by Gordon Banks
Ron Newman had played the majority of his football in the lower divisions of the Football League. He was a good manager for the NASL, not least because he lapped up the hype of the American game. The NASL was at that time divided into two conferences – Pacific and Atlantic – each of which had two divisions. The top teams from each division met each other in end-of-season play-offs. We were leading the Eastern Division of the Atlantic Conference as we took to the road for three away matches. We won one and lost two, though we did pick up some bonus points in the third game, which was decided on a shoot-out.
Those two defeats saw the Strikers slip to third and the local media believed our chance of winning the title had gone. As we took to the pitch for our next home game, against Tampa Bay Rowdies, I was surprised to see a table in the centre of the pitch with a coffin on it. I had no idea why it was there. Once the formalities of introducing the team were over, a man with a microphone walked on to the field and headed for the coffin. We all watched agog, wondering what on earth was going on. This man made a short speech about how, according to reports in the media, our chances of winning the title were dead and buried. Suddenly the lid of the coffin was flung open and up popped Ron Newman like a jack-in-the-box. He grabbed the microphone and announced loudly, ‘But, as you can see, the Strikers ain’t dead yet, folks!’
The stadium erupted as the Strikers fans lapped up Ron’s piece of showmanship. I can understand why they did. I mean, who wouldn’t pay good money to see Sir Alex Ferguson do that at Old Trafford?
My decision to resume playing had been a massive one for me. I was confident I could do a good job for the Strikers, but at the back of my mind was the fear that I would make a fool of myself. After all, how many one-eyed goalkeepers have you come across? Thankfully, nothing could have been further from the truth. I coped well with the flight and speed of the ball. My reactions were good and I was pleased with my general level of fitness. The only problem I had was in the drastic reduction of my peripheral vision. I found I had to make a half-turn to bring players on my right-hand side into my field of view. This did not hamper my performance, though. On the contrary, I think I did pretty well. In 26 games that season the Strikers conceded 29 goals – the fewest in the NASL. Not only did this help us to win matches, it also denied our opponents bonus points for goals scored.
To my great delight, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers won our division, though we were beaten by the New York Cosmos in the final play-offs. To cap what for me had been a great comeback and a marvellous swansong to my career, I was voted NASL Goalkeeper Of The Year. That award gave me as much if not more satisfaction than many I had picked up in England.
Having had a great time with the Strikers I decided to hang up my boots for good. I had overcome what had undoubtedly been the greatest challenge of my life. I had played football again and at a very good standard. My disability had not beaten me.
I returned to England in 1979 to discover that I was unemployed. Tony Waddington, who had told me I would always have a coaching job at Stoke City as long as he was in charge, had resigned in 1977 after seventeen years as manager. I wasn’t out of work for long, however. The Port Vale manager, Dennis Butler, offered me a coaching role at Vale Park. When Dennis resigned only months after I had taken up my duties, my old Stoke City team mate Alan Bloor took over. So I was back in harness with Alan, who took on as his assistant the former Preston and Blackburn player Graham Hawkins.
At first everything went well. But one thing I was beginning to understand about coaching is that you can only teach those who are willing to learn. One day I gathered the first-team squad together to make a point on attacking play. The Port Vale centre forward was Bernie Wright, a burly and somewhat surly striker who had been at Walsall (twice), Everton and Bradford City before joining Vale for £9,000 in 1978.
Having watched Bernie play for the first team on a number of occasions, I’d noticed he wasn’t helping his midfield the way he should. Bernie tended to stay too close to his marker, instead of dropping off into space to receive the ball, hold it up and allow support to arrive from midfield. I pointed this out to him, but he was having none of it.
‘I’m not doing that. Can’t see the point,’ he informed me. We discussed the issue, but still Bernie wouldn’t follow my instructions. He was intransigent, belligerent, and in the end, quite rude.
I was very annoyed. I had been employed as the coach, yet here was a player who didn’t value my ideas and what I had to say about the game. I suppose that sort of attitude is something a coach is paid to sort out, but it certainly wasn’t my idea of job satisfaction. I spoke to Alan Bloor, who said he’d have a word with Bernie. Whether he ever did, I don’t know. A few days later Alan resigned and I left Port Vale with him.
On the whole I enjoyed coaching, but I was hankering to be a manager. I applied for two vacant jobs, at Lincoln City and Rotherham United and was interviewed for both. In the meantime I received a telephone call from the chairman of Telford United of the Alliance Premier League, the equivalent of the Vauxhall Conference today. The Telford chairman invited me to take over as club manager. I politely declined, telling him that my aim was to manage a Football League club, for which I had two forthcoming interviews.
Big mistake. The Lincoln job went to Colin Murphy and Rotherham United appointed Ian Porterfield as their new team boss. A few days later, however, the Telford chairman was back on the phone. With about ten games to go to the end of the season, Telford were in danger of relegation to the Southern League. Obviously, he added, he didn’t want that to happen. All he wanted me to do was come along and do what I had to do to keep them up. This time I accepted his offer.
