Banksy (11 page)

Recalling those players now, I can’t help wondering whether, if David Beckham or Michael Owen had been blessed with similarly yeoman surnames, would they now enjoy star status? Can you imagine the snack foods, mobile phone, designer eyewear or soft drinks companies scrambling to secure the
endorsement of Albert Cheesebrough or Arthur Bottom if they were the star turns of football today? Moreover, ‘Cheesey’ and ‘Bots’ are not nicknames that lend themselves to today’s perceived image of a star. Christian names have always been subject to fashion. Subsequent generations of parents rejected Arthur, Albert and Harold as being simply old-fashioned. But surnames you’re stuck with. Where are the Cheesebroughs, Bottoms, Cakebreads and Otheringcrofts of today? Curiously, not in professional football, nor have they been for some years. Their absence is a small but poignant reminder of the changing fabric of the game.

Another young player also made his mark during my first season at Leicester – Frank McLintock, a Glaswegian signed from Shawfield Juniors. As a young player he combined the toughness of a Gorbals upbringing with a fine footballing brain to emerge as a stylish wing half whose great vision was the catalyst to many a Leicester attack. At twenty-two he had the guile and nous of a much more experienced player. Frank always made himself available to me for throw-outs with his shrewd positioning in midfield. His skilful repertoire of long and short passes, timed and executed to perfection, probed ceaselessly into opposing defences and were an indication of a great player in the making. When Frank eventually left Leicester for Arsenal in 1964, the £80,000 paid for his services was the highest fee Leicester had ever received for a player. Frank’s enthusiasm for football was to play no small part in my development as a goalkeeper, for which I will always be grateful.

Our good form in the new year gave rise to hopes of a good FA Cup run. In the third round we won 2–1 at Wrexham, with goals from Albert Cheesebrough and Ken Leek. (The headline writers were no better then than they are today: ‘Cheese and Leek Give Wrexham Food for Thought’; ‘Wrexham Leek Early Goal then Are Cheesed Off’.) In round four we beat Fulham 2–1 at Filbert Street to set up a fifth-round home tie against West Bromwich Albion – the first ever all-ticket match at Leicester.

Someone had the bright idea that cup tickets would be sold on the turnstiles at the reserves’ Football Combination fixture against Bournemouth. Cup fever had gripped the city and a bumper crowd of 22,890 (obviously a record for a Leicester City reserves match) turned up to see the reserves that day, while I played in front of fewer than 17,000 in the First Division at Luton Town. Apparently the atmosphere was terrific and Bournemouth’s reserves couldn’t believe their luck to be playing in front of such a large crowd. I still think it’s a great way of selling tickets for a big game.

These days many clubs have a sliding scale of admission prices. Prices vary according to the perceived attraction of the opposition or status of a game. Though admission prices are never cheap. A lot of supporters resent paying more to see their club play Manchester United or Liverpool in a cup tie. Hiked admission prices simply annoy a lot of fans who feel their club loyalty is being exploited. To sell tickets for a big game at a reserve match or a League match that would normally attract far less than the ground capacity, seems to me to be a far better way of going about things. First, the club would enjoy two bumper pay days instead of one. The extra money taken from the match at which tickets went on sale would more than equal any price increase implemented for the big game. Secondly, by doing that, clubs would not incur the wrath of supporters incensed at having to pay more than the normal admission price. Even allowing for the extra costs of policing, gatemen and so on, I am sure clubs would still benefit both financially and in terms of goodwill.

These days clubs invest heavily in PR departments and community schemes in an attempt to foster better relations with supporters and the wider public. Yet when they have an opportunity to do just that and make some extra money in the process, they ignore it. Perhaps this has something to do with people who work behind the scenes at clubs these days. Many have a proven track record in marketing and advertising but have never been football supporters, never mind players. Of course there are chief
executives and commercial directors with a football background, but there are many people in key commercial and administrative positions in clubs today whose first experience of football comes with their taking up the post. They understand marketing but seemingly not football or its supporters. They try to sell the club as they would do any commercial product. But they don’t have to, because in the supporters a football club already has inbuilt brand loyalty. What’s more, unlike breakfast cereal or toilet tissue, football instils a great level of emotion in its consumers. When such loyalty and emotion is not understood and occasionally ignored, supporters at best feel exploited, at worst antagonized.

