A FOOTBALLING GHOST FROM THE PAST (WITH APOLOGIES TO SCROOGE)

When Charles Dickens wrote his great tale of Christmas, “A Christmas  Carol” he restated and established many of the Christmas conventions and traditions that we still put to the test each year. The tale  of Ebenezer Scrooge, probably more than any other book anywhere in the world, has established our Christmas. I could write a whole  blog on this theme but will resist that and select just one small aspect.

Scrooge

When Scrooge is visited by the “Ghost of Christmas Past” he is forced, by the spectre, to remember the many happy Christmases of his own past and the kind, jolly people that he knew then. And this is what we all do at Christmas – we tell our children and grandchildren of Christmases when we were small, we remember long lost friends and relations and Christmases that we have enjoyed, we send cards to remind ourselves and our neighbours, friends and relations of our friendship and warm thoughts about them at Christmas time.

And so I have been doing in the last few days – with a rather unexpected result!

Before I begin this I must say to all that this is not particularly about Christmas – that is merely its starting point. And, I would add I’m writing it and it appeals to me because I like little coincidences and the nice symmetries of life. Those of you who are, like Ebenezer Scrooge, of  a harder hearted disposition might dismiss the next few hundred words as (to use Scrooge’s much used phrase) “Humbug!” But to all of you – wherever you might be on the planet  I would, like little Tiny Tim, in Dickens’ story, to  say “A Merry Christmas to you One and All – and God bless Us, Everyone”.

Being passed over the crowd

On Sunday I was writing my weekly article for the football programme that I produce for my local team – Arnold Town. It had a Christmas theme and I was recalling games that I had watched  on past Christmases. I wrote of my own memories of going to big games at Christmas as a child.  Each week of the football season I went to Deepdale to watch Preston North End. This was the mid-fifties and I would (like all the other kids) be passed over the heads of the thousands of spectators so that I could sit on the cinder track right at the side of the pitch. At the end of the game I would wait till my dad or uncle came to find me.

But Christmas games were different. Always Boxing Day local derbies – against Blackpool or Burnley or Blackburn with vast crowds and there would be a family outing – my dad, my  uncle, my dad’s mate and me. And, we would stand in the crowd – I was rarely big enough to see anything except the back of the bloke in front! But I loved it – I was with the men, I could hear the banter and the jokes from the blokes standing around me – and I knew that after the game we would all go home to a family party at my uncle Joe's where the men would all have a bit too much to drink! They would sing slightly rude songs, there would be presents, and if I was lucky, a few silver coins would be pressed into my hands from slightly tipsy Aunts and Uncles.  At half time in the match my uncle Joe would always take a flask of coffee out of his overcoat. One plastic cup which would be shared around. And, out of the other pocket would come his little bottle of rum, which he would pour into the coffee – “To keep out the cold” he would say. I hated it – revolting stuff, but this was growing up time and part of what you do when you go to a match as a man – and I loved it! It was why I would stand and see little of the game – and drink something revolting - it made me feel grown up! Such is the power of football and Christmas!

Little boys standing on the edge
 of the pitch at Deepdale as Tom Finney
takes a corner. I must be on
there somewhere!

But that was at Christmas – other weeks of the year, as I said above, I watched like all the other thousands of kids from the edge of the pitch – sitting on the cinder track that ran round the perimeter – so close to the players that they occasionally crashed into you as they ran or slid off the pitch. If the ball bounced off the pitch there would be a mad scramble of little boys all wanting to retrieve it to throw back to our footballing heroes. I can remember many such days and games – and a few stand out – one in particular, for an incident that happened only four or five feet from where I was sitting. I didn’t think too much of it at the time but in the days and months and years afterwards it became one of football’s legendary events. And, as I researched footballing history for my programme notes the other day it came back, like Scrooge’s ghost,  to touch me in the most unexpected of ways.

