by Gordon Banks
Having met Burgin, he was no less my hero in terms of his expertise as a goalkeeper, but from that moment I saw him in a totally different light – an ordinary bloke on his way to the fish and chip shop.
At that moment, at the side of a road in a village on the outskirts of my home city, it came to me that footballers were mere mortals. I would have no more perfect heroes. It would be an exaggeration to say that my age of innocence was over, though I did sense that something from my childhood had died.
After a while Browny, Hutch and I decided to travel to Chesterfield by train. This was usually more convenient, but on one occasion it put us in hot water with our new manager, Duggie Livingstone. We used a local service that always departed from the same platform, but on the day in question we found it wasn’t there. I asked a platform attendant and he directed us to a train on another platform. Browny and Hutch felt uneasy about this departure from the norm, and on seeing the same platform attendant again, to allay their fears, I pulled down the carriage window and asked for confirmation that we were Chesterfield bound. No problem – this was the right one. On the outskirts of Chesterfield the train began to slow down. We gathered our bags only to stand dumbfounded as it started to pick up speed just outside the station. Panic set in as we watched the station flash by.
The train did eventually come to a halt. At Derby. We jumped out as if it were on fire and raced for the nearest telephone. By now it was twenty to three. I rang the club and heard the voice of our trainer, George Milburn, brother of the legendary Newcastle centre forward, Jackie Milburn, uncle of Bobby and Jack Charlton. Not a man to mince his words. When we told him where we were, George told us what we were. He ended the brief conversation by telling us to take a taxi to the ground. It was twenty minutes to three and I knew even if Stirling Moss himself turned out to be the driver, there was no way a taxi would get us to Saltergate in time for us to play against Everton.
We eventually arrived at twenty past three and were told to take a seat in the stand for the rest of the game. Nobody said another word to us about the matter that entire afternoon. Come Tuesday, however, the three of us were pulled out of training and told to report to the manager’s office. Duggie Livingstone sat stony faced as he listened to our tale. Then he took to his feet. We would have to drive to Sheffield station and point out to Duggie the platform attendant who put us on the wrong train.
We felt like naughty schoolboys being admonished by the headmaster. Eventually, I spotted the miscreant attendant.
‘That’s him!’ I piped up, like some nine-year-old lad pointing out the school bully.
‘You! Come here!’ Duggie barked. ‘The station master’s office. All four of you. Now!’
Once inside the station master’s office, we repeated our tale and, luckily for us the platform attendant admitted his mistake.
We sat in silence on the journey back to Chesterfield. Duggie Livingstone never apologized for having doubted us. All he said was that we’d have to come in for training the following night to make up for the session we’d missed, and that he would be docking our wages for missing the match.
No manager today would treat even junior players like that. But that’s how it was in those days. More often than not, players had more respect for a manager’s position and his seniority of years, than his actual expertise as a football manager. You did what you were told. Irrespective of your character or individual circumstances, if you weren’t playing well or if you didn’t do as the manager wanted, you got a rollicking. The onus was on the individual player to shape up, not on the manager to assess and address that player’s idiosyncrasies or emotions and adapt his methods of management accordingly. Nobody thought anything less of a manager for that. His word was law and there was a democracy of sorts – all players were treated the same, albeit, at times, like naughty schoolboys.
I was later to enjoy revenge at Duggie’s expense. The money I earned at Chesterfield enabled me to buy my first car – by which I mean an old Ford van owned by a brickie I knew from my days as a hod carrier. This van had seen better days. The front passenger seat wasn’t secured to the floor as the brickie often removed it when loading the van with building materials. The headlights would intermittently cut out and their silver backing had perished so that they provided only a dim glow. The tyres were nigh on bald and the van had the disconcerting habit of jumping out of gear. All of which made even the shortest journey an adventure.
One night, after training, Duggie Livingstone asked if I could give him a lift back into Sheffield as his car was in for repairs. I readily agreed and once out on the country road back to Sheffield, put my foot down. The road home was full of twists and turns and Duggie was forever sliding backwards and forwards on that unsecured passenger seat. When, at fifty miles an hour, the gear stick popped out of its column I thought Duggie’s eyes were going to pop out of his head. Then as we were approaching Dronfield the van veered to the right and we were suddenly in the direct path of an oncoming car. It was at this point that the headlights decided to give up on me. I think that was when I heard Duggie utter a muted scream. I swung the van back over to the left. The headlights came back on and in the rear view mirror I saw the tail lights of the other car disappearing down the road. It had been a close thing, too close for Duggie. When I dropped him at his home, I could see his face was ashen.
‘Gordon. Don’t ever let me ask you for a lift again!’ He meant it.
