Banksy (18 page)

The maximum wage, it has to be said, enabled clubs in towns of medium size, such as Huddersfield, Bolton, Preston, Blackpool and Blackburn, to do well. In arguing this, the League had a point – one only has to look at the top half of a First Division table in the fifties compared to the Premiership today. This was one of the few positive aspects of the maximum wage.

Football goes in cycles and while the so-called smaller clubs of provincial towns such as Huddersfield and Stoke have been absent from the top flight for quite a number of years, the recent resurgence of clubs such as Burnley, Wolves and Preston is heartening. Indeed, just look at the recent presence in the Premiership of smaller-town clubs such as Coventry City, Ipswich Town, Southampton, Derby County, Swindon Town, Barnsley and, dare I say it, Leicester City. These examples shoot holes in the main argument of the Football League at the time, that should the maximum wage be abolished, it would mean an end to smaller clubs from the provinces gracing top-flight football.

Freedom of contract came about through a test case in the courts when the PFA helped Arsenal’s George Eastham, former England Under-23 team mate of mine, to take his former club, Newcastle United, to court on a charge of restraint of trade in refusing him a transfer. George and the PFA won their day in court. Football, and the lot of a footballer, was to change irrevocably.

The highly paid Premiership players of today owe a debt of thanks to the players of 1961 and in particular to Jimmy Hill and Cliff Lloyd who took on the Football League and won the right for footballers to be paid a wage more in keeping with their worth to a club. Jimmy, in his day a fine wing half at Fulham and the manager who began the renaissance of Coventry City, toured the country in his role as chairman of the PFA. He held meetings for players where we aired our grievances about the
maximum wage and discussed how to get it abolished. On both the abolition of the maximum wage and freedom of contract, the Football League appeared intransigent. However, by January 1961, facing the prospect of strike action and with their own lawyers intimating that, legally, they didn’t have a case, the Football League capitulated.

The Football League had been hoping that because the very nature of a footballer’s job involved us being in opposition with one another, we couldn’t form a united front against the maximum wage and the ‘slavery contract’. It was a misplaced belief. The players encompassed all three of the major political parties, but, by and large, we soon became united in our opposition to what we believed was a violation of our labour rights.

Arguably the most significant meeting took place in December 1960 in Manchester. The northern-based players, almost exclusively from working-class backgrounds, were well aware of the hardships endured in the factory or down the pit and the fact that, in general terms, we earned more than the average working person. Shouldn’t we be content with that? A footballer, however, could do the job of a miner – but could the miner do the footballer’s job?

Then came a crucial contribution from the legendary Stanley Matthews. Some thought that, because he was better off than the vast majority of players thanks to his endorsement deals, he wouldn’t commit himself to our cause. They were wrong. Stan was not the best public speaker, but he was well read and a known lover of art. When he did speak, he chose his words carefully and wisely. As he got to his feet that day he commanded the rapt attention of everyone in the room.

Next to hard, honest, skilful and creative work, is the appreciation of it, and you, brothers, are not receiving the financial appreciation your endeavours deserve. I pledge my full support to you all, and, in particular to Mr Hill and Mr Lloyd. They will guide us to success, because the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

That sealed it. It took Stan Matthews but thirty seconds to say his piece, at the end of which every player was united in the cause. And in the end, faced with player solidarity which they hadn’t anticipated, the League backed down.

The lifting of the maximum wage had no immediate effect on my earnings, as I was still contracted to Leicester at £20 a week. One player who did immediately benefit was Johnny Haynes, the captain of Fulham and England. The Fulham chairman, the comedian and TV personality Tommy Trinder, had gone on record as saying that, should the maximum wage ever be lifted, he would be happy to pay Johnny £100 a week. Three days after the maximum wage was abolished and with Johnny – advised by Bagenal Harvey, the first football agent in England – ready to negotiate a new contract at Fulham, Haynes reminded Trinder of what he had said. There was no get-out clause. Johnny became Britain’s first £100 a week footballer.

