Banksy (41 page)

I took all the ribbing from the Scottish lads in good heart. They were worthy winners on the day and deserved to savour their moment of triumph. It was a great time to be a Scottish football supporter, for while their victory over England did not make them the official world champions, two months later Celtic became the first British team to be crowned European champions following their superb victory over Internazionale in Lisbon. The balance of power in the football world seemed firmly to lie in Great Britain.

As the England team coach left Wembley, our police motorcycle escort had to pull up at a crossroads. There was a pub on one corner and outside were hundreds of Scottish supporters toasting their team’s victory. They saw our coach and, perhaps befuddled by copious amounts of alcohol, at first took us for the Scotland team. Glasses were raised and bonnets thrown into the air. There were cries of ‘Well done!’ and ‘Great performance!’
Alan Ball stood up to acknowledge their good wishes and suddenly it dawned on them who we were. I’d never seen Alan Ball move so quickly. Pint glasses, pies and bottles crashed against the side of the coach. Our driver, throwing caution to the wind, put his foot down and shot across those crossroads with a bevy of tartan-clad supporters in hot pursuit. I was left trying not to think about their reaction if England had won.

Between 1968 and 1970 Tony Waddington slowly but surely turned Stoke City from a middling First Division side into one capable of challenging for silverware.

Tony had taken over as manager in 1960 when Stoke were poorly placed in the Second Division and pulling crowds of around 9,000. His success was built on a strategy of blending youth and experience, a philosophy he adhered to throughout his seventeen-year spell as manager of the club.

The Stoke City side of the late sixties was very much in the Waddington mould. Players such as Jackie Marsh, Alan Bloor, Eric Skeels, Tony Allen, Mike Pejic, Bill Bentley and Denis Smith were all products of Stoke’s successful youth policy. The experience of the home-grown players was backed by a number of seasoned professionals of quality whom Tony had signed for modest fees.

Tony Waddington had the knack of persuading good players who were coming to the end of their careers that they had two or three more years at the top when their respective clubs thought otherwise. By and large he was right. Grateful for a few more years in top-flight football, the experienced pros Tony signed rarely let him down. He wasn’t the most technically minded of managers, nor the most adept at tactics, but he didn’t have to be. Good, experienced players don’t need to be told what to do in a game. They know.

Full back Alex Elder had won a Championship medal and played in an FA Cup final for Burnley as well as winning forty caps for Northern Ireland. Willie Stevenson had won both the
League Championship and FA Cup with Liverpool. I had been in the same England Under-23 team as Peter Dobing who, in addition to a spell at Manchester City, had played for Blackburn Rovers in the 1960 FA Cup final. Both Maurice Setters and David Herd had bags of First Division experience under their belts and had been in the Manchester United side that had beaten Leicester City in the 1963 Cup final. Roy Vernon (Blackburn and Everton) and Harry Burrows (Aston Villa) were also seasoned First Division players.

And then there was George Eastham. George was an exceptionally gifted player from the traditional school of inside forwards. He scored a lot of goals and also created a lot for his colleagues. George was what we used to call a ‘schemer’, a highly creative player with superb vision who was able to pass the ball inch-perfectly. His first club had been Newcastle United. From there he moved on to Arsenal, doing exceptionally well at Highbury where his performances won him a place in the England team. (He was, of course, a member of the England squad of ’66.)

To fine-tune the team, and provide balance between youth and experience, Stoke had Terry Conroy. Terry was a Republic of Ireland international. Naturally two-footed, he possessed incredible stamina, lightning pace and one of the best body swerves I ever saw. As Jackie Marsh once remarked after seeing Terry execute a sublime dummy on Arsenal’s Ian Ure, ‘TC, you not only sent Urey the wrong way, the crowd on that side of the ground had to pay again to get back in.’

The camaraderie in the Stoke dressing room was fantastic and with so many players who ‘knew their way around’, hardly a day went by without me splitting my sides with laughter at the antics and comments of my team mates. Sometimes the joke was well and truly on me.

