Free Banksy by Gordon Banks Page B

those people who weren’t active supporters, and it fostered a deep loyalty and local pride. Everyone in Sheffield was either Wednesday or United, never Manchester United or Spurs. For those who owned a TV set, there was no league football to watch. Consequently, youngsters were never seduced by the glamour and reflected glory of the successful teams. You were never mocked at school for supporting your local team.
    Supporters believed the players understood what an important role the local club played in their lives. The majority of players had grown up alongside these fans and, because players were not paid much more than the average working person, continued tolive alongside the fans. In my early days at Chesterfield I’d catch the same bus as some of the supporters, who’d chat away to me for the duration of the journey. Whether in the newsagent’s, the chip shop or the barber’s, wherever I went around the town I would receive praise or criticism depending on how we had done in our previous game. I never viewed such familiarity as an intrusion. I simply saw it as part of my lot as a footballer.
    If supporters were loyal so too were most players. It was not unusual for clubs to have several longtime servants like Chesterfield’s Ron Powell, Dave Blakey and Gerry Clarke. ‘One-club men’ were loved by the supporters for that club loyalty. They were loyal, but their devotion presented them with the one opportunity of earning any decent money from football: the testimonial game, awarded to players who had given at least ten years’ service to a club. The award was in the gift of the board and usually took the form of a single game against superior opposition, the match receipts from which were given to the beneficiary.
    Such loyalty wasn’t always a two-way street. Stanley Matthews spent fourteen years at Blackpool during which time the club enjoyed halcyon days. Often Blackpool played money-spinning friendly matches for which the club received a substantial fee, usually payable as a guarantee that Matthews would play. When the time came for Stan to leave the club, the Blackpool board didn’t think fit to reward him for his efforts with a testimonial match. The receipts from a testimonial wouldn’t keep a player for the rest of his days, but at least it was a way to top up his pension fund. Many people (but not some parsimonious club directors) thought the testimonial game to be a fitting ‘thank you’ for loyal service, as well as providing a safety net for someone who had to embark upon an entirely different career when in his mid to late thirties.
    Today, we have millionaire Premiership players being awarded testimonial games after, in some cases, just six years of service at a club. That rests uneasy with a lot of supporters and I fully understand why. Such players are simply not in need of themoney. The decision by Niall Quinn to give to children’s charities the proceeds from his testimonial game at Sunderland in 2002 was a gesture as laudable as it was unique.
    In total I played in twenty-six league and cup matches. With each game my self-assurance grew and come the final few games I was confident enough not only to shout instructions to team mates, but organize the defence in front of me. I told the full backs when to push on and when to drop back and even started to tell big Dave Blakey when to drop in and pick up. Goalkeeping apart, I felt I was making a positive contribution to the team and took heart from the fact that in the final five matches of the season, I kept three clean sheets, conceding only three goals.
    My horizons at this time never extended beyond playing for Chesterfield. I had after all only twenty-three league games to my name, so it came as a big shock during the summer of 1959 when Duggie Livingstone called me into his office one day and introduced me to a dapper man with wavy black hair who he said wanted to sign me – Matt Gillies, the manager of First Division Leicester City,