If a fan turns up at a home game to hear the stadium announcer pushing the club’s own-brand financial services, when on the field the team is crying out for a new striker to avert a decline towards the relegation zone, then he or she is bound to resent his club’s scale of priorities. Yet time and again I hear stories of clubs riding roughshod over their supporters’ feelings, an attitude that inspires cynicism, not loyalty.

A near-capacity crowd of 38,000 turned up at Filbert Street for the West Brom tie. It became evident that something was wrong during an unusually long half-time interval. After a quarter of an hour we still hadn’t heard the buzzer sound in our changing room, the sign for us to go out for the second half. Thinking there may have been a problem outside the ground with ticketless supporters, Matt Gillies told us to take to the field and to keep warm until the match officials appeared. As we filed out in the corridor, our trainer Les Dowdells told us to return to the changing room; the second half was going to be delayed because the referee, Jack Husband, had been taken ill. Then Charles Maley, our club secretary, came with some shocking news. Jack Husband had collapsed in the officials’ changing room and died. But it had been decided to continue the game.

When a loudspeaker appeal was made to the crowd for a
suitably qualified official, a former referee came forward to run the line with one of the linesmen taking over as referee. After a lengthy delay we went on to beat West Brom 2–1 with goals from Jimmy Walsh and Albert Cheesebrough, though our celebrations were muted. That the game was allowed to continue speaks volumes about the nation’s attitude to death in the aftermath of the Second World War. Nowadays we would all be shocked by such an event, and rightly so, and it would be inconceivable to play on afterwards. But to people with the carnage of war fresh in their minds it seemed hardly to warrant a second thought. The best defence people had erected against six years of destruction and tragedy was, as Mam said, simply to ‘get on with it’. So we did.

In the sixth round a crowd of 39,000 saw us bow out of the FA Cup against Wolverhampton Wanderers. It turned out to be a classic quarter-final, full of cut and thrust. Peter Broadbent put Wolves ahead only for Tommy McDonald to equalize. Len Chalmers, two years older than me at twenty-four, had recently been appointed captain. Len played exceptionally well that day but towards the end of the game couldn’t get out of the way of a low centre and deflected the ball past me and into the net. In the dressing room after the game Len was inconsolable. I told him, ‘It’s gone now, Len, so forget it. Next season, luck’ll probably be on your side in the Cup.’ Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Wolves went on to win the FA Cup that season, beating Blackburn Rovers 3–0, though they were denied a third consecutive League Championship when Burnley pipped them on the very last day – the first time that the Clarets had topped the table all season. Burnley’s success was a triumph for the attacking football that was still very much in vogue in 1960 as evidenced by Wolves’ goal tally of 100-plus for the third successive season. We played Burnley twice towards the end of the season when they really had their tails up and the league title within their reach. We lost by the only goal at Turf Moor, but dented their
progress by winning 2–1 at Filbert Street. Our good form in the second half of the season and the fact that we had beaten the eventual champions at home and had given them a very close game on their own turf, made me believe Leicester could go on to bigger and better things the following season. I wasn’t wrong.

As I have said, the emphasis was still very much on scoring goals rather than conceding them. The fact that the best club side in the world, Real Madrid, were an all-out attacking side fuelled the general notion that there was nothing wrong in conceding three or four goals as long as you scored five or six. In the case of Real Madrid, more.

The maximum wage a player in the Football League could earn at this time was £20. On making the first team at Leicester City my wage had been increased from £15 to £17, which on establishing myself in the Leicester team, was increased to £20 less tax. My new found ‘wealth’ enabled Ursula and I to buy one or two home comforts, one being a television. What televisions there were available in the shops in 1959–60 all seemed to be British made, Bush, Ferguson, Ekco and Ultra. We chose an Ultra, black and white of course with a fourteen-inch screen. For many people, ourselves included, television was still a novelty and the technology nowhere near that of today. When the cathode ray tube blew, as they often did in those days, replacement was so costly that many people when buying a TV set took out insurance to cover the cost.

