Читать книгу Between the Sticks - Alan Hodgkinson - Страница 8

‘There is a tide in the affairs of man, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune and success.’

Julius Caesar

The letter from the FA told me to report to the England team hotel in Hendon, North London, on the afternoon of Monday 1 April. I recognised, of course, the significance of the date and hoped it would not prove ominous.

Letters from the FA tended to be rather curt, the same being true of those sent to the Scottish lads by their respective Football Association. When Jimmy Greaves was first called up for England, his letter from the FA began, ‘Dear Greaves’. Jimmy simply thought a typist had erroneously omitted the ‘Mr’ part of the letter until, that is, he received his second letter. Jimmy felt the tone of such letters was suggestive of how the FA perceived footballers, as being little more than minions and menials in service. Jimmy saw the tenet and tone of the letters he received from the FA as being like something from the pages of Dickens, so much so, he would always complete the reply slip confirming his availability by writing, ‘Greaves is willing’. At the time, I always wondered if anyone within the FA was familiar with David Copperfield and would have recognised the impish, ironic humour of Jimmy’s replies.

My Sheffield United teammates were delighted for me. To a man they congratulated me on my call-up and wished me good luck. Joe Mercer was also pleased. Joe, of course, had played many times for England. He told me it was like taking medicine – not particularly pleasurable to begin with but much better to stomach the more games you played.

‘You’re working hard at your game and being rewarded for that,’ Joe told me. ‘You’re progressing all the time. Being selected for England is great. I’m pleased for you but, remember, in football the great thing is not where you are at any given time, but in what direction you’re moving. You’re going in the right direction, Alan, just be sure to continue that way.’

Wise words that I have never forgotten.

The press too were fully behind my call-up, which surprised me somewhat given my rise to full international status had been meteoric to say the least. Ted Ditchburn of Spurs had kept goal for England in their previous international, a 5–2 win over Denmark in a World Cup qualifying match that was distinguished by a hat-trick from young Tommy Taylor and two spectacular goals from his Manchester United teammate Duncan Edwards. The success of Taylor and Edwards, along with two other young players, Ronnie Clayton of Blackburn Rovers and Jeff Hall of Birmingham City, perhaps paved the way for my call-up. Three and half years after England had been humiliated by Hungary and, by the same token, English football had been placed in true perspective in global terms, Walter Winterbottom was placing faith in youth. Walter wanted to create England teams in four-year cycles with a view to winning or, at least, doing well in the World Cup. Walter was still hampered by the fact that the England team were chosen by a committee of FA selectors, but ever since Hungary, Walter had exerted his influence over the committee without ever being able to wrench from them selection of the team.

Walter’s first eye-opening experience of the FA International Selection Committee had taken place some weeks after he had been appointed as England’s first full-time manager. Walter’s ‘Road to Damascus’ moment happened in, of all places, the Victoria Station Hotel in Sheffield in 1946. In addition to Walter, also present were the Chairman of the International Selection Committee and eight other members of the FA.

According to Walter, after a ‘very good lunch’, they all sat around the dining table putting forward nominations for each position for Walter’s second game in charge, at home to the Republic of Ireland. There were five players nominated for the position of goalkeeper. The list was reduced by a process of votes until it was down to the final two and a straight majority vote.

Walter was fascinated by the whole rigmarole, and when it was over and Frank Swift (Manchester City) had been selected he asked: ‘How many of the Committee have actually seen these goalkeepers play this season?’

The reply astonished and perplexed Walter: ‘None’.

At the time, selection for the England team was much the same as it had been for decades. Selection was not based on pure ability or merit alone. Quite often a player would be awarded an England cap in recognition of his services to the game. As Walter told me, prior to his first game in charge, against Northern Ireland, one of the selection committee put forward the name of a player adding, ‘It really is time we gave this deserving player a cap, he’s a really good sort.’

It was that sort of attitude that Walter had continually battled against. His frustration intensified in 1950 when Arsenal’s Leslie Compton was selected for an England debut against Wales at the age of 38. Arguing the case for another centre-half who Walter felt truly merited an England call-up, he was told by one committee member, ‘But this Compton, he’s a gentleman through and through, it’s only right we recognise that and give him a chance.’

Water was not in agreement, but the committee had their way as committees tend to do. The FA International Selection Committee was the bane of Walter’s life and every player knew this to be so. Arguably the best summing-up of their worth was made by no less than the great Stanley Matthews who for all his awesome talent had, throughout his lengthy career, suffered more than most from the Quixotic policies of the International Selection Committee.

