually received the £1,000 owing to him, and consequently withdrew his transfer request. He continued to give loyal service to the club until his eventual retirement in 1966 after nineteen years with Chesterfield!

That summer Maurice Galley and Ivor Seemley were also put on the transfer list. The money received from my move didn’t result in any notable signings. Following my exit Ronnie Powell had come back as first-choice goalkeeper and, in need of cover, Duggie Livingstone signed a lad called Ted Smethurst from non-league Denaby United. Chesterfield’s other signing that summer was Brian Frost, a forward from fellow non-league team Oswestry Town. I was pleased to see Brian get his chance in league football because I had been at school with him. We were two of five lads from Tinsley County School who went on to play professional football, an unusually high number from one year at a single school. The others were David ‘Bronco’ Layne, who became a prolific goalscorer with Sheffield Wednesday until his career was ended through his involvement in the infamous bribery scandal of 1963, Bob Pashley and Terry Leather. In time both Brian and Ted Smethurst made an impact at Chesterfield but initially their signings did little to excite the supporters and detract from the general feeling that the club were lacking ambition and descending into stagnation.

Indicative of Chesterfield chairman Harold Shentall’s curmudgeonly attitude to fans and reluctance to invest in improving the ground and the squad, was his statement that, ‘No one would turn out to watch a mediocre team under floodlights.’ As it happens, Chesterfield did eventually install floodlights – in 1965, the last Football League club to do so!

In the fifties floodlights were common on the continent and
had been since before the war. British football, however, had been slow to take them up, due in the main to a negative attitude on the part of the Football Association and the Football League. Floodlights had been first used in English football as long ago as 1878 when an experimental match had taken place at Arsenal. Arsenal’s next game under lights, the first to be officially recognized, took place seventy four years later! In 1952 the Gunners entertained Hapoel Tel Aviv and a crowd of 44,000 turned up to sample this novel experience.

The old Arsenal manager, Herbert Chapman, had been lobbying for the introduction of floodlights throughout the thirties, but it was only in the fifties that their true worth was recognized. I readily recall watching a much-anticipated televised match in 1954 between Wolves and Honved that took place under floodlights. In 1954 few people had television sets and televised football was a rarity. Everyone was excited at the prospect of seeing the broadcast, especially as this one was to take place under Wolves’ newly installed floodlights. Today such a friendly would create only mild interest in Wolverhampton and pass virtually unnoticed nationwide. Back then the nation awaited this game with bated breath.

Honved, then one of the best club sides in the world, fielded five of the Hungarian team that in 1953 became the first foreign team to beat England at home. That score was 6–3. Earlier in 1954 England’s humiliation had been complete when they had travelled to Budapest in May and were hammered 7–1, a record defeat for England. Everyone saw this as an opportunity to restore a semblance of pride to English football.

Those fortunate enough to have a television discovered that they were the most popular family on the street, with friends they never knew they had. Luckily for me I was a friend of Derek Cooper, whose family was the only one in our street with a television set. Even so, Derek at first declined my request to watch the game at his house as his father was in charge of who was to be allowed to watch the match on their TV. It was only
after much badgering, pleading and downright grovelling on my part that Derek eventually plucked up the courage to ask if I could watch the game. To my great delight, Mr Cooper said yes.

That evening you couldn’t have packed more into their living room if you tried. Naturally the Coopers themselves took the comfy seats. Behind them, two to three deep, stood the men. To the sides, seated on the sideboard and a small table which had been brought through from the kitchen, sat the teenagers, while young boys sat crosslegged on the floor at the front. I was in my mid-teens but was asked to sit down at the front with the small boys, which gave me a great view of the match.

Wolves did not disappoint. Two down inside fifteen minutes they pulled back to 2–2, then, in a finale straight out of
Roy of the Rovers
, scored three times in the last three minutes to win 5–2. It was a fabulous game of football and the excitement generated in the Coopers’ lounge was just like being at Molineux itself. Wolves had put the pride back in English football and, just as importantly, had shown floodlights were important to the future of our game.

Following that night, more and more clubs invested in floodlights to the approval of the football authorities. Though consent for their use in League games was not given until February 1956, when Portsmouth staged the first ever floodlit Football League match against Newcastle United at Fratton Park.

The FA and Football League, however, were less enthusiastic about further games being broadcast on TV. Even in highlight form. The official line was that even televised highlights would have a detrimental effect on attendances. As a consequence, England games and the FA Cup Final apart, television was more or less given the cold shoulder by football’s governing bodies until
Match of the Day
was launched on BBC2 ten years later. The football authorities viewed the relatively new though burgeoning medium of television with suspicion. Their belief that supporters would stay at home to watch any team on television rather than
attend a game at their local club was an attitude that showed how little those who ran the game understood its paying customers. Football clubs have deep roots and a long tradition. In the fifties every club lay at the centre of its community and there was no evidence that televised football would have a detrimental effect on attendances. On the contrary, over 55,000 paid to watch the Honved game!

The Wolves–Honved encounter was probably the first game in England to be played with a white ball rather than the usual dark orange caseball. It was certainly the first I had ever seen. This novelty caught our imagination and the following day, after school, Derek Cooper and I gathered in our back yard with our pals to whitewash Derek’s brown leather ball. We couldn’t wait for darkness so that we could play with this new innovation under the gaslight in the street. Of course we were to be disappointed. As soon as we started to kick the ball around the whitewash came off – though, oddly, it managed to stay on our shoes, much to our parents’ annoyance.

I arrived for my first day as a Leicester City player in July 1959 full of high hopes and enthusiasm. It was the first day of pre-season training and I immediately knew I’d joined a top club on being told to report to the Leicester training ground on the outskirts of the city. The training ground had been purpose built and had a wooden pavilion with changing rooms, a shower block and a weights room, as well as three full-size pitches. I was impressed; I’d never known such luxury.

I wanted to improve my knowledge of football in general, and other players in particular, which I was sure would assist me greatly in my quest to make my mark as a First Division goalkeeper. My £7,000 fee had instilled in me the idea I would soon be knocking on the door of the Leicester first team. That notion was immediately dispelled when the trainer, Les Dowdells, arrived to tell us there was going to be a press photo call and began to distribute shirts. Les began by handing out six green
tops which made me think Leicester played in green! Only when he started to pass round the blue shirts as well did it dawn on me that I was just one of six goalkeepers at the club challenging for the one place in the first team. Being the new boy, I was last in the pecking order!

I soon discovered that Johnny Anderson, who hailed from Arthurlie, and his fellow Scot Dave MacLaren, who had been signed from Dundee, were considered the two main contenders for the first team goalkeeper’s jersey. Of the three other keepers I can recall only two: Tony Lines, a promising youngster whose potential had been spotted when playing for the Lockheed works team, and Rodney Slack, a lad from Peterborough who had been scouted playing for a local youth club team.

Chesterfield had given me the chance of playing league football, but Leicester City gave me the opportunity of carving a career at the highest level of the game. I’d worked as a coal-bagger and hod-carrier, often getting up at 5.30 in the morning, and there was no way I wanted to go back to that life. I was determined to give my all at Leicester and buckled down to pre-season training. The fact that I was just one of six goalkeepers on the books concentrated my mind wonderfully. I knew the club couldn’t justify six full-time professional goalkeepers indefinitely and I was determined that when Matt Gillies decided who was to stay, I would be one of them.

I did all that was asked of me in training, and in the pre-season friendlies I felt I gave a good account of myself. On the Friday before the first day of the 1959–60 season I trained as usual with my team mates, after which we all headed to the club noticeboard to find out the teams for the opening day of the season.