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Work and Play: The ProfessionalFootballer in England c.1900 -c.1950Matthew Taylor aa University of PortsmouthPublished online: 14 Dec 2009.

To cite this article: Matthew Taylor (2002): Work and Play: The Professional Footballer inEngland c.1900 - c.1950, The Sports Historian, 22:1, 16-43

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WORK AND PLAY: THE PROFESSIONAL

FOOTBALLER IN ENGLAND c.1900 - c.1950’

Matthew Taylor

University of Portsnloutli

Play and work.. .are two different things. Professional footballers are engaged not in work but in play. They are playing for reward or payment.. .but they are still playing a game. It may be said that they are working at their play, and so they are, but what they are not doing is manual labour.

Justice Roche, quoted in Sporting Chronicle, 21 April 1934.

Work is a complex and multi-faceted concept yet it is only relatively recently that historians have begun to take its various meanings seriously. The influences of anthropological and sociological perspectives have convinced us of the need to look beyond the narrow conception of work as paid employment and to understand the different ways in which it is experienced by avariety of individuals and groups.’ It is no longer possible to regard work as a self-evident category or to equate it simply with the production of goods; we need to recognise that the external boundaries of work- the distinction between ‘work’ and ‘non-work’ in other words - is neither straightforward nor static. Indeed it has been convincingly argued that traditionally ‘non-work’ activities such as housework and hobbies have many of thecharacteristicsof-and provide similarsatisfactions, frustrations, identities and meanings as - paid work? Given discussions of this type, it is somewhat surprising that there has been little serious attempt to examine professional sport as a form of work. This article is an exploratory attempt to do just that by looking at the working and social lives of professional footballers in England during the first half of the twentieth century. Its

Tlie Sports Historian, No. 2002,22 (May, 2002), pp. I643 16 PUBLISHED BY.THE BRITISH SOCIETY OF SPORTS HISTORY

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Work aid Play: The Professioiial Footbrrller iit Eiiglrriid

central theme is the ambiguous relationship between ‘work’ and ‘play’ for the professionals themselves. For most, football was neitherjust work nor just play but a combination of both. The majority (though possibly not all) enjoyed the game and gained from it the same pleasure as did thousands of amateur and recreational footballers. Yet it was also a job, with the usual routines, sttuctures, constraints and pressures found in any form of employment. Without asysteniatic study of theoccupation-integrating the voices of footballers themselves - we cannot begin to grasp the range of experiences and the myriad of meanings that professionals took from the game they played for a living.

Playing sport has often been considered a peculiar thing to do for a living. It does not fit easily into any recognised occupational category. Unlike manual labourers and craftsmen, footballers did not actually produce a material object: they did not really ‘make’ anything at all. Neither was the footballer a professional in the recognised sense that lawyers, doctors and teachers were. The footballer’s job has historically been quite unlike any other. With the arrival of professionalism in 1885, footballers became employees whose job it was to compete and try to win for their team but who were nonetheless described as ‘players’ engaged in a ‘game’. In some respects, the nature of football work was comparable to that of actors, musicians or variety ‘artistes’: to distract, entertain or amuse the public. Herbert Chapman, manager of Arsenal in the late 1920s and early 1930s, considered football to be ‘a world’s entertainment’, with his role as ‘the showman’ putting on ‘the best possible programme’? But footballers had the added responsibility of having to satisfy employers and supporters by producing good results, a demand not necessarily compatible with the provision of aesthetic pleasure or entertainment. Forthe England international forward Raich Carter, the distinction between the footballer and the actor was clear. Whereas the latter ‘sets out with the full knowledge that he has to hold and entertain a public audience’, the paid footballer ‘is never consciously entertaining his spectators. His business is to win the match with the help of his ten colleagues’?

The legal categorisation of football work underwent significant change in this period. The background to this was the passing of the Employers’ Liability Act of 1880 and the Workmen’s Compensation Acts of 1897 and 1900, which, undercertain conditions, madeemployers liable to compensate

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Tlie Sports Historiait No. 22 ( I )

workers injured in the course of their employment.6 In 1902 the Football League lookedinto the application ofthis law toemployers offootball labour but was assured that no such liability could be attached to member clubs. Footballers were not, it was argued, ‘workmen’ under the terms of these Acts.’ In 1906, however, a new Workmen’s Compensation Act broadened its application to ‘virtually all employments’, including professional football? For the first time, the footballerwas legally defined alongside a host of other industrial occupations as a ‘workman’ employed ‘by way of manual labour’. This decision was reinforced in 1912 when the National Health Insurance Commissioners ruled that ‘a professional footballer is employed by way of manual labour’ and thus had to be insured under the 19 1 1 National Insurance Act ‘whatever his remuneration’? It was not until April 1934 that this verdict was overturned in the High Court by Justice Roach. As the quotation at thebeginning ofthe article indicates, Roachdecidedcategorically that a footballer could not be considered a manual labourer under the National Insurance Act, a decision which also became applicable to the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Although he recognised that football was an activity requiring skill and dexterity, Roach ultimately found that footballers ‘are engaged to amuse and entertain other people by playing a game’.1° In this sense, they were placed, legally at any rate, alongside acrobats, cricketers and pugilists as ‘players’ rather than ‘ ~ o r k e r s ’ . ~ ~

It is not clear how far these changing perspectives were reflected in contemporary opinions offootballers and their ‘work’.The writerof a 1907 article in Football Clint felt that it might surprise the public to hear footballers described as workmen. In his view, however, football had indeed become a permanent formof employment, requiring close supervision and control of players. ‘Play’ may have only occurred once or twice a week but the ‘player’ was increasingly a ‘footballer’ full time.” Representatives oftheplayers’ Union,establishedin 1907, were tothe fore incementing the image of professional football as serious work rather than trivial play. Billy Meredith, for example, had no doubt about the footballers’ status: ‘we are all workmen, we are the men who are earning our living on the field of sport’.I3 Jimmy Fay’s view, expressed in 1938 while he was secretary of the Players’ Union, was that ‘although football is a game, and.. .the nien whoplay it doso withadeeplove forthegame, it is,nevertheless, the living of the Professional’.“ Men like Fay and Meredith were of course

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Work and Play: The Professional Footbnller hi Eiiglrriid

determined to have football recognised as an occupation just like any other but we do not really know whether the rank-and-file professionals thought the same, or if, at a time when there were still considerable numbers of amateurs and part-timers competingat the elite level, they regarded football as merely a casual, short-term job. Dick Walker, a professional between 1934 and 1953, expressed a less straightforward approach to his vocation which may have reflected moreclosely theviews ofthemajorityofplayers:

[Walker] enjoyed playing for West Ham and getting paid for it. But at no time did he ever regard what he was doing as amusement or a game. He was on the pitch to perform attractively for the crowd aiid to do ;I job.IS

It is more than likely ofcourse that professional footballers simply disagreed on the nature of their occupation. A slight detour outside our period might be instructive here. When Hunter Davies followed the Tottenham Hotspur team through the 1971/72 season in the course of writing his book The Glory Game, he asked the players whether they considered what they did as ‘a job of work or a career’. The responses he got were revealing. Some players undoubtedly found it difficult to regard the game they played for a living as a job. John Want believed that ‘I’m getting paid to do something I enjoy, so that can’t be work’; Alan Gilzean refused to define his occupation as work or a profession, preferring to see it as a sport. Others, like Mike England, undoubtedly saw football as work: ‘I play it for a living as opposed to doing it just for sheer enjoyment. People depend on me to do n good job. It’s not a relaxing thing. I never say I’m going toplq~football. It’s work’. But the distinction between work and play was not always so clearly drawn. John Pratt told Davies that ‘Five days a week I call it work, because I think of the money, but on the last day, Saturday, I call that play and 1 never think of the money’.I6 Before the 1950s, these narratives of football as ‘work’ and ‘play’ were constantly rehearsed in the popular media as well as in the more private discourses of football associations and clubs. What follows is an attempt to tease out and examine some of these ideas through an analysis of a selection of contemporary sources.

