Is this really the sturdy competitor who played for three Football League clubs when a bit of clogging was mandatory and if you could not play with freezing mud filling your big leather boots you should be doing summat else? 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.

When Footballers Were Skint 2018 by Jon Henderson - Waterstones When Footballers Were Skint 2018 by Jon Henderson - Waterstones

Player after player mentioned his name to me when I was writing When Footballers Were Skint. Not all liked him, quite the reverse in some cases, but the impression that emerged was of a character who would have stamped his personality and ideas on whatever profession he had chosen in whatever era. 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.’ The same goes for the World Cup. Now that the tournament in Russia is under way no one is talking about how the bid was won. Nor will they be in Qatar in four year’s time. All eyes are on the football alone. The pound signs are forgotten and replaced by goals. Football is dead. Long live football.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. 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. I’ve met hundreds of nice females,’ he says, ‘including my missus, who’s a good Nottingham girl who puts me in my place.’ 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. Timeless Two Stripes: How sponsorship conflict made Johan Cruyff play the 1974 World Cup with a two striped Adidas kit

‘And, of course, generally I showed them that | Biteback

Cliff Jones, the greatly admired Wales and Tottenham winger, remembered Edwards from the British Army team. ‘They were a terrific side,’ he said. ‘I was in the team with Duncan Edwards, the great Duncan Edwards. What a player he was going to be. The best there’s ever been.’

And you’ve heard of Betty Grable? Well, she paid a million dollars to insure her legs and they were great legs and my missus had legs that were as good as Betty Grable’s. But she doesn’t believe me, because she doesn’t believe anything I say…’ 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... Edwards’s grave in Dudley remains a place of pilgrimage and he is depicted in a stained-glass window in a local church. 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.’

‘It was in the character and spirit of Duncan | Biteback

Interestingly, though most of my interviewees mentioned Edwards among their favourite players, there were few anecdotes, just expressions of quite how formidable he was. 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! In his tributes to Edwards, Bobby Charlton, Edwards’s Manchester United teammate, has said: ‘If you asked such players as Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney about Duncan their answers were always the same: they had seen nothing like him.’

He also introduced rowing machines so that fitness sessions were not simply a case of running up and down the stadium terracing. My first meeting with Colin Collindridge, a player for Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest and Coventry City either side of the war, was both a pleasure and slightly unnerving...