When Footballers Were Skint: A Journey in Search of the Soul of Football

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If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us He’d say, “Tell ’em they can’t play. If they were any good they’d be up here with us in the forward line”– that type of thing.’ Not to be outdone, Cristiano Ronaldo, football’s most gifted narcissist, gave his own TV interview a few minutes later. He didn’t seem that bothered by the result, either, satisfactory though it was. If Bale could put himself in the shop window, then so could he. Anything to ensure a bit of attention and to guarantee he remained one of the highest paid footballers in the world. No one should dream of taking his loyalty for granted.

were | Biteback Publishing A Wolves side fuelled by monkey glands were | Biteback Publishing

Eastham hung on for seven months before Newcastle relented in October 1960 and allowed his transfer to Arsenal.Don Ratfcliffe, the popular Ratter who was another team-mate of Matthews’s in his second spell at Stoke, says: ‘I got on very well with Stan and used to fire his bullets for him. He was a very quiet fella, but he was funny and used to tell me things to say to their defenders. A patriarchal home life when he was a lad and a tightly knit mining community forged in him what I soon learn is an uncomplicated set of values. Timeless Two Stripes: How sponsorship conflict made Johan Cruyff play the 1974 World Cup with a two striped Adidas kit But the thing about him that really caught the public imagination was whether he did or didn’t experiment with the use of monkey glands.

‘It was in the character and spirit of Duncan | Biteback

About the Author: Jon Henderson has written about football as a journalist and author for more than fifty years. He progressed from covering Rushden Town for the Northants Evening Telegraph in the 1960s to filing stories for Reuters on Diego Maradona’s antics in winning the World Cup for Argentina in 1986. Since then he has written on football for The Observer and Guardian and his biography of Stanley Matthews was shortlisted for Football Book of the Year in 2013. His other books include a biography of the tennis champion Fred Perry, which was shortlisted for Sports Biography of the Year in 2009 and was a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. And you’ve heard of Betty Grable? Well, she paid a million dollars to insure her legs and they were great legs and my missus had legs that were as good as Betty Grable’s. But she doesn’t believe me, because she doesn’t believe anything I say…’ Born in Dudley, Worcestershire, Edwards appeared on the radar of leading clubs while still in his early teens. He met all the criteria of a Busby Babe, the name given to the youthful recruits enrolled by the Manchester United manager Matt Busby because the club were too impoverished to sign established players. The narrator was a bit iffy, but the content was well researched and made you nostalgic at times, but the Bosman ruling changed everything, not always for the better and now we have owners that don’t give a flying for fans & their communities...and they call it progress! In those days, when you married they gave you a club house to reside in, you paid your rent and that was how it worked. There was no buying your own house because you couldn’t afford it.’Interestingly, though most of my interviewees mentioned Edwards among their favourite players, there were few anecdotes, just expressions of quite how formidable he was.

Some players clogged – Stanley Matthews used | Biteback Some players clogged – Stanley Matthews used | Biteback

Based on the first-hand accounts of players from a fast-disappearing generation, When Footballers Were Skint delves into the game's rich heritage and relates the fascinating story of a truly great sporting era. When you think about it,’ George Eastham says, ‘it was a silly sort of situation. All I was looking for was a job in the afternoons because footballers did nothing in those days. You finished at lunchtime and then the rest of the day you became a good snooker player or whatever, a good golfer – but you didn’t have anything to do.’ But I couldn’t get a job and I couldn’t come to any agreement with Newcastle,’ he says. ‘They told me, “Oh, we’ll get you a job, no problem, no problem.” But nobody ever did anything.’Long before perma-tanned football agents and TV mega-rights ushered in the age of the multimillionaire player, footballers’ wages were capped – even the game’s biggest names earned barely more than a plumber or electrician. At the time of his death, at the age of 21, he had already played 151 times for United and 18 times for England. I said, “Yes, let’s do it. Let’s go the whole hog.” I wasn’t happy with the way things had gone with my transfer. So the case went to High Court and that broke the retain-and-transfer system.’ His cynicism may prove justified but Colin Collindridge, one of the oldest surviving Football League players, lives here, an invaluable source for my book When Footballers Were Skint given his direct link with professional football’s pioneering days. Occasionally, Matthews would instruct his hitmen to deploy psychological rather than physical retribution.