Derek Dooley

You see, on a damp and cold February Saturday in 1953 I was sitting on the cinder track at Deepdale watching the game between Preston and Sheffield Wednesday. I was eight years old. It was a big game and mid way through  the Sheffield Centre Forward, the great and feared Derek Dooley ran in towards the Preston Goalkeeper George Thompson. They both lunged for the ball – right in front of my eyes, only a few feet away – and there was a crack that was, it was later said, heard all around the stadium. I can certainly vouch for that – everyone in the ground knew that one of the players had a serious injury. Thompson staggered to his feet but Dooley lay still – his right leg badly broken in two places. Ambulance men ran onto the pitch and Dooley was carted away to the Preston hospital where he was treated. Unfortunately, the treatment didn’t go well. As he was preparing to leave hospital the following Monday a nurse noticed that there was no reaction in his toes when touched. When the pot was removed it was found that a small scratch on the back of his leg had become infected. Gangrene had set in and it was decided to amputate his leg. It was thought at the time that a chemical from the white touchline marking had got into his injury. They were the touchline markings right on front of where I had sat!

Derek Dooley and his wife Sylvia
leave Preston hospital for home after
his "accident".

Derek Dooley died in March 2008 aged 78. Of course in those days footballers were poorly paid and the loss of his leg meant his career was over. But, he  overcame the trauma of the  amputation to become the club's manager, and was later chairman of their rivals Sheffield United. The way Dooley triumphed over adversity made him the most respected icon of his football-mad home city, and his administrative skills earned him an MBE in 2003. Aggressive on the field, he became renowned off it for his modesty and integrity; the United manager Dave Bassett reckoned him "a man you could trust your life with".

Deprived of his livelihood at 23, Dooley displayed a complete lack of bitterness or self-pity. Indeed, the only time he showed resentment was when Wednesday sacked him as manager on Christmas Eve 1973. He would not watch a game at Hillsborough for 19 years; when eventually he returned, for a Sheffield derby, the entire crowd rose to give him a standing ovation.

Derek Dooley's statue at Bramall Lane
- home of Sheffield United

On his death, both Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United opened their own books of condolence the following day. United announced  that they would name their new youth academy after him and that  a statue of Dooley would be commissioned. 

But, you might be asking, that’s all very interesting but why are you blogging about an obscure event sixty years ago which probably has  a pretty limited appeal in terms of interest – except to football nuts! Well, that is true, but as I researched  my Arnold Town programme I discovered something else – that, rather like Scrooge was touched by the spectres who visited him in Dickens’ great tale, there brushed against me something that brought that event back to my mind and (yes, I do mean this) set the hairs on the back of my neck tingling!

I was searching Google images for a photo of the great crowds who used to attend matches. I put in “Preston North End”, found a number of suitable pictures and then, following  a link, suddenly a picture of Dooley and that fateful day in 1953 popped up onto my screen. “Look”, I said to my wife, “I was there then”.

But then, as the link continued, another photograph with a face I recognise almost as my own! It was my good friend Brian Bradley – a man I had been sitting beside in a football meeting only three or four days before and who I have known and respected for many years. Brian is a Sheffield man – a Yorkshire man – gritty, no-nonsense, sincere,  a droll sense of humour, kind, thoughtful, modest and oozing integrity. Just as was said of Dooley,” He is a man you could trust your life with!” I would say the same thing about Brian. He has given his whole life to football at every level and I know him, and have known him for years,  because  of our mutual interest in local sport and football and because  we both sit in the Committee than runs the Under 19 Football in the North Midlands.

 So, Brian’s face leapt out at me from the thousands of Google images in front of me. Why?

My friend Brian (centre) receiving
his award.

Because, last year Brian was awarded the  “Derek Dooley Award”.  Sheffield & Hallamshire FA and Sheffield City Council  celebrated and recognised the outstanding dedication and achievements of Brian to  the grassroots football community in the area. The Derek Dooley Award  is  specially commissioned  to recognise and honour the outstanding contribution made by Derek Dooley to both the professional sides from Sheffield playing today, and for the grassroots game as a whole - and my friend Brian has been a deserved recipient.

Brian Bradley  has dedicated his whole live to the game at a local level starting out as a player, then a referee and referees assessor before moving into the administration side of the game. And he is still doing it – with huge commitment, humour and expertise - passing his vast experience in to the next generation.