‘I’ve visited nigh on every country in the world,’ said Stan. ‘In those countries I have walked through numerous cities and in countless parks, and have yet to see a statue to a committee.’

Walter could see the selection system needed to be overhauled rather than simply refined. What helped his cause was his establishment of the England Under-23 team whose remit was to develop players to full international status. Also, Walter managed to persuade the powers that be to use matches involving the Football League XI as a means to honour players with representative appearances. Which left him with the main task to create an England team fit to represent the nation in the World Cup.

In every problem there is a gift. The gift may not immediately make itself known to you, but it is there all the same and, in time, even the most problematic of situations will produce a positive. Such was the case for Walter following England’s heavy defeats by Hungary in 1953. The stark reality that England was no longer a world power in football was hammered home by a brilliant Hungary team. In the wake of England’s first home defeat at Wembley by foreign opposition and the 7–1 thrashing inflicted on them by Hungary in Budapest some months later, it was clearly evident that England, once the masters of world football, were now merely pupils. The double mauling at the hands of Hungary was widely considered to be a disaster at the time; however, in every problem there is a gift. The FA International committee were ‘bewitched, bothered and bewildered’ as to what should be done to re-establish England as a force again in world football, which played into the hands of Walter Winterbottom.

In the wake of the Hungary defeats, Walter slowly but surely managed to exert his influence over the selection committee and, come 1957, had persuaded them to go along with his policy of selecting youth with a view to creating a team capable of doing England proud in the World Cup, the finals of which were to take place the following year in Sweden. Hence the selection of Tommy Taylor, Duncan Edwards, Jeff Hall, Ronnie Clayton and yours truly for England.

Ted Ditchburn was a very good and experienced goalkeeper, likewise Bert Williams of Wolves, both of whom had superseded Gil Merrick of Birmingham City in the England team. Walter, however, wanted to create an England team for the future and so Ted and Bert were, to his mind, the wrong age. I, seemingly, fitted the bill. In truth, I didn’t have a great deal of top-level experience and was, of course, playing Second Division football with Sheffield United. This mattered not one iota to Walter, who saw me as part of his policy of developing an England team that would mature together, and be ready in four years’ time to make an impact in the World Cup. As evidence of this, in addition to myself, Derek Kevan (West Bromwich Albion), Tommy Thompson (Preston North End) and my Sheffield United teammate Colin Grainger were also due to make their England debuts in a team that also included Roger Byrne (Manchester United), Jeff Hall, Ronnie Clayton and the teenage sensation, Duncan Edwards. With over half the team suggesting youth, Walter Winterbottom added a degree of balance and much needed experience at international level by also including skipper Billy Wright (Wolves) and two truly world-class players in Stan Matthews (Blackpool) and Tom Finney (Preston).

The inclusion of Wright, Matthews and Finney not withstanding, it was still a very bold selection on the part of Walter. More to the point, it was testimony to his ability to persuade and cajole the International Selection Committee into supporting his policy of youth with a view to future World Cups. The annual encounter between England and Scotland was still the biggest and most important fixture in the international calendar. Somehow I can’t imagine the England set-up of today selecting, for a game seen as being of vital importance, four debutants and four young players whose collective international appearances did not constitute double figures. Credit to Walter Winterbottom.

The letter from the FA instructed me to report to the Hendon Hall Hotel at 5pm on the Monday preceding the game on Saturday 6 April. Players made their own way to and from international matches so I simply booked a return train ticket from Sheffield to St Pancras. Today the notion of players making their own way to and from international games on public transport is unthinkable. When the England team returned from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, for example, a fleet of Mercedes cars awaited them at Heathrow, one for each player in the squad, which then duly took them to their respective homes. In 1957 it was very different. On arrival in London I, along with all the other England players from provincial clubs, travelled to Hendon on the Tube. The FA letter informed me to send my ‘second-class’ rail and London Underground ticket to their finance office and I would be ‘reimbursed in due course provided travel expenses were deemed appropriate’.