Footballers aiid Work

A footballer’sworking timewasdividedbetween thetraining and preparation for matches and the playing itself. These two aspects of employment seem

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The Sports Historian No. 22 (I)

to have been perceived very differently by players. Training represented the routine labour of the job: it was unquestionably work rather than play. Under the control and instruction of a trainer or manager, the work and conduct of employees was closely monitored. Any transgressions were reported to the board of directors and players could be censured, fined or even suspended for missing sessions or failing to keep to the prescribed trainingrules.The ‘training groundas factory’ idea wasevident atMiIlwal1 in the 1930s, where players were required toclock-inby signing theTraining Book each morning and afternoon and to obtain the permission of the manageror trainerbefore leaving.” Yet the suggestion that footballers had ‘muchincommon with theold convicts working the treadmill’ wascertainly an exaggeration.Is Working hours, for instance, were shorter than in most jobs. Mondays often represented a day off and some clubs trained only in the mornings, as had been the norm before 1914. Even where the schedule was more rigorous, players rarely trained more than four hours a day and never more than five days a week. Raich Carter, player-manager of Hull City from the late 1940s, encouraged players who were tired to take days off and do ‘just as much training as he feels he needs’.I9

What did players think of training? Tony Mason is doubtless correct to speculate that many considered it ‘boring, unimaginative and regular’.20 The most common complaint throughout the period was that training took place without aball andprovidedlimitedpreparation formatches. Accounts of sessions before 1914 indicate the predoniinance of sprinting, running, walking, skipping and some work with weights alongside occasional bouts of ball work and there is little indication that the general experience of training changed significantly between the wars.21 In 1933 the training schedule at Second Division Millwall consisted of ‘running, skipping, physical exercises and ball practice’.” Most monotonous of all was the practice of lapping the perimeter of the playing field, in order to harden the muscles and improve general fitness and stamina. At some clubs, players were allegedly required to circle the pitch as often as fifty or sixty tiiiies a day.”

By the 1930s such traditional training methods were subject to increasing criticism. Charles Bell, a former coach of Italian, Portuguese, Swiss and French as well as English clubs, complained in 1934 that training methods in England were ‘slip-shod and antiquated’. He went on:

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Players turn up at the ground in the morning, do a few laps, a dozen sprints and ten minutes skipping and that’s that. When they are allowed to kick a ball it is more the rule than the exception that gym shoes are worn. There is nothing organised in ball practice.. . Players often ask for a ball for heading practice, and they stand in groups of threesor foursandnod the ball toeachother. Nothingreally happens as it is likely to happen in a real match.?‘

Tom Mitchell, manager of York City and a pupil of the FA’S instructional trainingcourses which beganin 1934,outlined hisenlightenednpproach for readers of Topical Tiiim.

Daily training is a pleasure with us. We play games. Just plain larking about. The larking, though, is done with afootball and with a view to stamina-strengthening players.. . Lotsofclubsincludealotoflappinground thegroundintheirroutine. I’ve done it. Now there’s nothing so boring as lapping round like a squirrel in a cage. No interest.

Now it is a fact, admitted by the medical profession, that physical exercise which doesn’t also exercise the mind is worse than no exercise at all.

So, if a game of five-a-side football is started, there’s an instant rush to join in. Or if a relay race with football to be dribbled is put on for a penny a corner, there’s a desperate dash to get into a team.

Players will sweat and sweat and dash and tear about with a cheerful grin under these circumstances. They do inore work, willingly, than they would do in a fortnight at lapping.

It’s training with a laugh. We like what we are doing ... All our training, evening as well, is light-hearted. ‘Controlled freedom’, I call it.’5

Writing in 1950, Peter Doherty, recently appointed as player-manager of Doncaster Rovers, considered lapping and sprinting to be ‘still the main props inmost trainingroutine[s]’but felt that they oughttobecombined with competitivegames such as football tennis, ‘walking football’, basketball and

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The Sports Historim No. 22 ( I )

volleyball. Such activities, he thought, ‘help to make training an attraction, and not the dull drudgery it often tends to become’.26 Raich Carter thought lapping ‘over-rated’, consigning it to part of the Thursday schedule alongside dribbling, sprinting and body exercises. For him, ball practice was ‘the correct way to do training’ as it was ‘ideal for keeping players interested in their At Crystal Palace, another young player- manager, Ronnie Rooke, abolished lapping entirely, replacing it with eight to ten-mile hikes on a number of different routes. He also introduced competitive ball races intended to ‘deaden. ..the monotony’ of ‘the old knees-bend-arms-stretch-touch your toes methods’.’8

The fact that these managers, all of whom had been professionals themselves, were increasingly concerned with keeping players attentive to their ‘work’ suggests that football training was regarded as fundamentally miiiteresting. Did all players think the same? Although the evidence is obviously sparse, we do have some clues. Willie Cook’s account of his training schedule with Everton, described in his ‘weekly diary’ from 1938, shows that he preferred passing and shooting practice, and competitive ‘games’ such as wall tennis, to the usual routine of lapping and ~printing.’~ No doubt in coniiiioii with most players, Cook’s attitude to training depended on his own form and that of the club as well as the weather. Enjoyable training often corresponded with success on the pitch:

It is a pleasure training these sunny mornings. I do my usual laps. Two without stop, and walk one and run one after that. We have no match on Saturday, but I do my training as usual.

After my sprints I go into the gym, and do exercises and punch-ball work. Then the trainer gives us a few light balls to practice with.

One could play all day at this. As it is, the trainer has to tell us we have had enough.

Afterwards, in for our usual baths and then change into our clothes again. The chaff these mornings is very funny, and everyone seems to be in good humour, probably owing to the fact that the team is getting better

Cook particularly enjoyed special training, which provided a break from the usual environment and schedule- ‘a fine time, staying at a first class hotel

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Work atid Play: The Professiotial Foorballer. it1 Eiiglatirl

and partaking of the mineral baths, nice walks in the country, and fed on the best of food’ - although he admitted that some of his teammates would sooner have stayed at home.31

Whether they looked fonvard to training or not, however, what is clear is that many professionals genuinely ‘worked at football’?’ It was not so much that it washard physical toil, although therewasnodoubt that itcould be. The South African winger George Wienand regarded training with HuddersfieldTown as ‘hard labour’ compared with what he hadexperienced at home: ‘For the first week or so I was aching all over, and when the day’s work was through I had a job finding the energy to crawl to my digs’?’ Though he did not regard it as manual labour, even Justice Roche acknowledged that playing football could be ‘very hard work’;U Yet more important than the physical activity itself, work in this sense involved a dedication and commitment to football as a trade, a craft or a vocation - certainly somethiiig more than merely a ‘game’. Thus Tony Mason’s portrayal of Stanley Matthews as a professional ‘dedicated.. .to fitness and training’ with ‘the qualities of an artisan who kept his tools in order’ may have been applicable to other players as well?s Like Matthews, Cook seems to have taken seriously the business of keeping himself in condition. He watched his weight, attended assiduously to potential injury problems and put in more training hours than his club required. Indeed if Cook’s diary were anything to go by it would appear that a great deal of training took place at the initiative of the player rather than his employer. There was clearly an element of professional pride in keeping oneself physically fit and prepared to play. ‘Even although you are on the transfer list or given a free transfer, one should always stick into the training’. This, Cook observed, was the ‘only way to become a footballer and remain one’.36