When I sat with Brian last week, I knew nothing of this – he hasn’t boasted of it – he wouldn't. But I somehow  had  a link with that day all those years ago, when I sat, as  a little boy, on the cinder track at Preston, saw the dreadful injury to one of the footballing greats  and never dreamed that over half a century later I would sit, regularly, with a man who has followed on the tradition set up by Dooley. In those days I didn't even know where Sheffield was and never dreamed that sixty years later I would be friends and a colleague of someone who subsequently had a direct link with the man who lay badly injured on the grass in front of me!

Last year Brian wrote an obituary for a footballing friend who had died after a long illness. He wrote of the man “he can be best summed up by saying that today’s players are yesterday's youngsters and today’s youngsters are tomorrow's players, and they all have one thing in common, they are all playing because of Tom's determination and dedication to the club he loved so much." That comment could equally be made of Derek Dooley and Brian Bradley.

At our meeting last week – the last before the Christmas break – Brian arrived with two packets of mince pies – “to celebrate Christmas” he announced. We all had a laugh at his expense and said things like “No expense spared” and “This doesn’t sound like a Yorkshire man”! (For readers in far off places across the globe, Yorkshire men are known in this country for being very careful with money!). In a way a real Ebenezer Scrooge moment – the tight fisted Yorkshire man turns up just before Christmas with Christmas mince pies for everyone! I like that!

"God Bless us everyone"
said Tiny Tim

So, yes, when I saw the connection between the event that I witnessed as a child, when I thought of all the history of it  that I knew so well and then  realised that in a very tiny way I was involved because of my friendship with Brian – then yes, the hairs on my neck bristled a little bit! It put the whole thing in a new context and made it extra meaningful. And that, of course, is what happened to Scrooge in Dickens’ tale – the ghostly visions opened up a new world for him and he became a new man. And when I next see my friend Brian, after Christmas, I will be delighted to tell him of my little connection with his award – and like Scrooge when he woke on Christmas morning after his ghostly visits, I will feel a bit of a warm glow at that association.

Now, as I said above, there might be those of you out there who are of the Scrooge disposition and might just say "Bah Humbug" to what, in the end, is just a bit of a coincidence  - that I went to a football match half a century ago and now know a man who has got an award! But to you I would say these are the little events and occurrences  that perhaps set us off from the animal kingdom - we respond emotionally to situations, we notice quirky little things like this, we think about our past and how it affects our present and future - in short, it is, I believe, one of the characteristics of being a person. To use a musical analogy it is why a piece of music can make us weep or feel pride or feel huge excitement - when after all, be it Mozart or Madonnna, it is in the end only an assembling of notes and sounds and rhythms. It does so because, as human beings, we are stirred by these deep emotional instincts and feelings which in turn are often related closely to our past and its good times and bad times, its happy events and sad, notions of right and wrong or good and bad, the people we have met and been close to, events that have changed our lives  and so on. Animals and robots know no such considerations - but we are humans and we have these feelings. A week or two ago my wife and I went to a concert to see the "Bootleg Beatles" - a wonderful evening of pure 60s nostalgia. And as we listened to the music and watched the group perform it transported me back to the sights, sounds,smells, feelings and emotions of the period - and yet, in the final analysis, it was only a few notes arranged in a particular way and in a particular rhythm. This is part of the human condition and which  separates us from animals or robots. We have feelings. And it is what the ghosts taught the hard hearted Scrooge - a man who until his Christmas Eve visitors - was known for having no feelings.  In the end, my little discovered coincidence   gave me a new take on something that I remember from my childhood - those days of going to watch my team, of being part of a huge crowd, of witnessing an event which made the newspapers and then sixty years later knowing a man who also has a small part in this jig saw made me feel good, it gave the memories and extra dimension .

So, to those of you who would say "Bah Humbug" I will simply repeat the final words from "A Christmas Carol".........."Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all and infinitely more......he became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as that good old city knew........." Perhaps that is what  happened to the great Derek Dooley after his dreadful accident on that fateful day in 1953 - it transformed him and he became a new person so respected and loved in his native City. And that in turn has touched me via my friendship with my colleague Brian Bradley.........I am a very tiny part of that jig saw of events that began in my home town almost sixty years ago.

"And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Everyone”.