A couple of days after having received my dream letter from the FA, I received another important-looking piece of correspondence in the post. On opening the envelope I discovered a letter from the Chamber of the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, together with a card bearing the city crest and detailing an invitation in faultless copper-plate handwriting. The letter bestowed upon me (their words not mine) the ‘hearty congratulations and best wishes’ of the Lord and Lady Mayoress of Sheffield on my selection for the England football team. Seemingly the city’s councillors were also delighted for me. The invitation informed me I had been invited to partake of coffee with the Mayor and Lady Mayoress at 9.30am on the morning of Monday 1 April, the day I was due to travel down to London to meet up with the England squad. The invitation went on to say following coffee, the Mayor and Lady Mayoress had organised a special occasion to celebrate my England selection at which they would be delighted should I also be able to attend.

Working on the principle it would not be much of a celebration of my England selection should I not attend and, after enquiring at the City’s Town Hall how long my presence would be required and being told ‘no more than an hour’, I worked out I would still have enough time to catch my train to London. I found the Basildon Bond letter paper in the sideboard and duly penned a reply saying I would be delighted to accept their kind invitation, perplexed as to what the ‘special occasion’ would actually entail.

There was only one worry. The invitation informed me I would be partaking of coffee with the Mayor and his wife. I am not particularly fussy when it comes to food or beverages but the only drink I have never taken to is coffee. I had never met any dignitaries before. As far as I was concerned the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Sheffield had the status of Earls or Baronets; to my mind, they inhabited a world far removed from my experience. I hoped my dislike of coffee would not produce a social faux pas, one that would cause embarrassment to both parties. I posted my acceptance praying tea would also be available.

It was one of those shooting-green mornings you get in early April. The wretched winter weather was over. The hills in the distance had taken on the look of verdant green. The cherry blossoms were in bloom and the gents’ outfitters that sold worsted overcoats and Burberry macs were advertising their annual sales. At the time I had a suit for every day of the week and I was wearing it when I presented myself at the Lord Mayor’s Chamber.

The Chamber was set deep within the ambitious gesture of the Victorians that is the Sheffield Town Hall and Civic Offices, where some elected and unelected folk had worked unstintingly to the benefit of the city, whilst others had been known to walk around its maze of corridors without making any more progress than a maggot in a fisherman’s bait box. I was escorted to a large wooden double door that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Hampton Court in terms of age or size. When one half of it opened, I stepped into a large, square, cool room that had all the restful atmosphere of an old Methodist chapel and something of the same smell. Dotted about the room were heavy carved chairs with plush red-cushioned seats; a large dark oak table that looked as if it could comfortably sit sixty for dinner and some; while on wood-panelled walls hung oil paintings of past Mayors in ceremonial robes draped with gold chain, their faces sporting thin white moustaches. On the far wall to my right, a landscape oil of Sheffield viewed from a hill recorded an elevated view of the city just as the Industrial Revolution was seemingly getting under way. On the left, a stained glass window about the size of a tennis court shed every colour of the prism dancing across floorboards you could have skated across in stockinged feet. It was an old musty, fusty, narrow-minded room, as quiet as a minister’s study, the sort of room that didn’t look as if anyone ever worked in it or would ever want to.

The Mayor was a small, round, avuncular man with a cheery face and voice to match. He seemed to be of friendly and humorous disposition, but something about him suggested to me he’d held a lot of noses to the grindstone in his time. The Lady Mayoress was taller, larger, with a rotund face covered in sufficient make-up to keep Max Factor’s profits ticking over nicely and chins that lay on top of one another like slices of processed cheese. She had blue-rinse hair set in a ruthless perm and her eyelashes were twin miracles of mascara. When she welcomed me her voice had a blustering, hard quality to it and sounded as if it would never tolerate any nonsense.

Introductions over, a woman dressed in a blue overall entered the room pushing a metal trolley containing cups and saucers, a pot of coffee and all the usual trappings that go with the drinking of coffee. There was no tea.

I gingerly sipped miniscule amounts of coffee as we passed a pleasant enough fifteen minutes. I was told His Worship and his wife saw my selection as a ‘feather in the cap for the city’. For my part I informed them I felt it a great honour to be selected to represent my country and would do my very best not let down the good folk of Sheffield. As the minutes ticked by like hours I fielded questions about Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, players I had yet to meet, whilst the Lord Mayor said he would offer me a cigarette as he ‘liked the occasional one’, only they brought on the asthma of his good lady wife. I put him at ease by thanking him and saying I didn’t smoke anyway. He looked a tad disappointed.