Footballers may have preferred playing matches to training for them, but ‘playing’ in this context was still work. They must surely have looked forward to the weekly (or twice-weekly) match as an opportunity to display their skills - to supporters, colleagues and employers - but it is difficult to know exactly how much freedom was retained in this part of the job. At the beginning of this period, directors or secretary-managers continued to control the selection of many professional teams and exercised some input into how they played. At AstonVilla, aclubwhichdidnot appointamariager until 1936, the board of directors issued periodic tactical instructions to

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Tlic Sports Historim No. 22 (I)

players through the secretary - to markopponents at throw-ins, avoid giving away needless fouls around the penalty area or to ‘place free-kicks to better advantage’?’ Yet the authority of the employerwas limited once the player stepped onto the field. The Millwall directors acknowledged as much in their application to the National Insurance Commissioners, observing that a manager and trainer could only control ‘the method of performance of duties’ ofaplayer ‘asfaraspossible’?8 Tactical instiuctions, like coaching, probably had little impact on footballers who felt they had little to learn: according to one First Division manager ‘You tell the players to do certain things and then when they get on the field they forget all about Indeed despite the innovations of Herbert Chapman and others, it would seem that tactics (such as they existed) remained largely in the hands of trainers and senior players for much of this period.“O

The position of captain carried with it particularauthority. His was often a . dual role: as players’ representative and spokesman on one hand and a type of supervisor for management 011 the other. In 1924 the West Ham United board acceded the captain’s right to alter the formation and tactics on the field and the Millwall players were likewise informed that while the trainer and manager determined the ‘general plan of play’ before the match, the ‘control of tactics on the field is in the hands of the captain’?’ Irrespective of the relative freedom players enjoyed over ninety minutes, however, their play and conduct were ultimately subject to close scrutiny by their employers. Improper behaviour on the field often led to the player being warned or brought before the board of directors. In 1925 Vic Watson, for example, an England international fonvard, was dropped by West Ham for kicking ‘anopponent in anFA Cup tie:“ Neither did indifferent performances go unnoticed. Two of Darlington’s fonvard line for the 1937/38 season, Albert Brallisford and Albert Harris, were interviewed by chairman and manager and asked to explain their recent poor form. Brallisford never playedforthec1ubagain.h 1928, meanwhile, theentire Astonvillareserve team had been up before the board and collectively censured following an adverse display in one fixt~re:’~

The enjoyment of playing a game that one presumably liked was thus tempered by the anxiety of having to perform consistently under difficult conditions. Bob Crampsey described the footballer’s as

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Work aid Play: The Professional Footballer iii Eiiglarrd

ahighly fraughtanduneasylife.Hisskil1 transientandovenvhelmingly dependent on his colleagues, is all he has to offer. Week by week, in the wildest variety of climatic conditions and against all sorts of physical andmental intimidation, he submits himselfto rigorous and merciless public scrutiny.u

Such hyperbole may not have engendered sympathy from supporters but it does indicate some of the pressures faced by professional footballers. One of thegreatest of these was undoubtedly the fear of injuiy, a fear which increased with the intensification of football work in this period:“ Intensification was felt less in terms of increased training hours and fixtures than in thequickening paceof thegame. Many commentators identified the 1925 change in the offside law as crucial to this. According to Jimmy Fay:

When the change came a new system of training was instituted by many clubs. Players were trained for sprinting more than football. Speed meant everything and still means almost everything today. Trainers are continually trying toget another ‘yard’ on their players. And with this striving to ‘tune up’ the players to greater speed, the strain becomes greater and greater. You know as well as I that such striving leads to players becoming more susceptible to knocks, injuries, bre‘akdowns etc:’6

Fay argued that this ‘craze for speed’ had thrown scores of footballers ‘on the scrap heap’: ‘I reckon that the average players’ life in the game has been reduced by probably40 per cent in the past few The Union’s demand in 1938 for an increase in the maximum wage was thus partly justified by the ‘speeding-up’ of what was anyway considered ‘a precarious living forth emany’?* Although it is hard to prove that increased speed led to more injuries, there is less doubt that players were henceforth expected to work harder when they played. Contemporary reports certainly admitted that players now had less time to rest for a ‘breather’ during these increasingly end-to-end mat~hes.“~ Whether such changes also led to the deskilling of professionals-reflected, as Willy MeisI argued, in the loss of craft and technique at the expense of speed - is a question that must wait more thorough investigation?0

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The Sports Historian No. 22 (I)

Footballers and Play

We know veiy little about what footballers did in the enornious amount of spare time that their working schedules allowed. There is a danger of assuming, in this as in other areas, that profes‘sionals were a honiogenous group, engaged in a particular set of recreational andcultural activities. We must also avoid tracing modern stereotypical notions of football culture backwards onto earlier periods. It may well be the case that the leisure hours of footballers have always revolved around the golf course, public house and betting shop but we need to be sensitive to the temporal and geographical variations which coniplicate this rather static picture.

The conibination of reasonable wages and free time which professionals enjoyed inevitably presenteddifficulties forthe football employer. Whether for moral or sporting reasons (or both), most clubs made at least some attempt to control the off-field activities of their playing staff. The building of clubhouses and recreational facilities had been a feature of the welfare strategy of successful clubs such as Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield United since the turn of the ~entury.~’ Rules over players extended beyond the training field. In the 1930s Millwall required all sick and injured players to be home by 8 p.m. each evening while squad members were subject to a 10 p.m. curfew before match days.s2 The players of Hull City, meanwhile, could only attend dances after Tuesdays if they were chaperoned by a club official or had gained prior permission from the club. Probably on the assumption that drinking was more counterproductive to the athlete than dancing, players were also banned from visiting pubs after Monday of each ~veek.5~ Employers also tried to exert control over the living arrangements of players. Like so many industrial concerns, football clubs began to take responsibility for the housing of at least some of its players from the inter-war period. New players were often placed in lodgings with a team-mate or, if married, in a rented club hou.ye.54 The Charlton Athletic directors bought six houses in 1934 which they let to the players ‘at very reasonable rents’. Major Buckley, meanwhile, set upahostel forhis youngercharges at Wolverhampton Wa~iderers .~~ This was certainly a further device for keeping the private activities of employees under close surveillance. Huddersfield Town, for example, required all lodging to be approved by the club and expected the landlord or landlady toreport ‘the hours kept and conduct of theplayers’.56

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\Vork mid P l y : The Profcssional Footballel- iii Eiiglaiid

The notion of the football director as paternal employer certainly has some application here. Charles Korr has argued that, in relation to West Ham United at least, the club assumed ‘the dual role of employer and parent towards its players’.s7 Tony Mason thought that before the First World War football clubs exhibited ‘astrange kind of paternalism’ which involved ‘stifling the.. .independence [of players]. . .but cushioning them fromsome of the natural contingencies of life which most working people could rarely face with equanimity”8 Directors certainly used widely recognised paternal forms of management such as social evenings, whist drives and outings to improve personal relations between the employer and the workforce and encourage collective loyalty and commitment to the club.“9 For a short time Sheffield United even arranged for a local golf club to take on its players, directors and officials as winter members and organized regularclubvisits.6° By the 1930s some clubs were also arranging activities for players during the close season, possibly with the dual puipose of keeping them fit and under close supervision. West Ham players, for example, were competing in cricket, tennis and golf tournaments as well as swimming galas, often against rival football clubs, during July and August of each year.6*

