Between the Sticks. Alan Hodgkinson
to go to Bramall Lane. I was an amateur player but, according to my pal, Sheffield United had offered Worksop a fee of £250 for me. That was a huge amount of money, enough to erase the recent annual loss with enough left over to put a welcome hundred quid into the club’s coffers.
When I reported for evening training I was again summoned to Fred’s anticlinal office, where once again I informed him and the two stooping directors that I felt I wasn’t good enough for professional football at any level, let alone with a First Division club.
‘They think you are,’ said Fred, ‘and the fact that a club the stature of Sheffield United think you are good enough, should be good enough for you.’
I hadn’t thought of that. It got me thinking.
The conversation continued and I began to hover. Sensing I was having second thoughts, Fred then played his ace.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘You know that United have offered £250 for you. You’re an amateur so we can’t make a payment to you, but, if you sign for them, as a sort of signing-on fee from us, Worksop will buy you a brand new suit out of the fee we receive.’
‘A suit?’ I repeated, feeling my heart flutter and my eyes widen as I said the words.
‘A brand new suit, from a proper tailor?’
‘None of that demob stuff,’ said Fred, ‘one that’ll fit you like bark on a tree.’
This time I was aware of his eyes widening.
I started to reason that if Sheffield United felt I had the kind of talent as a goalkeeper they could possibly develop, the least I could do was to respect their view and let them try. I saw for the first time this was indeed a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ and, should things not work out for me, I could always get a job on a building site. Sheffield had been heavily bombed during the war and the city had implemented a massive re-building programme. Jobs in the building trade were plentiful. Should United release me, I was still young enough to learn a trade and, of course, I could always return to non-League football.
All these thoughts ran through my mind as I stooped in contemplation in Fred’s office, but it was the promise of the suit that swung it.
As my hand hovered over the signing-on form, I re-affirmed with Fred that Worksop would buy me the suit I craved.
‘Made to measure, from a bespoke tailor,’ confirmed Fred. ‘The best that money can buy, well, from round here at any rate.’
That was good enough for me. I put pen to paper and signed for Sheffield United.
Fred reached into a drawer of his desk and threw a cloth tape measure to one of the directors.
‘Arms out,’ said the director.
With my face beaming I thrust out both arms and the director ran the tape along one of them.
‘We’ll send all your measurements to the tailor. It’ll be a suit fit for a king,’ Fred boasted, his face now a mixture of relief and joy.
That is how my career in professional football began
Sixty years on, I’m still waiting for the suit.
* * *
I wasn’t quite done with the butchery business, though, because I began my career at Sheffield United as an amateur. I trained at Bramall Lane twice a week, on a Tuesday and Thursday night, in the company of some fourteen other amateur players and a few semi-professionals. I had, of course, been to Bramall Lane before but only as a spectator, not only for football, but also to watch cricket, as the ground hosted both Sheffield and Yorkshire County Championship games. The first evening I turned up for training my body was wracked with a mixture of awe, excitement and nerves.
It was still the summer. In 1953 the steel and building industries and their affiliated businesses were working around the clock to rebuild not only the city but the nation, so there was as much work going on in the evening as there was during the day. As I walked from the bus station to Bramall Lane, tramcars clattered along cobbled streets and hissed like ganders as they stopped to pick up passengers. The ugly fingers of soot-blackened chimneys forever pointing at the sky belched great fugs of yellowy-brown smoke into the atmosphere. Though evening, there was the bustle of a city whose industry lived cheek by jowl with the homes of its work-force. Not far off I could hear the sound of a thousand hammers echoing in cavernous corrugated-iron-roofed factories. The fiendish chatter of electric riveters. The sudden squeal of tortured metal. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse inside a partly open door and see a shower of sparks followed by great plumes of grey smoke. In the air an acrid mix of fired coal, sulphur-tainted steam and human sweat fought for ascendency with the yeasty odour of the nearby Wards’ brewery. Amidst all this stood Bramall Lane, where many of the folk who sweated for little reward would escape to on a Saturday afternoon in the hope of inhabiting, for ninety minutes at least, a better world.
Sheffield United and, yes, Sheffield Wednesday too, provided the workers of the city with conflict and art. On the terraces, the smelter or foundry man was turned into a critic. Happy in his judgement of the finer points of what Tony Waddington would later refer to as ‘the working man’s ballet’. Ready to analyse a defensive formation; to estimate the worth of a slide-rule cross-field pass; a mesmerising dribble down the touchline, a bullet header or a crunching tackle. I knew how these supporters felt because I was one of them. On the terraces at Bramall Lane we turned into partisans, drawing breath when a shot from the opposition whistled past our goal; elated, exultant and ecstatic when a thunderous shot from one of our forwards turned the opposition net into a gumboil. Just as with every supporter the length and breadth of the land, smiling, scowling, laughing, longing, delirious, downcast, rabid, rapturous, vitriolic and victorious by turns at the fortunes of our team, as the players and a leather ball shaped Iliads and Odysseys before our very eyes, created our memories and myths and sprinkled stardust on harsh working lives.
Reg Wright looked after the amateurs and semi-pros at Sheffield United; Reg was an old pro who had stayed on at the club upon his retirement as a player to fulfil myriad roles. Reg took the training on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and he was also in charge of the ‘A’ team which played on a Saturday morning. Today, an academy team can have half a dozen backroom staff and more; Reg was their manager, coach, trainer, masseur, doctor and kit-man; and, just in case anyone felt he wasn’t putting in a good shift at the club, during the week he also acted as physio to the full-time pros and helped out in the training of the first team.
I warmed to Reg Wright immediately. He was a hard taskmaster, but fair. His philosophy did not embrace the molly coddling of young players; you either did what he asked of you or you were out on your ear. Through his whole narrative ran a steel cable of tenacious durability, you had to be hard because football was hard, and football was hard because life was hard. With his Brylcreemed hair parted down the centre and topped by a flat cap worn at a jaunty angle, a baggy roll-neck sports jumper that looked every inch like the one you see the garrulous trainer’s second wearing in one of those Laurel and Hardy shorts when Olly has persuaded Stan to get into a boxing ring to fight a frightening hulk, there was more than a little of the anachronistic about Reg Wright, even in 1953.
Reg exemplified the notion that football is a simple game and he embraced a simplistic evaluation of young talent. According to Reg, young players came in only three categories: ‘Quick burn, slow burn, never to burn’. I can only assume Reg assessed me as being worthy of the former category for, after only a handful of games in goal for the ‘A’ team, I graduated to the youth team and, again, after only half a dozen or so matches, found myself promoted to the reserves.
I couldn’t believe how quickly my life had changed. In little over a year I had progressed from the local Colliery Welfare team via the various teams at Worksop Town to Sheffield United reserves team via their ‘A’ and youth teams. I wasn’t going to qualify with any team for a long-service award, that much I knew.
Sheffield United reserves played in the Central League, which was a massive step up from Youth and ‘A’ team football as it boasted the reserve teams of Wolverhampton Wanderers, both Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Everton, Newcastle