After enduring a dismal qualifying campaign for the 1984 European Championships, a crestfallen Bobby... 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. 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.’

Some players clogged – Stanley Matthews used | Biteback Some players clogged – Stanley Matthews used | Biteback

Interviewing 23 now-elderly former players whose careers fell into this period, Henderson uses their memories to paint a vivid picture of the hopes and aspirations, trials and tribulations of young men who earned only a few pounds more on the pitch than their fathers had down the pit. When Saturday Comes magazine Edwards bestrode the football field, a six-foot-three athlete with strength and stamina, who dribbled with the deftness of a much smaller man, hit long, precise passes and shot with meaning with either foot. About the Author: Jon Henderson has written about football as a journalist and author for more than fifty years. He progressed from covering Rushden Town for the Northants Evening Telegraph in the 1960s to filing stories for Reuters on Diego Maradona’s antics in winning the World Cup for Argentina in 1986. Since then he has written on football for The Observer and Guardian and his biography of Stanley Matthews was shortlisted for Football Book of the Year in 2013. His other books include a biography of the tennis champion Fred Perry, which was shortlisted for Sports Biography of the Year in 2009 and was a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. Then you can walk off down the tunnel,’ the official said, pointing to the tunnel in the days before red cards.The taxi driver is right, the estate he has just turned in to is a regimented assembly of what the Americans call cookie-cutter houses. Maybe he was right, too, in implying that there could be nothing or no one of interest in surroundings of such overbearing conformity. 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. Specials Winning Vs Not Losing: The difference in approach that could make or break a football team He taught me nicely but the only thing was at school I was always in scraps because someone wanted to fight me. And, of course, generally I showed them that one [he holds up his left fist] and banged them with it, because I was southpaw. So that was part of my upbringing.’

When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson - Signed Edition When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson - Signed Edition

Specials UEFA Nations League: How Italy deployed the ‘Overload to Isolate’ tactic to overcome Netherlands The narrator was a bit iffy, but the content was well researched and made you nostalgic at times, but the Bosman ruling changed everything, not always for the better and now we have owners that don’t give a flying for fans & their communities...and they call it progress! According to charity Xpro, as many as 60% of Premier League starlets have been declared penniless within the space of five years of hanging up their boots. Meanwhile, across the pond, nearly 80% of American football players have got themselves into all sorts of financial stress after just a couple of years out of the game. At the end of the day, a professional athlete’s career may only span a decade at best. But some choose to squander their money for a number of different reasons. 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...

A patriarchal home life when he was a lad and a tightly knit mining community forged in him what I soon learn is an uncomplicated set of values. Henderson has spent four years interviewing former players who are now in their 80s and whose stories were in danger of being forgotten. Time colours everything, but while there is something undeniably attractive about footballers being rooted in their communities, travelling to games by public transport and earning a similar amount to the fans who came to watch them – if the game did ever have a soul, this might have been that era – Henderson is too astute an observer to let the romance ever slide into sentimentality - John Crace - The Guardian. In those days, when you married they gave you a club house to reside in, you paid your rent and that was how it worked. There was no buying your own house because you couldn’t afford it.’ If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us

When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson - Audiobook When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson - Audiobook

Newcastle were probably hoping that after I eventually signed for Arsenal the dispute over the retain-and-transfer system would fall away,’ Eastham says. ‘But the PFA were looking to me to be the man to take the fight forward, to bring an end to the system. 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.’ I’ve met hundreds of nice females,’ he says, ‘including my missus, who’s a good Nottingham girl who puts me in my place.’ Not to be outdone, Cristiano Ronaldo, football’s most gifted narcissist, gave his own TV interview a few minutes later. He didn’t seem that bothered by the result, either, satisfactory though it was. If Bale could put himself in the shop window, then so could he. Anything to ensure a bit of attention and to guarantee he remained one of the highest paid footballers in the world. No one should dream of taking his loyalty for granted. Timeless Sony MiniDisc Euro Sixes: The bizarre star-studded mid-season six-a-side tournament lost in time

The Invincibles vs The Invincibles: Hungary and Uruguay in the 1954 World Cup

A Wolves side fuelled by monkey glands were going ‘to run Portsmouth off the field’ – but Pompey won 4-1 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. He also introduced rowing machines so that fitness sessions were not simply a case of running up and down the stadium terracing.