There were, however, considerable limitations to the scope of club involvement in the broader social life of its players. Even the West Ham board recognised that club social evenings were difficult to organise as ‘players had always shown a marked preference for arranging their own social events’.6’ Despite the appeal of the concept, few football clubs were really paternalistic in the broadest sense. If many clubs were headed by individual paternalistic figures and remained small in scale, there was still a lack of personal contact between employer and worker. The positioning of the secretary, manager and trainer as a link (or a buffer) between the board of directors and the players meant that relations between management and labour tended to be formal and irregular. If paternalism’s essential human element existed at all in football, it was increasingly embodied in the manager or secretnry-manager rather than the directors. Face-to-face contact was extremely rare and what Morris and Smyth have termed the ‘theatre of paternalism’, involving the boss shaking the workers’ hands and using their Christian names, was largely absent?’ The observation from one professional who played during the 1940s and 1950s that he only ever

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The Sports Histol-irnt No. 22 (I)

saw the directors on match days was surely not uncornmonP-’

There are some dissenting opinions on this question. Reflecting in 1935 on twenty-one years as aprofessionalwith threecIubs,TommyUrwinfelt that things had improved:

There is a more sympathetic link between the dressing-room and boardroom. At one time.. .the players hardly knew their own directors. The only time a player saw the inside of the office was when he was on the mat for some supposed misdemeanourP5

What Urwin’s view indicates more than anything else is the variety of experiences and the range of different strategies ernployed by professional clubs. Duncan McKenzie was more explicit on this point when in 1939 he compared the attitude of his present club Middlesbrough with his previous employers Brentford:

ThitikingitoverIcannotrecallanyrestrictioii the ’Boromakes.They trust the player, and argue that any sensible man will take care of himself when he knows his career depends on it.

Brentford, 011 the other hand, play forsafety, and inipose restrictions because they believe that some players have to be saved from themselves. A lot can be said for both sides.

Brentford forbid any player to have acar or motorcycle, and compel him to be home by ten o’clock on Friday night.

But when it comes to social life Brentford have the advantage. Their players get regular trips to shows and round the bright lights. The ’Boro don’t go in for things like that except when they have a game in London.66

McKenzie’s description of social life at Brentford is supported by Andrew Horrall’s recent work on popular culture in London, which emphasises the close associations between music-hall establishments and professional football clubs. London clubs and players, as Horrall notes, were regular visitors tolocal halls andcinemas-oftenas invitedguests -fromthe 1900s. In 1912,forexample, ClaptonOrient’splayersweretaken tothe pantomime at their local music hall, the Britannia, by the club president Horatio

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Work a d Play: The Professioiial Footballer in England

Bottomley, and posed for photographs alongside the actors George Lupino andDaisyGoldsackP7 We know, in addition, that many leading footballers struck up close friendships with professional entertainers of various kinds.

Even if not organised directly by the employer, the leisure time of many footballers still often revolved around the club and workmates. It is hardly surprising that professionals tended to socialise with colleagues away from the ground, given that few acquaintances outside football would have shared their unusual working hours. According to his diary, Willie Cook regularly spent free days and afternoons playing billiards, cards or golf with

The club billiard room and the local golf course were important sites of sociability, where the camaraderie generated on the training pitch was reinforced. The distinction between work and leisure time could thus became blurred. The popularity of golf among footballers provides a case in point. As we saw of Sheffield United, golf was often integrated into the normal training schedule of professional clubs. Its benefits were simple - it provided a non-strenuous form of exercise while at the same time encouraging team spirit and light-hearted competition. Charles Sutcli ffe, vice-president of the Football League, regarded ‘golf exercise’, alongside baths and long walks, as ‘an essential part of ordinary training’P9 But playing golf - with team-mates or other professionals - was also an ideal and enjoyable way of killing time away from work. Players who regularly partnered eachotheraround thegolfcourseoftenestablished long-lasting friendships which extended beyond club loyalties. Former colleagues Jack Bruton and Arthur Cunliffe, for instance, continued to holiday togetherwith theirfamnilies, visitinggolfcoursesand bowling greens on the way, long after Cunliffe had left Blackburn Rovers to join Aston Villa.‘0

As we might expect, the leisure activities of footballers seem to have been dominated by sports, games and physical activity. Tables 1 and 2 indicate that some of the most popular hobbies and summer activities which footballers engaged in were sports such as cricket, golf, fishing and tennis, or games like billiards and cards. In this respect, they seem to follow Ross McKibbin’s argument that hobbies in this period were ‘simple extensions of work itself‘.” Footballers played other sports and engaged in physical activities, such as ballroom dancing, both for enjoyment and because it kept them fit for theirjob. More than this, playing cricket, baseball oreven golf

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during the summer months was more than simple recreation for many professionals; it acted as a subsidiary nieans of employment. Activities of this type did not so much encroach upon as compliment the footballer’s formal ‘work’; in this sense, as McKibbin has argued, therelation between work and hobbies was more ‘organic’ than ‘dialectic’.’’

The other major site of leisure for the professional player was the home. ‘Wife and child, home and golf - that is how Dave [Mangnalll’s chief interests in football are catalogued in order of importance’, wrote Topical Tirizesof the Millwall captain in 1938.73 In its ‘Private Lives’ and ‘Human Side’ series from the 1930s,To~icnlTiriiesportrayedsome ofthecountry’s leading footballers as respectable family men (see Table 1). George Shaw, right-back with West Bromwich Albion, was described as a ‘handyman’:

His home is his hobby.. .Apart from the mere four walls, George may point to his house as his creation. The painting, the wallpapers, the fittings, the garden, the radio, George did most of these things. And made a job and joy out of the doing ...[ He] would sooner spend a couple of evenings during a week in papering and painting one bedroom than he would spend the time sitting in the pictures.

Like a number of other players, Shnw also spent some time in his garden, re-turfingthelawnandbreedingroses,althoughheclaiinednot tobe ‘aposh gardener’.’‘ Some players were interested in iiiusic or popular fiction. Hughie Gallacher listened to classical music (‘He.. .prefers Beethoven, Brahms and Liszt to Ellington, Jack Payne and Louis Armstrong’) on his gramophone and radio set and occasionally ‘tinkled’ on the pian0.7~ The Brentford centre-forward John Holliday

gets through an amazing number of books in a year. He reads anything hecanget his hands on-mysteries, novels, humorousstuff. He likes nothing better than a good, swinging yam and the time to read it in. He confesses with alaugh that he takes a book to bed every night and reads himself to sleep.76

Jack Bruton read ‘mostly light stuff and mystery yams’, especially Edgar Wallace; Charlton’s Don Welsh liked ‘a good detective yam, and is very fond of any book which bears the name of author Jeffrey F a r n ~ l ’ ? ~ Peter Doherty, by contrast, claimed hardly to read at all while Mangnall ‘has

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Work aiid Play: The Professioiinl Footbollel- iii Eiiglniid

never read a novel in his life’ despite having ‘a pretty extensive library in his attractively comfortable home at Catford’.’’