Johnny’s leap in wages had a knock-on effect at Fulham. Tommy Trinder was forever telling centre forward Maurice Cook that he was only half the player Johnny Haynes was. When his contract was up for renegotiation he was offered £35 a week.

‘You’re always telling me I’m only half the player Johnny Haynes is,’ said Maurice.

‘You are,’ said Trinder.

‘In that case, I deserve fifty quid a week.’ He got it.

Not every player saw a huge increase in their wages, even when the time came for a new contract. One of the first Leicester players to renew his contract following the abolition of the maximum wage was Richie Norman. Everyone was eager to know what Richie had managed to negotiate with Matt Gillies.

‘Say hello to Leicester’s first three-figure-a-week footballer,’ said Richie on entering the dressing room.

Everyone was slack jawed. Jimmy Walsh asked Richie what his new wage was to be.

‘Thirty pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence,’ replied Richie.

Matt Gillies was particularly difficult to negotiate with where
wages were concerned and treated the club’s money as if it were his own. There were no agents or financial advisers, so we players had to renegotiate our contracts and terms ourselves. I was never comfortable doing this with Matt. Rather than suggest an amount of money, even as a starting point, Matt always asked how much I wanted. I always found it difficult to come up with a sum that would be acceptable to the club, yet would pay me what I believed I was worth. Some players would suggest a sum that was way over the top and when taken to task about it would simply reply along the lines of, ‘I’m a top player. My contribution to the team is invaluable, now are you going to pay me what I’m worth, or something like it? Because if you don’t, I know plenty of clubs who will.’

I never had it in me to blow my own trumpet. Matt knew this and often took advantage of it. As an improving player, I always asked for more money than my previous contract paid me, but never outrageously more. Whatever I suggested by way of a wage, Matt would pull a face, sigh, then say: ‘I’d love to pay you that, Gordon, believe me I would. But the refurbishment of the main stand has cost this club a lot of money. As well you know, we’ve also spent a lot on the training ground, so that you players can enjoy much better facilities at training. Attendances are up, but so too is the level of entertainment tax the club pays. Travel costs to away games are spiralling and we’re even having to cut back on how many apprentices we can afford to take on …’

After ten minutes of Matt’s excuses I’d feel so bad about asking for a rise I was almost ready to turn out for nothing.

Ultimately I always did receive improved terms at contract time, but never anything like I had hoped for. Johnny Haynes in earning £100 a week in 1961 was an exception, but even First Division players not deemed to be of international standard, such as Maurice Cook, were earning £50 a week. In 1961–62 the Spurs players were earning between £70 and £85 a week. The most I ever earned at Leicester was £60 a week in 1966,
when I was England’s first-choice goalkeeper. I should imagine England’s current number 1 is glad he wasn’t born thirty years earlier.

Just about every player today has an agent, even at youth-team level. Johnny Haynes was not only the first £100 a week footballer in England, but also the first in my time as a player to have an agent. Johnny’s agent was Bagenal Harvey, an Irishman who was no stranger to the role. Though the role of Johnny’s agent was unlike that of many of today’s players’ representatives.

In the late 1940s Harvey was a pal of the great Denis Compton who played football for Arsenal, was even better known as a cricketer with Middlesex and represented England at both sports. In the immediate post-war years Denis used to receive a considerable amount of fan mail. Being a dual sportsman and a man who, shall I say, led a full social life, Denis simply didn’t have the time to reply to all his fan mail and asked his pal, Bagenal Harvey, to help out. When Harvey saw the sheer volume of letters written to Denis he realized straight away that, in addition to his sporting talents, Denis had considerable commercial appeal.

Harvey knew the marketing manager of a company called County Perfumery, based in Stanmore, Middlesex. While the name of this company was not well known, one of its products, Brylcreem, a hairdressing cream for men, was a massive seller nationwide. Men being demobbed from the services were known as the Brylcreem Boys; free from the constraints of service life, men wanted to appear fashionable and smart on civvy street and Brylcreem was seen as the perfect way to maintain their hairstyle throughout the day.