My career with Chesterfield was interrupted when at seventeen I received my call-up papers for National Service. I joined the Royal Signals and after weeks of square-bashing at camps in Catterick and Ripon found myself posted to Germany. Fate had another wonderful stroke of luck in store for me, for it was during my time out there that I met a beautiful young German girl called Ursula. I fell in love with her and I’m even more in love with her now. Ursula and I have been married for over forty years, have three children and five grandchildren. Family life and family values are very important to me, and always have been. When I was a boy in Tinsley we never had much money, but I never felt deprived because there was love in our family and there were frequent little surprises. As a father and grandfather I’ve always tried to foster such family values.
During my National Service in Germany I managed to play quite a lot of football. When the Army learned that I was a pro I was soon picked to represent first my squad and then my regiment, which I helped to win the Rhine Cup, a very prestigious trophy in Army sport at that time.
Chesterfield must have kept tabs on me because on being demobbed I received a letter inviting me back to Saltergate. The manager, Ted Davison, had a surprise waiting for me: a contract as a full-time professional on £7 a week. I had no agent, no image consultant or PR manager, no lawyer, to pick over the fine print and set up lucrative deals from all manner of ancillary activities. It took me all of five seconds to sign. My dream had come true. I was to be paid for doing the only thing I ever wanted to do in life and, having met Ursula, I’d never been so happy.
*
Many of the reserve team were still young enough to play in the FA Youth Cup and we found to our delight that the experience of playing against seasoned pros and the occasional international in the Central League made us more than a match for lads of our own age.
In 1955–56 I kept goal both for Chesterfield reserves and the youth team in the FA Youth Cup. It wasn’t all plain sailing. Playing for the A team against Sheffield Wednesday, I dived at the feet of Wednesday’s Keith Ellis and fractured my elbow – a worrying injury for a keeper. But during an operation the surgeon inserted a metal pin to aid the healing process and strengthen my shattered elbow. I have to admit I feared my career as a goalkeeper could be over before it had got off the ground. As luck would have it, and thanks to the expertise of the surgeon, the injury healed so well that within seven weeks I was back between the posts for the reserves and keen to show what I could do in the FA youth team.
The FA Youth Cup was a relatively new competition, inaug
urated in 1952–53, and was won in its first five seasons by Manchester United. It was not only an incentive for clubs to develop their own young players but for managers and directors it became a benchmark as to how their club was progressing. Success in the Youth Cup was seen as an indication of a rosy future for a club, the hope being that a generation of players would then progress to first-team football. Many of that extraordinary crop of Manchester United players who monopolized the competition in its first five seasons did make the grade and were of course dubbed the Busby Babes. For other clubs, the reality was often different. In the fifties, as today, if just two players from a triumphant FA Youth Cup team went on to make their mark in the first team, a club’s youth policy was considered to have been a success. Of course there have been exceptions. Sometimes no players from a winning FA Youth Cup side proved good enough to make the grade; conversely, there have been occasions when four or five have done so. For example, of the successful youth team of (again) Manchester United of the early 1990s, several went on to win great club and international honours, namely Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and, of course, David Beckham.
We set out on the trail of the FA Youth Cup in 1956 as minnows and surprised not only the Chesterfield supporters but also ourselves by reaching the final. Our opponents were the holders–you’ve guessed it–Manchester United, who fielded Wilf McGuinness, Alex Dawson, and a blonde-haired lad on the left wing with a humdinger of a shot, Bobby Charlton. Nobody gave us an earthly. We were up against the cream of young English talent. Nearly all the United side were youth internationals, whereas none of the Chesterfield team had ever watched an international youth game, let alone been selected to play in one.
The final was over two legs, the first at Old Trafford. As our coach drew into the car park I was taken aback by the sheer number of supporters milling about. Chesterfield reserves often drew crowds in excess of over 2,000 for home games against First Division reserve teams and at Anfield or Goodison Park the attendance there might be 14,000 scattered around such large stadiums. Seeing thousands of supporters thronging Old Trafford left me in no doubt that this was to be a big occasion.
Match programmes were always issued for Central League games, though to my knowledge they never carried pen portraits of the players, simply the team line-ups. For this game, however, Manchester United produced a special edition of their matchday programme complete with four- or five-line biographies of each player, which I sat and read in the dressing room. The pen portraits detailed how the United players had been spotted playing either for England Schoolboys, or the North of England Schoolboy Representative XI, or even, in some cases, England Youth. My pen portrait said I had been spotted playing for a works team on Tinsley Rec.
As I ran out of the tunnel with my team mates I was dumbfounded to see around 34,000 people in the ground, all but a handful United supporters. From the kick-off they got right behind their team. United forced us on the back foot and within minutes I knew how those Texans must have felt at the Alamo. The United pressure was relentless, shot after shot raining in at my goal. I caught them, parried them, tipped them over the bar and blocked them with any part of my body I could. But for all my efforts and those of my team mates, such constant pressure had to pay off for United and just before half time they scored twice.