The focus on home life in these accounts is partly explained by the fact that all but oneof the featured players was married.Thisdistinction was ofsome significance. Willie Muncie, a winger at Leicester City, had no doubt that

Getting mamed was the best thing I ever did. ..The trouble with our job is we get too much money and too much time to spend it in. When I was single, money just slipped through my fingers. Now I have someone to look after it for me. Having your own home makes a big difference as well, it creates a settled feeling that is reflected in your

Most managers would probably have agreed that married players created fewer problems than their single colleagues and were easier to control, although one at least was not so sure: ‘If a man’s happily married his heart’s in his home and not in the game. If he’s unhappily spliced he’s sure to be up to mischief‘.SO Married or not, in their free time players rarely shunned the public world altogether. Going to the cinema or the dance-hall was as popular with footballers as with the broader working-class public. Willie Cook went to the pictures at least twice a week during the playing season and attended dances perhaps once or twice a month, but was sometimes frustrated at being recognised and ‘besieged with questions’.’’ Based in London, Don Welsh and his wife wereable to visit a West End theatreevery fortnight??

The increasing popularity of the motorcar amongst footballers may give us some ideaabout the latter’s changingsocial and economicstatus. Even with falling prices, the increasing use of hire purchase and the expansion of the second-hand market, it is doubtful whether many footballers could afford to own or run a car before the 1930s. One writer reckoned in 1926 that five professionals at an unnamed club had their own cars: ‘The club will soon need a parking station!’’’ By no means every professional drove, even by the 195Os, but wecanseefromTables 1 and2that motoring wasaprevalent enough activity, at least among the better-off players. As they were not required to drive as part of the job, car ownership was a luxury for footballers rather than a necessity. A car provided the freedom, speed and

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Tltc Sports Historiaii NO. 22 (I)

mobility denied by the train or bus and made easily accessible parts of the country which might otherwise have been beyond one’s reach. Willie Cook’s weekly Sunday run with friends in his ‘modest Momis Eight’ took him from Liverpool to local resorts such as Southport, the North Wales coast and the Lake District?‘ In 1935 Topical Tirites identified ‘motor touring’ as one of the favourite summer pastimes for footballers (see Table 2). It reported that Dai Williams of Wolverhampton Wanderers was planning a visit to the Norfolk Broads while Middlesbrough’s high-scoring centre-forward George Camsell was ‘looking fonvard to a trip to London’.85 The symbolic value of car ownership should not be forgotten here. Historians have told us that the status and social position conferred by the car on its owner was an important factor in understanding its Perhaps we need to examine how the consumption of this (and other ‘symbolic’ goods) may have affected perceptions of the professional footballer as a representative of the community and social group from which he came.

Footballers, Status and Respectability

It is extremely difficult to gauge the social standing of professional footballers at any given time. If we accept that perceptions of the player were inseparable from those of the professional game itself then we might expect to see a gradual, but marked, improvement in his status as football began to occupy an increasingly central role in the nation’s cultural life through the inter-war and post-war years. Yet the need to assert the respectability and good character of footballers - and by extension to be recognised as ‘professionals’ in the broadest sense-was evident throughout the first half of the twentieth century. More often than not, this manifested itself in attempts to defend the paid player against accusations of improvidence, immorality andinsobriety. Billy Meredith hadargued in 1904 that the improved character of the professional in the previous twelve years ‘now see him able to take his position in the best of company ... The days indeed when hotel proprietors absolutely refused to allow a football team on their premises ... are now incidents of the past’!’ Five years later, at a time when the public attitude towards footballers was at a nadir due to a threatened strike, H. Reason of Clapton Orient wrote an extended defence of the professional.

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The idea is abroad.. .that the general character of the footballer is summed up in the one word: ‘rotter!’ Let me disabuse your minds of this ridiculous belief. Footballers can be, and are, as good citizens as any other class of men. Our life is not made up of drinking, squandering our hard-earned money and betting. We have something else to live for.

A great change has come over the football world of recent years. The old habit of soaking has given way to more abstemious habits, not only because there is no place in the football world for men who cannot restrain themselves, but because men are becoming better educated.

Most of us down Hackney way take a keen interest in politics, and follow everything connected with the constituency with the keenest interest. At local elections most of us vote, and we are far readier to discuss the social troubles of the time than spend our spare time in card-playingordrinking.. . Get in touchwithfootballers,I implore you! You will find they donot play ducks anddrakes with the King’sEnglish; they donot misbehave at table, or stare at you open-mouthed when you mention a subject understood by the average man.. . They are just as well educated, just as cultured as their neighbours, and sometimes more gentlemanly than those whose birth and wealth gives them, it would seem, a better claim to the title.88

The alleged fondness for alcohol was a particularly difficult image to shake off. Minute books from the beginning of the century reveal the problems clubs faced in dealing with the excessive drinking of their employees; the creation of rules forbidding players from living or working in licensed premises reflected the assumed practical as well as moral dangers associatedwith alcohol?9 Writing in 1909 James Wilson, a member of the Players’ Union executive, described alcohol as ‘the bugbear of a footballer’s career’, even suggesting that clubs should avoid signing players on in hotels so as to steer them away from temptationg0 James Bradley of Liverpool, however, felt that the association of the footballerwith ‘the third-rate beer- house.. .had been thoroughly eradicated’.

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Footballers, likeothers, takeaglassofwineoccasionally, but takean analysis of footballers and compare them in a numerical sense with any other body of workmen - for after all we are simply earning our living at the game- and I think you will find that the general body of footballers are easily the most temperate of the lot.9’

According to his team-mate Sam Hardy, ‘Footballers.. .nowadays are men blessed with a fair amount of common sense. You don’t find then1 loitering about pubs and street comers whiling away their time as many of them used to do in earlier times’?’ Yet football players were still concemed in the 1930s to dismiss the idea that they drank too much. Writing in 1934, Sam Weaver of Newcastle United admitted that although not all players were teetotallers, ‘the big majority are very m~derate’?~ Dave Mangnall’s staunch teetotallism was linked both to physical and moral qualities: ‘His splendid physique and fitness is a tribute to the way he has always taken care of himself. A cleaner-living, steadierperson it would be hard to find’.w That some professionals still drank to excess and misbehaved is without question-oneiieedonlyconsiderthe way in which anumber ofthe British exports to France in the 1930s conducted them~e lves .~~ What seems to have changed by the interwar period was the tendency to represent the footballer as a respectable professional rather than a disreputable worker.

Cultivating an image of the respectable footballerwas equally important to employers. Charles Sutcliffe’s 1923 view of the player’s recently acquired respectability echoed the voices we have aIready heard:

Sometimeago the professional players weredescribedas blackguards and guttersnipes; today they are welcomed in the best company of society.. .the majority of footballers were unruly and prone to misconduct; today they deport themselves in a worthy fashion.. .To football clubs the doors of the best hotels were closed; now they are thrown wide open. The boozing, guzzling whiskey-swiper is gone, and the ale-can is practically unknown. The old order of shadowing the player during the week to see that he did not get locked up is merely a taIe to tell. Now they associate themselves with the directors and know full well how to take care of t h e m ~ e l v e s . ~ ~

Yet it is doubtful whether footballers were always treated as trustworthy employees by their clubs. Good behaviour was obviously encouraged for

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practical purposes: most clubs sought to avoid recalcitrant employees or ‘troublemakers’ who might disrupt their team-mates and damage the team’s playing prospects. The correspondence files of the Aston Villa secretary reveals that that club, at least, looked to recruit the ‘right type’ of player. The club avoided players who were allegedly difficult to manage or those thought to be ‘boozers’. One of the scouts was told that any prospective recruits should ‘be steady and well behaved and solid in mind and body. We have a nice young well behaved lot of Boys and we should be sorry for any bad influence to get amongst them’?’ Despite Sutcliffe’s claim that players were no longer ‘shadowed’, the same club was still employing private detectives to report on the ‘movements and habits’ of players in the 1920s and 1 9 3 0 ~ ~ ~ The public image and the private treatment offootballers therefore oftenclashed: in practice the ‘respectable’ professional was treated as if he were a troublesome child.