When Stoke were in London once for a game against Chelsea, Terry Conroy, Jackie Marsh, George Eastham and I decided to kill time on the morning of the match by going for a walk around
the streets near our hotel. Before long Terry spotted a pavement artist and we strolled over to view his work, which turned out to be an amazing series of chalk drawings of the heads of the England team that had won the World Cup. We gazed down at a drawing of a bald head over which a few lines of yellow chalk had been scratched to indicate strands of hair.

‘It’s Bobby Charlton,’ said Terry, convulsing with laughter.

Another paving stone showed another balding head, this time with black chalk hair. The mouth was a black circle with two white rectangles on either side of the circle to indicate teeth. Above the mouth were two large white circles of chalk, each boasting a brown dot in the middle for eyes.

‘Nobby Stiles. Brilliant!’ said Terry, warming to this artwork of the most primitive type.

We shuffled along the line of crude drawings with Terry, Jackie and George howling with laughter at each one. Eventually we came to a paving stone that showed a face with a crooked nose and a gormless expression surmounted by a manic scribble of black hair.

‘Who’s this supposed to be?’ I asked.

‘Gordon Banks,’ said the artist proudly.

That did it for Terry. He collapsed to his knees. Tears streamed from his eyes and he beat the pavement with his fists and howled. Jackie Marsh and George Eastham clutched their stomachs with their hands in a vain attempt to calm themselves, and slid down the wrought-iron railings they had been leaning on for support.

When I saw them there, helpless with laughter, I had no choice but to join in.

One of the prerequisites of being a good team player is the ability to take a joke. If you can’t have a good laugh at yourself, you’re in trouble. A football changing room is a testosterone-driven man’s world. Out there on the pitch you have to know how to dish it out and how to take it. The same is true of the dressing room. If a team mate cracks a joke at your expense, or plays a prank on you, the worst thing you can do is take it
seriously. A petulant reaction only invites more gibes and jokes at your expense. The best way to deal with it is to see it as a test of character. If you’re the sort of player who takes exception to jokes at your expense, team mates will see that as a flaw in your character. The way footballers see it, if you’re too sensitive to take a bit of playful ribbing, you’re not the sort of player they can depend on to roll your sleeves up and battle when the going gets tough on the pitch. Wallflowers are biennials, but their life expectancy in a football dressing room is much shorter.

You have to take the stick from your team mates and the knocks from the opposition. As a goalkeeper, I experienced plenty of the latter. In the sixties every First Division club seemed to have a barnstorming centre forward whose first job would be to test the mettle of the opposing goalkeeper. With their first attack, the opposition would cross the ball into the penalty box and their number 9 would try to clatter me. You had to be up for that; it was part and parcel of the job at the time. Only if you gave as good as you got, or simply demonstrated that you were able to cope with such robust challenges, could you win the mind games.

There was a game in 1969 against Sunderland, however, when I definitely came off second best, though the injury I received was accidental and came late in the game. Terry Conroy had given us the lead at Roker Park and we looked comfortable for both points. There were only fifteen minutes of the game remaining when Sunderland’s Gordon Harris split our defence with a through ball. Sunderland’s young centre forward, Malcolm Moore, gave chase and I came quickly off my line. It was touch and go who would reach the ball first, but I was determined that it would be me.

As Moore advanced into the penalty area I came out and dived at his feet to collect the ball. Unfortunately Moore’s momentum carried him on. As he slid forward in a last-ditch attempt to get a toe to the ball, his knee whacked against my forehead and everything went black.

The next thing I remember is being prostrate on the ground with a knot of players watching as the Stoke trainer Frank Mountford wafted smelling salts under my nose. I momentarily regained consciousness and told him I was going to be all right, but Frank wasn’t so sure. He called for a stretcher and I lay there listening to my team mates debating what best to do. Then Peter Dobing asked who could play in goal.

David Herd immediately rallied to the call. ‘Me. I can play in goal,’ said Herdy, with not a little confidence.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Peter. ‘There’s a quarter of an hour left –’

‘Give me Gordon’s top,’ said Herdy. ‘I tell you, this lot won’t put a single goal past me.’ Peter looked at Jackie Marsh and Alex Elder who shrugged their shoulders to indicate it was worth a try.

I vaguely remember Frank Mountford asking Eric Skeels to help him remove my goalkeeping jersey, then everything went black again.