I’d managed to decrease the coffee in my cup a couple of millimetres when the doors to Ben Hur’s temple opened again and a tall, thin, silver-haired man of around sixty entered and informed His Worship the car was ready. The Lady Mayoress snorted and said she hoped it wasn’t the Daimler as she had ridden in it before and it had brought on her asthma. The old boy with the silver hair bowed about a centimetre. He didn’t scowl but he looked about as happy as a man in a starched collar ever looks.

‘Well, Mr Odgkinsun, shall we depart to our, ehm, special hoe-casion, to celebrate your Hinternational status?’ said the Mayor, and he duly extended a chubby little hand in the direction of the towering doors.

The Lady Mayoress’s asthma was spared. It wasn’t the Daimler. An old black Rolls Royce with headlamps the size of Royal Doulton dinner plates awaited us. On seeing us descending the Town Hall steps the driver leapt out of the car, scuttled around to the pavement side and opened the rear door. I followed the Lady Mayoress on to a cool, leather back seat and sat feeling very self-conscious between the pair of them. The driver closed the door of the Rolls Royce as if he were closing the lid of a jewellery box. That done, he returned to his own seat for a journey that lasted all of four hundred yards.

We drew up outside the Odeon cinema. It would have been as quick to walk and would have made more sense to do so. As we ascended the steps of the Odeon I thought, ‘This is going to be some occasion.’ The Odeon seated 1,500 people and though I did not expect the auditorium to be anywhere near full to capacity, for the ‘special occasion’ to be held in such a vast hall I imagined a decent crowd of the great and good of the city to be present. The cinema manager and a young usherette welcomed us with no less reverence than if they had been welcoming the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon’s pied à terre. We three followed in their footsteps, up the carpeted stairs towards the main auditorium, in so doing, I ran through my mind a few words of gratitude should I be called upon to speak, which I was certain I would be.

On reaching doors leading to the auditorium stalls, the cinema manager and usherette stood to either side, extended a hand and swung the doors open as if beckoning us to enter another dimension.

‘After you, Mr ’Odgkinson, tis your special day,’ intoned the Mayor.

I checked my tie was straight, took a deep intake of breath and strode into the vastness of the Odeon cinema auditorium. The sight that greeted me turned the shape of my mouth into an O. The place was completely and utterly deserted.

I was so taken aback I stopped dead in my tracks, but the genial Mayor extended a chubby hand again and indicated I should carry on walking down the aisle. When we reached a point about halfway, the chubby hand got to work again, pointing to a row of seats.

‘I think about ’ere will do very nicely.’

The three of us parked ourselves in the middle of a row of seats and with the cinema lights still up, his Worship the Mayor revealed to me the purpose of our visit.

‘My good lady and I wanted to mark your selection for the England football team by doing something special for you,’ said the Mayor with not a little enthusiasm, ‘but what could be done to honour one of our own sons of the city on such an horse-spicous hoe-cassion as playing for ’is country? What form could this special occasion take?’

Before I could mount a guess, he told me.

‘We ’ave arranged for you to see, with us, a film of Saturday’s Grand National ’orse race. Now what about that? Surprised?’

I certainly was. I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d suddenly produced evidence that proved Elvis Presley was the illegitimate son of Mother Teresa. In truth, I had no idea as to what the ‘special occasion’ to celebrate my England call-up would entail but, should I have been asked to guess, watching a film of the previous Saturday’s Grand National would have been pretty low on the list.

The cinema lights dimmed, the big screen flickered into life and I found myself watching horses and riders in the Aintree parade ring. I settled back in my chair, crossed my legs and hoped that the action wouldn’t bring on her Ladyship’s asthma.

Little over twelve minutes later we were bidding our farewells. Once again the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress wished me luck, reiterating my selection had helped put Sheffield ‘on the map’ and said they would be in touch on my return to hear all about my big day. I thanked them for their hospitality, and the coffee, picked up my grip bag and headed for Sheffield Midland station. I never did hear from them again.

Of all the ceremonies and situations my football career has presented me with, sitting in a deserted cinema at ten on a Monday morning watching a re-run of the Grand National is, without doubt, the most bizarre. I did, however, appreciate the time and trouble taken by His Worship and his good lady and I did, in a curious way, feel honoured to have been invited to what they obviously saw as a rare treat. Even in 1957, the number of homes in the UK which possessed a television set was in the minority, at the time Mum and Dad didn’t own one, so it was somewhat of a treat to see a major sporting occasion as opposed to hearing it on radio or reading about it in my newspaper.