Notwithstanding their private behaviour, many professionals increasingly dressed the part. Blackburn’s centre-forward of the niid-l930s, Ted Harper, was ‘usually found in a dark suit, plain shirts and a bowler hat. He looks ... like a bank manager going to the Eddie Hapgood, the Arsenal and England captain was said to ‘pride himself on being the best- dressed footballer in the game. His plus fours are always immaculately cut, and his shirts and ties are chosen with great care’. Hapgood’s team-mate Alex James wore silk shirts, had his suits tailor made and regularly visited a manicurist. How common this concern was for things sartorial is not clear. When George Barber turned up at training with a bowler hat and watch- chain across his middle, theChelsea trainerapparentlyjoked: ‘Wrong door, m’ lord.. .Corinthians at the other end!’ Yet Barber’s attention to dress was reported to be merely one aspect of his more general concern ‘to raise the tone of professional footballers’.’” There is little doubt that the popular press played their part in this - especially publications such as Sports Pictiires and Topical Tirnes, which in Dave Russell’s words often portrayed ‘smartly dressed young men playing golf, indulging in a moment of posed horseplay, or in a happy family group’.’O* The latter was particularly important - through pictorial series such as ‘Players and their Families’ and ‘The Best Dressed Players’ as well as its written portraits - in redefining the footballer as a serious, sober and respectable worker.lO‘

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What all this meant for the status of the professional footballer is hard to judge. Yet it does seem about time to reassess the idea that during this period professional footballers simply reflected and represented the communities from which they came. Clearly not all professionals remained economically, socially and culturally rooted in theclass or community that nurtured them and it is unlikely that many would have been ‘available for comment in pub and club on a regular basis’.Io3 By the 1930s the best players, at least, began to inhabit different social worlds both from their predecessors and the majority of their supporters. As aprofession, football developed significantly between the turn of the century and the end of the Second World War. In 1926, one commentator contrasted the player of the 1890s with the ‘modern player arriving at the ground in a smart two-seater, possibly attired in plus-fours in readiness for around or two when training for theday is over’.’M Perhaps not all players were well-educated, cultured nien with their own cars and their own businesses. But they were probably more likely than before to have been ‘trusted to behave like gentlemen’.lo5

Conclusion

The public has always held ambivalent attitudes towards the professional sportsperson. As Charles Korr noted, there has been a long tradition in Britain of ‘distrust of the motives and moral character of men who play for pay’.1o6 At the very least, there was a feeling that those who made money from what was essentially a ‘game’ should consider themselves fortunate and not abuse the privilege. They were lucky, after all, to have ajob they liked. Beyond this, a suspicion has lingered that the professional was really in it for the money rather than the love of the sport. At the same time, however, most spectators demanded that professionals ‘worked’ at their play. To have talent was not enough. They also had to show a willingness to ‘graft’ honestly for the benefit of the club rather than the self. Men such as Billy Meredith, Willie Cook, Stanley Matthew, Tom Finney and Nat Lofthouse were perceived, in part at least, as ‘workers’; skilled workers in an exceptional occupation perhaps, but workers ~ionetheless.’~~

It would appear that footballers also felt this ambivalence. They were both players and workers, engaged in a sport and in a job. Both on the field and off, their ‘play’ was often constrained and subject to the imposition of schedules, discipline and orders. But as work, football could also become

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a source of satisfaction, meaning and self-respect. It clearly brought psychological rewards like any other occupation. In this respect, professional footballers may have been like the fishermen, teachers and potters studied by WilliamRonco‘and LisaPeattie in their analysis of ‘satisfying’ occupations. Ronco and Peattie summed up their perceptions of what these people did for a living in the phrase ‘good work’: ‘It is important for people.. .to have work that they feel positively committed to. Good work for these people is work they wniit to do, work they do for more than the money’.Ios Many footballersseem tohave lookedupon thejob they did in thesameway.They were committed to it as a passion but also took it seriously as a living, an economic necessity. Playing football may have been an unconventional thing to do for a living but it was definitely ‘good work’.

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The Sl>orts Historion No. 22 (I)

Table 1: Hobbiesaxid Interests ofProfessiona1 Footballers, 1935 and 1938

Name Jack Bniton

Warney Cresswell

Hughie Gallacher

John Holliday

George Shaw

Bob Bnxter

Peter Doherty

Dave Mangnall Don Welsh

Club Blackburn R.

Everton

Derby C.

Brentford

West Bromwich

Middlesbrough

hlanchester C.

Millwall Chxlton A.

Hobbies and Interests Bowls, Cricket, Golf, Motoring, Radio, Reading. Rugby League Cards, Dog Breeding, Gardening, Golf, Smoking, Reading Boxing, Cricket (Watching), Gardening, Music, Radio, Walking Billiards, Bowls, Cinema. Cricket, DRncing. Gardening, Golf, Hay-hlaking, Reading, Swinmiing,Tennis, Walking Cricket, Embroidery. Fishing, Gardening, Golf, Home Hobbies, Motoring. Music Hall, Roller-skating. Tennis, Shooting, Singing,Swinmling Golf, Joinery, Music, Radio, Swimming. Variety Shows Cards, Dancing, Golf, Home Hobbies, Radio Brass Band Music, Golf, Radio Cricket, Dancing. Golf, Reading, Roller- Skating, Swininling, Theatre

Soirrce: Drawn fromTopicol Times, 25 May, 1.8.15.22 June 1935; 30 April, 7,14,2 1 May 1938.

Table 2: Summer Activities of Professional Footballers, 1934 and 1935

Cricket (21) Motor Boating (2) Piano Playing Motoring (6) Pigeon Keeping (2) Scouting Master Fishing (5) Athletics Singing

Golf (4) Crab Hunting Trawling

Baseball(3) Hay Making Working in Baker’s Shop Tennis (3) Hiking Working at Football Ground Bowls ( 2 ) HenFarming Working at Tobacconists

Sorrrce: Drawn from Topicat Titires, 26 hfay 1934, 15 June 1935.

Gardening(4) Chicken Keeping s\Vimnling

Seaside Holidaying (4) Dog Breeding \Vaking

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Work mid Play: The Professioizal Footbollcr in Eiiglnnd

Notes I

2

3

4

5 6

7

8 9 10

I !

