Free Banksy by Gordon Banks Page A

game.
    Bryan Frear was an important goalscorer for the club, who could be relied upon for twenty goals a season. Bryan could play equally well in any position in the forward line but to me was always at his best when leading the line. He was one hell of a competitor, as centre forwards had to be in those days. As we prepared to take to the pitch Bryan would be there in the dressing room, right fist clenched, teeth gritted, urging us all to give of our best – though on occasion some of his encouragement had a touch of the Sam Goldwyns about it.
    ‘Let’s go out and enjoy ourselves,’ said Bryan. ‘The result doesn’t matter. As long as we win!’
    They were a super bunch of lads who played no small part in helping me establish myself in the first team. To a man, they always encouraged me and, when I did make a mistake, told me not to worry and just get on with it. To a young goalkeeper experiencing league football for the first time, this encouragement and support was invaluable, helping my confidence grow with each passing game.
    I was learning my trade not in training but out there on the pitch in games. You might think that’s a very dangerous way to do it, especially for a goalkeeper, and you’d be right. But in those days there was no different training or specialized coaching for goalkeepers. Certainly in those early years, I was self-taught.
    Back in the fifties, unless you were a player destined for a club in a much higher division, there was little to be gained from moving clubs. Players in the Third Division were all paid more or less the same. Marginally more in the Second Division, less in Division Four. Unless a First Division club came in for you, there was little financial incentive to change clubs. A player would only receive a cut of his transfer fee if he had not asked for a move. If he asked for a transfer, he got nothing. Moving to another club of similar size for a couple of pounds extra in wages was only beneficial if you lived within easy travelling distance and didn’t have to move home.
    At the time most Chesterfield players were on around £9 a week. We heard stories of players at some clubs in the south, such as Brentford, Plymouth and Crystal Palace, being paid more. But the cost of housing and living in general in the south was much more expensive than in the north and midlands. The few pounds gained in wages from such a move would probably be gobbled up by more expensive mortgage payments and so on. Similarly, not many southern players made the reverse move to the lower-paying northern clubs.
    In January 1959
Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly
, the most popular football magazine of its day, surveyed the origin of players in the Third and Fourth Divisions. The statistics showed that at the thirteen Third Division clubs from the north and midlands there were only twelve players who had moved from the south of England. In the Fourth Division the situation was even more pronounced: seventeen northern and midland clubs in that division boasted just seven players from the south. As we approached the sixties, clubs in the lower divisions operated in much the same way as they had done in the twenties, thirties and forties. The vast majority of players on their books came from within a twenty-five mile radius and they rarely looked any further afield for emerging young talent. When I was at Chesterfield we had only three players, Dave Blakey, Andy MacCabe and Gwyn Lewis, who had been born outside that radius of the town. The only ‘southerner’ was the Scot Andy MacCabe who lived most of his life in Corby, Northamptonshire.
    Port Vale were also typical of the time. In 1959 they had twenty-three professionals on their books, eighteen of whom were local lads. Likewise Doncaster Rovers, who had nineteen local players on a professional staff of twenty-four.
    The very fact that the local team, by and large, comprised local players made the football club a focal point of the community, even for