Telford United were a team of part-time professionals who trained two evenings a week. Before signing the contract that had been offered I watched the players train in midweek and play on the following Saturday. It was obvious to me that Telford were not a good side, even for the Alliance Premier League. I knew I would have my work cut out, but I accepted the challenge. Telford may not have had a good team, but I knew a man who did.
Bangor City had previously won the Alliance, but at the time were experiencing financial difficulties. My thinking was simple: if Bangor had won this league, then they must have good players. And if they’re strapped for cash, they might be willing to sell some.
I drove to Bangor’s Ferrar Road ground to watch them in action and was impressed by their goalkeeper and centre half. Having been given a budget to work to, I approached the Bangor chairman, Mr Roberts, and asked him how much he wanted for the pair.
‘Fifteen hundred pounds…’ said Mr Roberts.
‘It’s a deal,’ I said.
‘… But you’re going to have to take our centre forward as well.’
I had seen the Bangor centre forward in action and, with the best will in the world, he just didn’t look good enough.
‘I’m not so keen on him,’ I said.
‘If you don’t take our centre forward, you won’t get the other two,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘They travel down from Cheshire together for games, and he has the car!’
What else could I do? I signed the centre forward as well. The goalkeeper and centre half did a great job for Telford United and, as luck would have it, so too did the centre forward. (Either I’m a poor judge of a striker, or he’d been having an off day when I first watched him.) He scored a hatful of goals for us and by the end of the season Telford United were comfortably clear of relegation.
The following year, 1980–81, we enjoyed a good pre-season. I signed John Ruggerio from Stoke City, organized friendlies against Stoke and Wolves and followed up with a satisfactory if unspectacular start to the season.
We were in mid-table in November when I took a sabbatical in order to undergo an operation. I asked the former Blackpool and Stoke City player Jackie Mudie to take temporary charge of team affairs while I was absent, satisfied that the team would be in good hands.
Unfortunately, during Jackie’s temporary period holding
the reins, Telford lost an FA Trophy match to a team from a lower league. I returned to work in December and was asked by the chairman to attend a meeting at the offices of the travel agents he owned.
‘I’m sorry, but we are relieving you of your duties as manager of this club,’ he informed me.
I was shocked. My sacking hit me hard. For a time it knocked for six all the passion and enthusiasm I had for the game. I had high hopes of taking Telford United on to bigger and better things, but felt I hadn’t been given sufficient time to achieve my aim. Time is the most important asset a manager can be given and, to my mind, I had been denied that.
I was still under contract, but the club were in no position to pay me off. I was rather naive about such matters at the time, and had no idea what my legal position was. A few days later the Telford chairman called me at home. He confirmed the fact that, such was the club’s financial position, the only way they could pay up the remainder of my contract was if I were to take up another position on the staff. I was gullible enough to believe him. My new role at the club was to stand in a small kiosk outside a supermarket and sell Telford United raffle tickets! Furthermore, he banned me from attending Telford games. I think the chairman expected me to reject my new role outright, which would have suited him fine. But out of sheer bloody mindedness I accepted his ridiculous offer and reported for duty at the kiosk the following Monday.
I sold draw tickets from that little kiosk outside the supermarket for nigh on six weeks, as much as anything so that the locals could see just how shabbily their football club had treated me. Talk about hero to zero! Many ex-supporters agreed:
‘A member of the England team that won the World Cup, the greatest goalkeeper there has ever been, selling draw tickets from this hovel? It’s a bloody disgrace, the way you’ve been treated.’
The groundswell of dissent grew, and gave me the strength not to walk away from the money I was entitled to. Eventually public opinion in Telford swayed matters my way; well, half way at least. The chairman called me into his office and pushed a cheque across the desktop. The amount was about 50 per cent of what I was entitled to, but I had made my point. I accepted it and walked out of his office and out of football management. Ironically, the team I had largely assembled at Telford went on to enjoy considerable success, not only in non-league football, but also in the FA Cup where they performed a number of giantkilling acts.
With a short and not so sweet career in football management behind me, I turned to the world of business. A Leicester businessman with a motor dealership in the city telephoned me to discuss his plans to open a corporate hospitality company and asked if I would run it for him. We had a number of meetings and he seemed genuine enough, so I accepted his offer, which necessitated Ursula and I moving back to the Leicester area. We bought a house in Quorn and I settled down to running a business. The business wasn’t mine, but it traded off my name. I fronted the company for ten years and enjoyed it, though it wasn’t all plain sailing.
The business provided hospitality packages to almost all the major British sporting events. In the main our clients were companies, but on occasions we dealt with individual customers as well. One day one of the girls in my office received a telephone call asking for Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon. This was not a problem, but then the caller asked for something else. He said that his clients were two very rich businessmen from Saudi Arabia and, as part of the package, could we supply a couple of escort girls?
‘Er, I’ll have to get back to you on that,’ my secretary said in a fluster.
I advised her not to do anything for half an hour, then return the call and tell the mystery man that we don’t supply the sort of hospitality he had in mind.
‘If a company receptionist answers, we at least know this unusual request has come from a potential client,’ I told her. ‘If he answers the phone himself, just hang up. Give it another half an hour, then ring him back. Tell him that Mr Banks says that this company is not an escort agency.’