12 13 14

15

16

17 I8 19 20

This article is linked to an ongoing research project on ‘The Post-War Oral History of the Professional Footballer’ with Richard Holt and Tony hlason of De hlontfort University. I am also grateful to Bert hloorhouse and Dave Russell, who were involved in the original project proposal. See Patrick Joyce (ed.), The Historical hfeaiiiiigs of Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Arthur J. hlcIvor, A Histoly of Work ill Britain, 1880-1950 (Basingstoke: Pnlgrave, 2001); R. E. Pahl (ed.),Oii Work: Historical, Coiiiparatiwaiid Tlieoretical~ppronclies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988); Paul Ransonie, Tlie Work Paradigm (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996). Ross hlcKibbin, Tlte Ideologies of Class: Social Relatioils iit Brit&, 1880-1 950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); H. F. Moorhouse, ‘The “work ethic” and “1eisure”activity: the hot rod in post-war America’ in Joyce (ed.),Hisroricolhfenriiiigs of Work, pp. 237-57; Williani Ronco and Lisa Peattie, ‘hlaking Work: A Perspective from Social Science’ in P.ahl (ed.), 0 1 1 Work, pp. 709-22. Quoted in John Harding,Ale.rJaiitcs: Lifeofa FootballLegeiid(London: RobsonBooks, 1988), p. 130. Raich Carter, Footballer’s Progress (London: Sporting Handbooks, 1950), p. 5 1. On the development of Workmen’s Compensation see Peter Bartrip, Workiiien ’s Coiitpeiisotioii iii Twentieth Century Britaiii: Low, History aiidSocial Policy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1987); Peter Bnrtrip and S . B. Burman, The WoiiridedSoldiers of bidirstry: Iiidirstriol Coiiiperisatioii Policy, 1833-1897 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). Charles E. Sutcliffe, J. A. Brierley and F. Howarth, T/ieStozyoofihe Football Lcague, 1888-1938 (Preston: The Football League, 1938). pp. 126-28. Bartrip and Burman, IVoiiiided Soldiers of Indirstry, p 21 1. FA Library, hlinutes of Football League. 9 September 1912. Report of the case Ministry of Health v. Leonard Graham (Footballer) in Sportirig Cliroriicle, 21 April 1934. See report of the case Alfred E. Dodds (Theatrical Producer) v. Hugh Mchianus (Acrobat) in Sporting Cliroiiicle, 12 Janu‘uy 1933. Football Cliat, Cycling and Athletic World, 6 August 1907. T hoiiisoii’s Weekly N e w , 12 hlarch 1910. Professional Footballers’ Association (henceforth PFA), Minutes of Association Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union (AFPTU), 22 August 1938 (AGhl). Charles Korr, ‘A different kind of success: West Ham United and the creation of tradition and community’ in Richard Holt (ed.)Sporroridtlie IVorkiiig Classiiihfodeni Britaiii (hlanchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 155. Hunter Davies, The Glory Gariie (Edinburgh: hlainstream. 1992 edition), pp. 303-05 (Appendix 6). PFA, File 35. hlillwall FC Rules to Players, 1933. Stanley Russell, ‘Soccer kicks off with an experiment’, John Bzrll, 20 August 1949. Carter, Footballer’s Progress, p. 220. Tony hlasonJssocintiori FootballaridEiiglislt Society, 1863-1 915(Brighton: H‘mester, 1980), p. 109.

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The Sports Historimi No. 22 (I)

21 See hlason Association Football, pp. 108-09; DaveRussell,Footb~//nndtheEng/is~i: A Social History of Association Football in England, 1863-1995 (Preston: Carnegie Publishing, 1997), pp. 48-49.

22 PFA, File 35, hlillwall FC Players’ Weekly Diary. 1933. 23 Stanley Russell, ‘Soccer kicks off with an experiment’,Johri Bull, 20 August 1949. 24 Topical Tinies, 4 August 1934. 25 Topical Times, 12 February 1938. 26 Peter Doherty, Soccer (London: Foyles Handbooks, 1950), p. 7 1. 27 Carter, FootbnNer’s Progress, pp. 220-21. 28 Quotedin Stnnley Russell, ‘Soccerkicksoffwithanexperin~ent’,JohriB~rll,20August

19-19. 29 ‘A Footballer’s Weekly Diary’, Topical Times, 12 February (Wednesday) 1938. 30 ‘A Footballer’s Weekly Diary’, Topical Tiriies, 26 February (Wednesday) 1938. 31 ‘A Footballer’s Weekly Diary’, Topical Times, 5 hlarch (hlonday) 1938. 32 This idea in relation to Stanley Matthews comes from Tony hlason, ‘Stanley

Matthews’ in Holt (ed.) Sport arid the Workiiig Closs. p. 175. 33 Topical Times, 21 May 1938. 34 Report of the case Ministry of Health v. Leonard Grnham (Footballer) in Sporting

Clirorricle, 2 1 April 1934. 35 Mason, ‘Stanley Matthews’, p. 175. 36 ‘A Footballer’s Weekly Diary’, Topical Tijiies, 14 May (Wednesday) 1938. 37 Aston Villa FC, Minutes of Board of Directors, 8 January 1929, 14 January 1930. 38 PFA, File 35, Application 10 National Health Commissioners in case of Leonard

Graham, 21 November 1933. 39 Top~ca/Tirr1es,4August 1934.HerbertChapnianadniitted that prior tothe introduction

of his Friday team meetings at Arsenal, players would ‘just nod, say “yes”, then not follow his orders’. Tony Say, ‘Herbert Chapman: Football Revolutionary?’,T/zeSports Historimi, 16 (May 1996). p. 91.

40 Nicholas Fishwick, English Football arid Society, 1910-50 (hlanchester: hlanchester University Press, 1989), p. 35.

41 West Hani United FC, Minutes of Board of Directors, I 1 February 1924; PFA, File 35, hlillwall FC Players’ Weekly Diary, 1933.

42 West Hani United FC, hlinutes of Board of Directors, 2,9 hlarch 1925. 43 Durham County Records, hlinutes of Darlington FC Board of Directors, 6 October,

10 November, I December 1937; Aston Villa FC, hlinutes of Board of Directors, 9 October 1928.

44 Bob Cranipsey,~ieScottish Footba/ler(Edinburgh: William Blachvood, 1978),p.48. 45 For a detailed discussion of the intensification of manual work in the sanie period, see

McIvor, History of Work, pp. 43-78. 46 PFA, File 35, James Fay, ‘Too Old at Thirty’, Draft of eigth newspaper article, 19381

39, othenvise undated, p. 2. 47 PFA, File 35, James Fay, ‘Too Old at Thirty’, Draft of eigth newspaper article, 1938/

39, otherwise undated, pp. 2-3. 48 PFA, File 35, Letter from Jimmy Fay to Fred Hownrth, 21 January 1938. 49 See Tony hlason, ‘Football’ in Tony Mason (ed.) Sport in Britain: A Social History

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 156-57;Topicd Times, 22 June

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193526 hlxch 1938. 50 Willy hleisl, Soccer Revolrrrioiz (London: Panther, 1957), pp. 3549. 5 1 hlason, Association Footbaff, p. 107; Sheffield United FC, Minutes of Football

Committee, IOSeptember I902,6 December 1901; James Cameron, ‘The Tottenh‘m HotspurFC: itsstory and Progress’ inAnon.,77reBookofFootOall(London: Sporting Handbooks, 1906), p. 82.

52 PFA, File 35, hlillwall FC Rules to Players, 1933. 53 Cited in Richard Holt and Tony hlason, Sport iri Britain, 1945-2000 (Oxford:

Blackwell. 2000), p. 69. 54 Aston Villa FC, 52/82, Letter from George Ramsay to G. N. Robinson, 22 July 1919;

Walsall Record Office, 52/1/66, Letter from W. Askew to hlr Lowes, 8 June 1937; Aston Villa FC, Minutes of Board of Directors, 2 May, 27 June, 18 July 1922; George Allison, Allisoit Calling (London: Staples Press, 1948). p. 76.