I woke up in Sunderland General Hospital. The first person I saw was a nurse who said I was suffering from acute concussion. It took some time to gather full consciousness and when I did, I noticed Frank Mountford sitting at the end of my bed. He asked me how I was feeling. I told him I just wanted to go home.

‘How’d we get on?’ I asked. ‘Herdy said they wouldn’t put a single goal past him. Was he as good as his word?’

‘He was,’ said Frank as he gathered my clothes together. ‘They didn’t score a single goal. They scored four!’

Goalkeeping. It isn’t as easy as it looks.

In addition to physical strength you need mental toughness to be a goalkeeper. It’s no good performing heroics for eighty-nine minutes to keep the opposition at bay, only to lose concentration for a moment and let in a soft goal. Luck is part of the goalkeeper’s lot and you have to be strong enough in character to accept it and override the bitter disappointment you feel when you are the victim of bad luck and poor decisions.

Every time I took to the pitch I hoped that all my hard work would not be ruined by a bad decision on the part of an official, or some bad luck. Of course, these things do happen many times over the years and often either of these factors cost me a goal and thus my team the points. I even remember one match when a controversial decision and bad luck combined.

In 1973 Stoke City were riding high when we went to Anfield. Liverpool were in a great run of form and no team relished playing them on their home turf where they rarely lost. The game was a thriller. We worked hard for each other and deserved the lead Jimmy Greenhoff gave us with a well-timed header just after the half hour. Roared on by the Kop, Liverpool laid siege to my goal, but for all their dominance had only an equalizer from Emlyn Hughes to show for their efforts.

The Liverpool players had been taken to the very limits of their skill and stamina by a Stoke City side whose commitment was absolute. A draw at Anfield in those days was considered a great achievement for a visiting team and I thought we deserved nothing less, but events in injury time conspired to deny us what was rightfully ours.

With only seconds remaining Jackie Marsh clipped the heels of Liverpool’s Ian Callaghan. Callaghan, though off balance, carried on with the ball at his feet for a couple of yards. The referee Roger Kirkpatrick waved play on, but when Callaghan stumbled and went to ground, he brought the play back and gave Liverpool a free kick just outside our penalty area on my right-hand side.

We thought it was a bad decision but didn’t protest. Callaghan hammered the free kick into a very congested penalty area. The ball was deflected by Eric Skeels and I quickly adjusted my positioning to get in line with the flight of the ball, only for it to take another slight deflection off the calf of Kevin Keegan and into the net. This was more like pinball than football. At the restart Jimmy Greenhoff only tapped the ball to Geoff Hurst when Mr Kirkpatrick blew for time.

After pulling out all the stops for the best part of the game, a highly controversial refereeing decision and two cruel deflections all in the last thirty seconds meant I came off that pitch on the losing side.

Football can be a very cruel game, especially for a goalkeeper. When a week of hard work and preparation goes down the pan in a moment entirely beyond your control, it’s devastating. But I found it best not to think too much about it. To dwell on bad luck and poor refereeing has a detrimental effect on your mental attitude. If you’re not careful, you think fate has it in for you and wallow in self pity. Far better to simply accept such things as part and parcel of the game, and find consolation in the fact that over time these things tend to be cancelled out by an equal number of favourable events. All you can do is not dwell on the last game, but look forward to the next one. Stay assertive and positive and you won’t go far wrong.

Having been at the club for a number of years, the products of Stoke City’s youth policy such as Alan Bloor, Eric Skeels and Denis Smith brought continuity and stability to the team. On the other hand, Tony Waddington’s policy of signing experienced pros capable of playing two more years at the top, also saw a gradual but steady turnover of players.

This curious mixture of stability and transience enabled Stoke to survive quite comfortably in Division One without ever threatening the elite band of clubs challenging for honours. But all that was to change in 1970.

At the start of the new decade the Stoke team had a much more settled look about it. The home-grown talent had matured in experience and blossomed; many of the ageing players had moved on, and though George Eastham and Harry Burrows were both in their thirties, they were still good for a few years yet. Tony was still signing experienced pros, but in Jimmy Greenhoff and John Ritchie there was a crucial difference. They were both experienced First Division players but, unlike David
Herd and Roy Vernon, they were not near the end of their careers. They were in their prime.