Harvey persuaded County Perfumery that Denis Compton would be the ideal front man for their product – he was stylish, fashionable, a great all-round sportsman and a celebrated ‘ladies’ man’. In short, the exact image the company wanted for Brylcreem.

Denis was paid handsomely for promoting Brylcreem, though
that was the extent of Bagenal Harvey’s involvement as his agent. Denis Compton was soon seen on hoardings across the country and in countless newspaper and magazine advertisements. Interestingly, for someone more famed for his exploits on the cricket field, Compton appeared in football kit, though the strip he wore in the advertisements bore no resemblance to that of either Arsenal or England. The Arsenal directors and the Football Association wouldn’t allow their respective strips to be ‘degraded for commercial purposes’!

In the late fifties Denis came towards the end of his career as a sportsman so County Perfumery had to look elsewhere for a readily recognizable face to promote Brylcreem. As Johnny Haynes was the rising star of English football Harvey contacted him with a view to becoming the new Brylcreem Boy.

Johnny took over the role from Compton and appointed Bagenal Harvey as his agent, though at no time was Harvey ever involved in discussions with Fulham regarding Johnny’s contract and wages. Johnny Haynes, as we have seen, was eminently capable of dealing with that himself.

The issue of players’ wages and Johnny Haynes’s appointment of an agent to represent him were major topics of debate in 1960. Over forty years on, the subject of players’ wages and the role of agents is still high on the debating agenda. There is a body of opinion that the players of today and their representatives wield too much power over clubs. Some feel that while the maximum wage was undoubtedly wrong and an infringement of not only working but human rights, now things have gone too far the other way. That wage demands are crippling many clubs and have a detrimental effect on football in general.

When ITV Digital was placed into receivership in 2002, many smaller clubs, dependent on the money from TV rights, feared for their future. Between 1991 and 2001 the money football clubs received from TV increased sixfold but in that time players’ wages rose by the same amount. The collapse of ITV Digital and the subsequent worry that the money promised to clubs would
not be forthcoming, signalled the end of football’s decade-long financial boom.

The top players will continue to earn fabulous sums of money, basically because the likes of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Michael Owen, like Denis Compton in 1947 and Johnny Haynes in the late fifties, have considerable commercial potential. David Beckham wouldn’t be at Manchester United and captain of England unless he was a great player and he wouldn’t have such great commercial potential unless he was with United and England skipper. His contribution to the United team is considerable, but so too is his importance to the club’s commercial arm. Manchester United were reported to have sold over a million replica shirts in 2001 in Japan alone, many of them bearing the name of Beckham on the back. Beckham and other top players today are paid not only for what they contribute to the club on the pitch, but also for what their image means to commercial sales.

Just as the top players and their agents have driven up wages astronomically, so the less exalted players around them have seen their earnings increase proportionately. This has led to a wages spiral throughout the Premiership and on down through the Football League, even into the Vauxhall Conference, as clubs are prepared to pay whatever it cost to attract stars to help get them promotion and concomitant higher TV revenues which were designed to fund the whole operation. It has become a vicious circle because the increased wages were largely financed by money received from TV. Now that television is reassessing the money it pays for the rights to broadcast football, we have gone full circle. Some pundits are now calling for wage restraint, even a cap on how much a player may be allowed to earn from his club – a situation not dissimilar to that which existed in football prior to the abolition of the maximum wage.

Of course, some say football clubs would not be in the situation in which they now find themselves, if the PFA and its members had not succeeded in the campaign against the maximum wage
back in 1961. That, to my mind, is too simplistic a view. My fellow professionals and I were right to take on the Football League over the maximum wage and the so-called ‘slavery contract’. That club directors, players and their agents have, in the intervening years, not always exercised common sense in matters of money is hardly the fault of those who successfully campaigned to have the basic labour rights enjoyed by every other profession in Great Britain.