Based on the first-hand accounts of players from a fast-disappearing generation, When Footballers Were Skint delves into the game's rich heritage and relates the fascinating story of a truly great sporting era. When you think about it,’ George Eastham says, ‘it was a silly sort of situation. All I was looking for was a job in the afternoons because footballers did nothing in those days. You finished at lunchtime and then the rest of the day you became a good snooker player or whatever, a good golfer – but you didn’t have anything to do.’ At the time of his death, at the age of 21, he had already played 151 times for United and 18 times for England.

care that football has lost its soul? How much do we care that football has lost its soul?

Before agents and TV mega-rights ushered in multi-millionaire players, footballers’ wages were capped, with even the game's biggest names earning barely more than a plumber or electrician. Edwards’s grave in Dudley remains a place of pilgrimage and he is depicted in a stained-glass window in a local church.But the thing about him that really caught the public imagination was whether he did or didn’t experiment with the use of monkey glands. I couldn’t have been born any better really. I was working-class Yorkshire, south Yorkshire, where most people were skint. Some of them had got work at the colliery and some hadn’t and it was the mine owners who ruled – only the one thing they didn’t do was dare fight my dad.’ From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: The retain-and-transfer rule was more accurately described by its alternative name, the slavery act. It lasted until the 1960s when Eastham and the Professional Footballers’ Association took legal action...

When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson | Waterstones

Collindridge was born in November 1920, only four years after Fergie Suter, the man widely regarded as the game’s first professional player, died in middle age. As a young man Collindridge mixed with many of the figures who had contributed to the game’s formative years. It seems almost too neat to be a mere coincidence that 156 years on Richard Wilberforce would be the one to abolish football’s so-called slavery rule. Winterbottom’s revival hopes ended with the Munich air crash in February1958, 15 days after which Edwards died from kidney damage. Seven of Edwards’s Manchester United teammates had died in the crash itself. They were coming to the end of their resources – they weren’t a big PFA in those days, they were a small PFA, the money wasn’t coming in like it does now – but they offered to pay my expenses if I carried on. Long before perma-tanned football agents and TV mega-rights ushered in the age of the multimillionaire player, footballers’ wages were capped – even the game’s biggest names earned barely more than a plumber or electrician.This is both an important historical record as well as an immensely entertaining book. Highly recommended. Greville Waterman His first international appearance was against Scotland at Wembley where he played with poise and without a hint of nerves in a 7-2 victory. The club were entitled to do this under football’s retain-and-transfer rule – aka the slavery rule – despite Eastham’s contract with them having come to an end. What is more, in accordance with the rule, Newcastle stopped paying him and refused to release him to play for anyone else.