was a long day. I was up with the sparrows’ fart at a quarter past four, started work at the Co-op at five, where my first job would be to defrost the freezer then arrange the various cuts of meat, sausages, pork pies and what have you on the display counters. Before the store opened the manager would come and inspect my handiwork, and would indicate that everything was in order simply by a single nod of his head. I would then do a variety of jobs around the shop and help out behind the counter until noon, when I collected my wages: the princely sum of £1. 2/6d (£1.12½p). That done, I would head for home, pay Mum my board and lodging and have a bite to eat before setting off to play football. In the evening, I would collect Brenda and we would go off dancing with our friends.
In the event my time with the Colliery Welfare team was short-lived. After twenty or so games I was approached by non-League Worksop Town and, keen to try my hand at a higher level of football, signed for a club where, unbeknown to me, serendipity would shape my future career and life.
For working-class people there was no such thing as fashion in 1952, after all, what could you possibly wear during rationing? We relied on functional clothes, mostly woollen hand-me-downs, previously worn by parents, older siblings or, in many instances, both. In the early fifties a young person’s taste in fashion was dictated by what was least itchy.
If you were a lad in your mid-teens and wanted to appear grown-up and smart, the crowning ambition was to own a suit. They were worn only on special occasions: to church on Sundays, for weddings, funerals, christenings, hot dates and to celebrate a Sheffield United away win. (I’m joking about the latter, but only a little…)
Most adult men owned a suit and the vast majority had been given it by the government when they were ‘demobbed’ from the forces at the end of World War Two. Demob suits, as they were known, were of plain cloth in either dark blue or brown and came in only two sizes – too small or too big.
As was the case with every other lad too young to have served in the war, I didn’t enjoy this dubious distinction. As a lad of sixteen, however, I longed to have a suit of my own and not simply because I wanted to appear smart. It offered real kudos in Laughton Common and the same was true of Sheffield and Rotherham. If you were young and owned a suit, other lads were in awe of you and, more importantly, you found yourself very popular with the girls.
I was still working as a butcher’s assistant at the local Co-op store when I signed as an amateur for Worksop Town. Such was my desire to own a suit that I hit upon the plan to buy one by saving some money from my weekly wage, still just £1. 2/6d, from the Co-op. I reasoned that once I had paid my mum for my board, deducted necessary personal expenses such as train and bus fares to and from Worksop Town for training and matches, ceased going to the cinema once a week, stopped buying fish ’n’ chips on a Friday night, went dancing every third Saturday night and continued to wear an old pair of football boots handed down to me by an uncle rather than buying a new pair, I would have saved enough to buy a suit in five years. Obviously, another way had to be found.
Sheffield FC was formed in 1857 and is the oldest football club in the world, but Worksop Town were only four years behind them. Even when I joined Worksop in 1952, the club had a long history. It was also as broke as the Ten Commandments.
Worksop Town played in the Midland League but, because they ran six teams, were always pleading poverty. The word was, Worksop had been saddled with debt for over thirty years but had somehow managed to struggle on.
In the 1907–08 season, Worksop had reached the first round proper of the FA Cup, the equivalent today of the third round of the competition. The club was drawn away to Chelsea, and though hammered 9–1, it found some consolation in a bountiful share of the revenue from a bumper attendance of 70,184 at Stamford Bridge. The money from the Chelsea game sustained Worksop for nigh on a decade until, once again, the club fell upon hard times.
During 1920 and into 1921 they enjoyed another good run in the FA Cup which resulted in a plum tie away to Tottenham Hotspur. Worksop produced the shock of that season’s competition, a doughty performance earning them a goalless draw and unprecedented headlines in the sports pages of national newspapers. The town was suddenly galvanised. The thought of playing host to mighty Spurs before a record attendance at Central Avenue had even non-football fans excited.
The club directors, rather than keeping one eye on the future, focused exclusively on money. They made a highly controversial decision to concede home advantage and return to White Hart Lane for the replay. According to those around at the time, Worksop stood a chance of beating Spurs on a home pitch that in mid-winter resembled molasses. But there was more chance of hell freezing over than achieving another favourable result at White Hart Lane.
To a man, and woman, the town believed the club’s directors had sacrificed the chance of beating Spurs, thereby earning lasting fame for the town, by opting instead to line their own pockets.
The result of the replay was as emphatic as the fall-out from the decision proved catastrophic. Worksop lost 9–0 before a White Hart Lane crowd of just 12,000 which meant the club’s share of the gate revenue was far less than anticipated. Town councillors and the local press berated the directors for their decision, and the town’s population exacted their revenge by boycotting subsequent matches.
Attendances for matches at Central Avenue plummeted, and once people lost the habit of going along to watch their local team, they never again returned in the numbers they had prior to the Tottenham furore. Thirty-two years on, when I joined the club, Worksop Town were still struggling to make ends meet and were burdened by debt.
The Midland League was semi-professional and its members included the reserve teams of, amongst others, Nottingham Forest, Notts County, Hull City, Rotherham United, Scunthorpe United, Bradford City and Doncaster Rovers as well as crack non-League clubs such as Peterborough United, Corby Town, Boston United, Scarborough and Grantham.
I was a month short of my sixteenth birthday when I joined Worksop in the summer of 1952. I began the 1952–53 season playing in goal for the club’s youth and reserve teams but my performances were such that I soon made the first team. That season we finished six places above bottom club Wisbech Town but won the Sheffield Senior Cup, the club’s first trophy of any significance since winning the same competition way back in 1924.
Every summit marks the brink of an abyss, and two days after the club’s Sheffield Senior Cup success, the club announced an annual loss of £145. It may not appear much by today’s standards, but in 1952 that sum would have covered my wages behind the butcher’s counter at the Co-op for the best part of three years.
In July 1953, as part of Worksop’s pre-season programme, the club organised a friendly at Central Avenue for the youth team against Sheffield United’s youth side. Although I was now Worksop’s recognised first-team goalkeeper, I was still not yet seventeen, so I was delighted when manager Fred Morris selected me to play in goal.
The fact it was the youth team didn’t matter at all. As far as I was concerned, I was playing against Sheffield United, and all their players were heroes to me. United had won the Second Division title the previous season and were preparing for life in the First Division (Premiership equivalent), so to play in this match was a tremendous thrill.
One-way traffic had yet to be introduced to Britain’s road systems, but those present at Worksop Town that night witnessed its football equivalent. I can’t recall much about the game itself but for the fact I was very busy indeed. Apart from having kicked off, I don’t think Worksop managed to venture into Sheffield’s half of the field for the majority of the first half. But, minutes before half-time and against the run of play, we broke out of defence and scored.
The second half mirrored the first. It was like the Alamo as wave after wave of red-and-white striped shirts laid siege to my goal.