After the interval United picked up the same script and soon we found ourselves three goals adrift. There was little we could do to stem the pressure. Inside right Harry Peck and centre forward Bob Mellows, whose goals had been so instrumental in our reaching the final, were playing so deep I thought they’d end up with the bends. With twenty minutes to go United took their foot off the gas and I enjoyed a welcome break from Bobby Charlton’s missiles as our forwards went deep into largely uncharted territory. To my delight we managed to pull a goal back and, with five minutes remaining, broke away and nicked a second: 3–2. I couldn’t believe it and I doubt if the United players could either. It had been smash-and-grab stuff but with the second leg at home I left Old Trafford in great spirits, feeling we had gained a moral victory.
A crowd of over 14,000 turned up at Saltergate for the return leg, some 5,000 more than the average attendance for a first team game. The second leg was another humdinger. This time we had more of the play but, in spite of our pressure, couldn’t claw back the deficit. The game ended 1–1, which gave United a fourth successive FA Youth Cup success. We may have lost, but I gained a great deal of satisfaction from our performances as a team, and was happy with my own efforts. We had taken on the best youth side in English football over two games and had only been beaten by the odd goal in seven. I was looking forward to further progress at Chesterfield.
*
The following season my youth team days were largely behind me, and along with team mates Harry Peck, Keith Havenhand and Bob Mellows I was selected for a Northern Intermediate League Representative squad to play the 1955–56 NIL champions Sunderland, at Roker Park. As it turned out, I didn’t play, and the goalkeeper’s jersey went to Alf Ashmore of Sheffield United. However, just being in the squad had been a boost to my confidence. It was the first time I had been selected for a representative team since my days with Sheffield Schoolboys. I felt my performances in goal were not going unnoticed.
It’s interesting now to look at the respective line-ups in the match programme for that representative game. Only two members of the Sunderland team who had won the Northern Intermediate League, Harry Godbold and Clive Bircham went on to play first team football. Both, however, only played a handful of games for Sunderland before moving on, in both cases to Hartlepool. Of the League Representative team, only two went on to carve out meaningful careers in football: left winger Kevin McHale of Huddersfield Town and Bill Houghton of Barnsley. See what I mean about the high fall-out rate of successful youth-team players? The vast majority never fulfil their early promise, whereas there are others who never make it on to the books of clubs as youngsters, but prove to be late developers and enter league football at a relatively older age. The former Manchester skipper Tony Book is a prime example of the late developer. Tony didn’t sign for his first club, Plymouth Argyle, until the age of twenty-five. So if you’re still kicking a ball around, remember, it’s never too late!
In the 1958–59 season my performance in goal for Chesterfield reserves saw me pushing the long-serving Ron Powell for a place in the first team. Ted Davison had been replaced as manager by Duggie Livingstone and it was he who finally gave me my big chance in November 1958. Following Friday training I joined the rest of the players gathered around the noticeboard on which were pinned the four teams for Saturday. When I looked at the reserve team my name wasn’t included and my first reaction was to check the A team. It still didn’t click with me until the regular first team centre half, Dave Blakey, appeared at my side and said, ‘Good luck, son.’
I scrutinized the first team line up and nearly choked. Banks was in goal for the Third Division home game against Colchester United!
I thought Duggie Livingstone would take me to one side the following day and tell me what was expected of me, but I should have known better. As with most managers of that era, man-management and tactical analysis were not high on his list of priorities.
The night before my league debut I went to bed early, but couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing and I played the forthcoming game over and over in my mind. On the first occasion we won 1–0 and I saved a penalty. Then we won 3–0. At one point I looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was four o’clock. I was angry with myself, certain that by the morning I’d be in no fit state to get out of bed never mind play football. When I arrived at Saltergate the next day the first person to speak to me was our left back, Gerry Sears. ‘Big day for you,’ said Gerry. ‘How’d you sleep last night?’
‘Like a log,’ I lied.
When a player enters a dressing room before a game, he finds his shirt hanging from a peg with the rest of his strip neatly folded on the bench below. In the
fifties, as is often the case today, there would also be a large enamel teapot of steaming tea, next to which would be a dozen or so complimentary matchday programmes.
Like most players I know, I wasn’t a great collector of matchday programmes. I have a few, among which are those from my debuts for Chesterfield, Leicester City and England. I wish I’d kept more because with the passing of time, these programmes are a far more revealing read than they were on the day of issue. Today’s programmes resemble glossy magazines and many cost what a Chesterfield supporter of the late fifties would have paid for a season ticket. Contemporary programmes carry any amount of photographs and a wealth of statistical information. They are too big to slip into your coat pocket so you have to sit holding them for the whole game.
The typical Chesterfield programme of the fifties was three sheets of A4 matt paper folded to make twelve pages. There was little information other than club news – or ‘Saltergate Chatter’ – the team line-ups, pen pictures of the visiting team, the league tables and results of the first team and reserves and a key to the board which displayed the half-time scores from other grounds. The rest of the space was taken up by display advertisements. Yet in those days before local radio, Ceefax, and saturation TV coverage of the game, these flimsy programmes were the main source of match information for supporters. The national papers contained little other than the results and goalscorers. Even the local paper, the Sheffield Star, never carried more than a few paragraphs of pre-match information.