55 Topical Tiriies, 27 October 1934; 16 April 1938. 56 Huddersfield Town FC, Minutes of Board of Directors, 12 April 1939. 57 Charles Korr, Wesf Hnrii United: Thehlakiiig ofa Football Clrrb(London: Duckworth,

1986), p. 171. 58 hlason, Association Football, pp. 106-07. 59 On the broader use of these managerial techniques, see Richard Whipp, Partents of

Lnborrr: WorkaridSocial Clmrige in rhe Pottery btdirstry (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 14041; John Griffiths, ‘ “Give My Regards to Uncle Billy...”: The Rites and Rituals of Company Life at Lever Brothers, c. 1900-c. 1990’,Birsiness History, 37 (4),

60 Sheffield United FC, Minutes of Football Committee, 5, 18 August 1937. 61 West Hani United FC, Minutes of Board of Directors, 31 July, 14 August 1934, 13

August 1935. 62 West Hani United FC, hlinutes of Board of Directors, 3 December 1934. 63 B. MomsandJ.Sniyth, ‘PatemalismasanEniployerStrategy, 1800-1960’inJ. Rubery

and F. Wilkinson (eds) Employer Strategy and the Lnborrr Marker (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1994.

M Personal correspondence froni George Fisher, received July 1994 (copy held by author).

65 Topicrrl Tirrtes, 22 June 1935. 66 Topical Times, 7 January 1939. 67 Andrew Horrall. Popirlrrr Cirltiire in Loi i r l~ i i : c.1890-1918: The Trarisfonimtioil of

Ei?Jertaiiinzart (hlanchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). pp. 16 1-62. 68 See, for instance, ‘A Footballer’s Weelily Diary’, 29 Janunry (Monday), 12 February

(hlonday), 14 May (Wednesday) 1938. 69 Topical Tiiires, I4 July 1934. 70 ‘The Private Life of Jack Bruton’, Topical Tiittes, 22 June 1935. 71 hlcKibbin, Ideologies of Class, p. 160. 72 hlcKibbin, Ideologies of Class, p. 160. 73 ‘The Human Side of the Players: Dave hI,mgnall’, Topical Tiiiies, 30 April 1938. 74 T i e Private Life of George Shaw’, Topical Tinres, 8 June 1935. 75 ‘Meet Hugh Gallacher off the Field’, Topical Tintes, 1 June 1935.

(1993, pp. 33-35.

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The Sports Historim No. 22 (1)

76 ‘The Private Life of John Holliday’, Topical Tiiries, 15 June 1935. 77 ‘The Private Life of Jack Bruton’, Topical Tiiiies, 22 June 1935; ‘The Human Side of

the Players: Don Welsh’, Topical Tiiiies, 21 May 1938. hlichael Hayes, ‘Popular Fiction and hliddle-Brow Taste’ in Clive Bloom (ed.)LiteratiirearidCiiltiireiitd~odeni Britaiii: Vohtie One: 1900-1929(London: Longman, 1993). provides an analysis of what hecallsthis ‘middle-brow taste’ inliterature, lookingparticularlyat Edgar Wallace.

78 ‘The Human Side of the Players: Peter Doheity’, Topical Tiiiies, 7 hlay 1938; ‘The Human Side of the Players: Dave hlmgnall’, Topical Tiities, 30 April 1938.

79 Topical Tirries, 26 hlarch 1938. 80 Aiiswrs, 14 February 1920. 81 ‘A Footballer’s Weekly Diary, Topical Tiiries. 12 February (Thursday), 26 February

(Wednesday), 19 March (Thursday) 1938. 82 ‘The Human Side of the Players: Don Welsh’, Topical Tiiries, 21 hlay 1938. 83 Topical Tiities, 4 September 1926. 84 ‘A Footballer’s Weekly Diary’, Topical Tiiiies, 22 January (Sunday), 5 March

(Sunday), 21 hlay (Sunday), 28 hlay (Sunday) 1938. 85 ‘What the Soccer Stars do in the Summer Time’, Topical firiies, 15 June 1935. 86 Sean O’Connel1,Tlie Car iii British Society: Class, Geiidernitddlotoriitg, 1896-1939

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 77-78. 87 Quoted in Mason, Associntioii Football, p. 122. 88 The Red Letter, 17 April 1909. 89 On the problems encountered by clubs over players drinking before this period, see

Wray Vamplew, Pay Up niid Play the Gaiiie: ProfessiorialSport iii Britain, 1875-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 232; Aston Villa FC, hlinutes of Board of Directors, 28 December 1899. 11 January, 8 March 1 9 0 .

90 Tlioiiisoit S Weekly News, 24 April 1909. 91 Tlioiiisori’s Weekly News, 12 March 1910. 92 T/ioitisoii’s Weekly Neirs, 26 February 1910. 93 Topical Tiiiies, 17 February 1934. 94 ‘The Human Side of the Players: Dave Mangnall’, Topical Tiiiies, 30 April 1938. 95 See Pierre Lanfranchi and hlatthew Taylor, dfoi*iitg With the Ball: The dfigr-ation of . Professioiinl Footballers (Oxford: Berg, 2001), pp. 55-56. It is interesting to contrast

the portrayalof Hughie Gallacher as adedicated family man in hisTopical Tiiriespiece, with his ‘tempestuous’ playing career and tragic personal life as documented in subsequent accounts. See, for instance, H. F. hloorhouse, ‘Shooting Stars: Footballers and Working-Class Culture inTwentieth-Century Scotland’ in Holt (ed.)Sport aridthe Workiiig Class, pp. 192-93.

96 Topical Times, 7 April 1923. 97 Aston Villa FC, 52/82, Letters from George Ranisay to hlcIlroy. 19 August 1921, 1

February 1922. 98 Aston Villa FC, hlinutes of Board of Directors, 2 ,9 November 1920.23 September,

21 October 1930. 99 Topical Tiiiies, 15 December 1934. 100 Harding, A1e.r Jaiiies, pp. 134-35; Topical Tiriies, 18 hlay 1935. 101 Russell, Footbollniid the English, p. 95.

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Work mid Play: The Professioiial Footbnller iii Eirglaid

102 John Harding, For the Good of the Game: The Official History of the Professiortal Footballers’ Associcltiort (London: Robson Books, 1991), reproduces some of these, pp. 130, 137, 183,200.

103 The quotation is froni Ian Taylor, “‘Football Mad”: A Speculative Sociology of Football Hooliganism’ in Eric Dunning (ed.) The Sociology of Sport (London: Frank Cass, 1970). p. 358. See also Chas Critcher, ‘Football Since the War’ in J. Clarke, C. Critcher and R. Johnson (eds) Workirtg Class Crrlttrrc: Sttidies irt History arid Tlteory (London: Hutchinson, 1979). pp. 162-68.

IM ‘The hlodern Footballer’, Topical Tirites, 21 August 1926. 105 hlason. Association Football, p. 123. 106 Charles Korr, ‘Two Cheers for the Professional: Some Anglo-Americnn Conipnrisons’,

British Joirntnl oftlie History ofS‘ort, 2 (3), (1985), p. 301. 107 On Finney and Lofthouse see Gavin hlellor, ‘Post-war Lancstrian Football Heroes:

Finney, Lofthouse and Douglas’, North WestlnbourHistory, 24 (1999/2OoO), pp. 4- 54.

108 Ronco and Peattie, ‘Making Work‘, p. 719.

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