She made the call. The same voice answered, so she put the phone down. After half an hour she rang again. The same man answered and she carried out my instructions to the letter.
The following Sunday, a well-known red-top newspaper carried a sensational story under a banner headline. I don’t remember the exact wording, but you know the sort of thing: ‘Strawberries and Sex on Centre Court’. I do remember the accompanying photograph, though – a telephoto-lens shot of the manager of a rival company walking down one of the aisles at the main arena at Wimbledon with two escort girls in tow, presumably searching for two non-existent Saudi clients.
I have no doubt that the whole thing had been a set-up. Fortunately, the sound principles by which we ran the business saved the company from acute embarrassment that time, but on another occasion I wasn’t so lucky.
As everyone knows, tickets for an FA Cup final are like gold dust. There are never enough to satisfy the needs of genuine supporters, and corporate hospitality companies have equal difficulty in meeting demand. So when I was offered a bunch of tickets for the 1987 Cup final by a tout, I snapped them up.
A few weeks after the match the Football Association had me up before them to explain how tickets allocated to players from a leading club had found their way into the hands of my clients. I told the hearing that I hadn’t bought the tickets direct from players, but had acquired them from a third party for the purposes of corporate hospitality. To my mind, the players who had sold their ticket allocation to the tout in the first place should also have been brought to book. The FA decreed that what I had done was a gross infringement of their rules and that I would have to accept the consequences.
I admit that I was silly to buy those tickets. I didn’t really have a leg to stand on. All I could hope for was that the FA would give me credit for my honesty and immediate admission in deciding my punishment. I was given a seven-year ban from receiving Cup final tickets. I accepted the ban with good grace, though at the time I believed it to be somewhat harsh, with more than an element of giving me an exemplary punishment as a warning to others.
I was, by this time, working on the pools panel, a job I still do. Following the news of my ticket ban I turned up one Friday evening at the London hotel that served as our base to find that two other members of the panel, Roger Hunt and Tony Green, had mounted and framed two old Cup final tickets which they presented to me with great relish.
When the motor dealership that was the parent company of Gordon Banks Corporate Hospitality went down the pan shortly afterwards, it took a lot of my savings with it. The hospitality business ceased trading. I had invested in the finance arm of the motor dealership and lost the lot. To my eternal gratitude, Leicester City offered me a testimonial game to help me out. It was a wonderful gesture on the part of the club, and one that touched me greatly. I had a great night and it was fantastic to see so many familiar faces again. We talked about the old days and I was amazed to find that, although we had all given up the game long ago, in the ensuing years we had all become better players!
I have now worked for the pools panel for some sixteen years. The panel currently comprises my England team mate Roger Hunt, the former Blackpool and Newcastle United midfield player Tony Green and myself, together with an adjudicator. In my early days the panel also included the former referee Arthur Ellis and the former Scotland goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson. When I first joined the panel we used to meet in the Waldorf Hotel in London. The food at the Waldorf was excellent and I remember being particularly impressed by the variety of the cheeseboard – although not quite as impressed as Arthur. We had all sampled a little cheese, but large portions of Red Leicester, Cheshire, Cheddar, Caerphilly, Lancashire and Brie remained. Suddenly Arthur Ellis asked, ‘Will anyone be wanting more cheese?’
We all politely declined. Arthur clapped his hands with delight, then produced a large plastic bag from his briefcase and proceeded to fill it with large chunks of cheese.
‘You lads don’t know what you�
�re missing – this is first-rate cheese. It’s all been paid for. Be a shame to leave it,’ said Arthur, oblivious to our embarrassment.
‘Waste not, want not’ was definitely Arthur’s philosophy and, judging by the size of his waist, he didn’t want for much. Whatever food remained, Arthur had it. He’d leave the Waldorf with his briefcase full of beef, chicken pieces, pork pies, tomatoes, grapes, you name it. He even wore a jacket with a deep inside pocket which he filled with slices of ham or turkey wrapped in tin foil. ‘He’s a walking Fortnum and Mason,’ said Roger Hunt one Saturday.
The jokes and leg-pulling were integral to the atmosphere of these meetings of the pools panel. During one session, Arthur Ellis announced that he was thinking of buying a grandfather clock. ‘You’ll be having the pendulum taken out, then, Arthur,’ I suggested. ‘You’ll not want the shadow it casts wearing a hole in your wallpaper!’
For a time the adjudicator of the pools panel was Lord Bath. He was a very friendly man who took his responsibilities as seriously as we did. We all became very good friends, and when Arthur Ellis’s wife died Lord Bath attended the funeral in Yorkshire with the rest of us. After the service Arthur laid on a buffet at his home. After a suitable time had elapsed to pay his respects, Lord Bath, who had travelled up north by train, asked Arthur if he could telephone for a taxi to take him to the station.
‘I’m not having you travelling in a taxi, Lord Bath,’ said Arthur. ‘I’ll sort you out for transport.’
Lord Bath thanked Arthur for his kindness. Ten minutes later Arthur was back.
‘When you’re ready, sir,’ said Arthur, and led his lordship outside to the Co-op’s hearse idling at the kerbside.