I watched the 1960 European Cup final on our little black and white Ultra and marvelled at the skill and technique of Real Madrid. All these years on, I still believe Real’s performance in that final to be the greatest ever performance, by the greatest ever club side, the world has ever seen. Real beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7–3 and the performances of Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas were sublime.

Looking at the margin of Real’s victory, one might think Frankfurt were simply a team of journeymen who ran up against
a very good side. The truth was that Eintracht Frankfurt were a very good side up against a brilliant one. To put Frankfurt into perspective, Glasgow Rangers were considered to be one of the best teams in Britain at that time. In the two-legged semi-final Frankfurt beat Rangers 6–1 in Germany and 6–3 at I brox! For Frankfurt then to concede seven in the final says volumes for how far ahead of every other team Real were. True, Frankfurt scored three, but they were outclassed and outplayed for long periods of the game and the final result was never in doubt from the moment Di Stefano pulled back Richard Kress’s opening goal for the Germans.

The European Cup was just starting to take off as a competition. The victory over Frankfurt was Real Madrid’s fifth consecutive European Cup success since its inauguration in 1955–56. As a team Real were peerless and their passing, movement off the ball, vision and finishing in and around the penalty box were breathtaking. Everyone else who watched that final was in awe of them.

It was generally felt that Spanish and Italian football was superior to our domestic game. But Real Madrid were streets ahead of any other Spanish team of the day. The football they played seemed to be from another planet. Following that European Cup final I spoke to quite a number of my fellow players and the consensus of opinion was that Real had created a benchmark for us all to aspire to. We knew that, in all probability, we would never reach the sublime level of football displayed by Real that night, either as individuals or as a team, but at least we now knew what was possible. I don’t think any club side has ever equalled the performance of Real that night, but many of the great individual and team performances we have seen since, in part, came about through people trying to equal the standard as laid down by Di Stefano, Puskas and company.

Since 1953 when Hungary beat England 6–3 at Wembley, the first foreign team ever to win on English soil, and less than a year later followed up that victory with a 7–1 demolition of England
in Budapest, we had known that, in International terms, our football was no longer the best in the world. Real Madrid’s domination of European club football merely underlined the point. The success of Real, and the manner of it, woke English football from its long slumber that had been remarkably undisturbed by the watershed defeats at the hands of the Hungarians. Following the 1960 European Cup final, more clubs started to appoint coaches. They realized individual skill and effort was no longer enough, there also had to be collective effort. The FA’s coaching school at Lilleshall took on far greater importance and many current and former players attended their courses with a view to learning more about the tactical side of the game and the development of skills and technique.

These coaching schools were under the supervision of Walter Winterbottom, the England manager who also bore the title of Chief of the Football Association’s Coaching Staff. Walter was a deep-thinking football man, always more at home with the coaching side of his job than the actual management of teams. The FA and Walter made a great effort to encourage former players, and some current ones, to take up what was then a three-part course leading to full qualification as an FA coach. Following the 1960 European Cup Final, the FA’s Coaching Course was fully subscribed and many of those who embarked upon the course would go on to make telling contributions to our game. Jimmy Adamson, Tony Barton, Tommy Docherty, Frank O’Farrell, Bob Paisley and Dave Sexton were all on the same coaching course. They and many others played no small part in changing the way we played the game. Another member of the Class of 1960–61 was Bert Johnson, the chief scout at Leicester City, who Matt Gillies later appointed as first-team coach and whose expertise and enthusiasm was to play a significant part in my development as a goalkeeper.

English football may well have been embarking upon a renaissance but there was still an insular attitude prevalent in a number of people charged with running the game. England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland had all declined to enter the inaugural European Nations Cup, which was won by the USSR. The four respective FAs shunned this new tournament, believing the Home International tournament to be of greater importance. While it is true to say the European Nations Cup had nowhere near the status and kudos of today’s European Championship, the fact that we had declined to compete with other European international teams on a competitive basis could only hinder, rather than help, the seeds of progress.