Free Banksy by Gordon Banks

Chesterfield and was a member of the Chesterfield Boys team which reached the semi-final of the English Schools Shield. Gerry joined Sheffield United from school but, after a couple of seasons in the United youth and reserve teams, signed for Chesterfield. Gerry was a fine wing half and a good leader onthe pitch, a quality that eventually saw him become team captain. He went on to give years of loyal service to the club before eventually retiring in the late sixties.
    Dave Blakey was a Geordie who had signed for Chesterfield in 1947. When I made my debut in 1958, Dave had already clocked up 350 appearances for the club, which would have been consecutive but for a spell out of the game in 1957 due to a troublesome appendix. He was a huge man who, when the going got tough, remained as immovable as a rock in a raging sea. Like Ron Powell and later Gerry Clarke, Dave was one of those players who spent the vast majority of his career with one club.
    My best mate, Barry Hutchinson, vied for the place of left half with Jim Smallwood. Barry had already been at Chesterfield for six years when I made the first team and was to continue playing for the club into the early sixties. He was a creative player, a good passer of the ball with a keen eye for goal and a ready wit. I recall one game, away at Southend United, in which Barry had got the better of the Southend right half, the wonderfully named Mortimer Costello – we won 5–2 and he scored two of our goals. After the game we were enjoying a quick drink and some sandwiches before starting off for home when he was confronted by an indignant Southend supporter who was outraged by what he perceived to be Barry’s robust treatment of Costello, though Mortimer himself had just accepted it as part and parcel of the game and given as good as he got.
    ‘I know football is a contact sport,’ said the supporter, ‘but you overstepped the mark today, young man.’
    ‘Football’s not a contact sport,’ replied Barry, ‘it’s a collision sport. Pairs ice skating, that’s a contact sport.’
    At outside right we had Andy MacCabe, a mercurial Scot who had lived most of his life in Corby. Andy joined Chesterfield from Corby Town, then a Midland League club, and proved himself to be a very tricky winger in the days when it was a common sight to see wingers plying their trade up and downmuddy touchlines. Like his counterpart on the left, usually Gwyn Lewis, Andy was a typical winger in that he could be brilliant one game and totally ineffective the next. This inconsistency was a constant source of wonderment to Duggie Livingstone and, at times, much frustration and irritation. In the end I think Duggie just sent them out there and hoped for the best.
    Keith Havenhand and I played together in the youth team that had reached the FA Youth Cup Final. As a player Keith had more than just a touch of class about him. He was a scheming inside right and, like most scheming inside forwards of that time, had an intellectual air to his play. He always seemed to be happy with a big smile on his face and he played the game that way too. He wasn’t a big lad but he was stocky enough to look after himself in the rough and tumble of Third Division football. Keith scored a lot of goals for Chesterfield and many of them were match winners. Quite often a player wins a reputation for scoring goals though a closer inspection of his record shows that many of his goals are scored when a game is over as a contest. It’s all very well scoring a goal when your team is two or three goals up. The true worth of a goalscorer, though, is how many times he puts the ball in the net when you really need him to. In my spell in the Chesterfield first team I can recall at least five occasions when a game was very tight and Keith popped up with the match winner. There may have been more prolific scorers around at that time, but few with a better record than Keith’s of notching goals that were crucial to the outcome of a