"Auld Lang Syne" and Empty Buckets.

The man himself

It’s a long time since I last blogged – not that there has been nothing to blog about but there have been other preoccupations. A lovely week spent in the sunshine of Tenerife, a granddaughter’s birthday party to attend, writing the minutes of meetings that I had attended have all gobbled up the time. And in what was left we have followed the tales of disaster and mayhem as floods, high seas, winds and storms batter Britain. Luckily, we in Nottingham have got off very lightly (so far!) but to see on TV places that we know well – Dawlish, the Thames Valley, the Somerset levels – under water and storm damaged has been a salutary but chastening experience - timely reminder of the knife edge that we live on. How clever we humans think we are until nature takes its course!

But this weekend I woke up to the news that one of the great sportsmen of the world – the footballer Tom Finney - has died at the age of 91. I have oft blogged about Finney – he was the name and the legend that I grew up with. Arguably the greatest footballer ever to play for England, maybe the greatest the world has ever produced. A true sportsman and a gentleman he filled my every weekend as I grew up in Preston in the 1950s until he retired in 1960. Week after week I would walk with my friend, now long dead, "Nebber" to Deepdale the home of Preston North End Football Club, each of us with our blue and white hand knitted scarves joining the blue and white throngs of other supporters filling the narrow streets of terraced houses.  Tony Clarkson or "Nebber" as we called him (because he always wore a flat cap) and I would walk the 10 or 15 minute walk from our houses in Caroline Street and along Skeffington Road with thousands of others, all going in the same direction, all of us to see our heroes but most of all  to see Finney weave his magic. Finney was a one club man – he never left his home town club. Preston were a top team in those days but no Manchester United or Arsenal. The club's story was largely one of  mid table mediocrity, occasionally challenging for honours but sometimes  struggling to stay in the top division . Finney never won any great titles or medals – he had a glittering career, but little silverware to show for it. It was the price he paid for loyalty. But that is only a small part of the story.  He was the ultimate loyal servant to both club and country. He was blessed with exquisite balance, skill and tactical intelligence, he played the game with a grace – or indeed good grace – given to very few: he was never booked, sent off or even ticked off by a referee. If fouled by an opponent – and he so often was – he simply shrugged, got up from the floor and carried on. If ever there was a career in football which proved that trophies are not the only, or even any, measure of greatness, it was that of Finney. The championship of the Second Division in 1950-51 was the only winner’s medal he ever won either for club and country and to this he added a Cup Final loser’s medal in 1954. But the admiration of numberless fans in the post-war years was of considerably more significance.

The great, the good and the not so good of the modern
game (Manchester cityand Chelsea) yesterday  pay their respects

His loyalty to Preston was tested when an Italian, prince Roberto Lanza di Trabia, made him an unimaginable offer to play for his team, Palermo, in Sicily. The Italian had seen Finney play for England while they were touring Italy in 1952, and was so impressed he offered him a £10,000 signing-on fee, wages of £130 a month plus a bonus of up to £100 a game, a Mediterranean villa, a sports car and unlimited travel to and from Italy for his family. At the time, Finney was earning £14 a week with Preston (reduced to £12 in the summer close-season) plus a bonus of £2 for a win and £1 for a draw. Finney was tempted – indeed he later admitted that he wanted to go, it was an opportunity not to be turned down – but the rules at the time allowed Clubs to retain their players and Preston refused to let him leave. Finney’s response was typical, he simply got on with life and continued to give of his best. What a far cry from today’s players who, to coin a modern phrase, "throw their toys out of the pram",  sulk, disrupt team morale, tweet, go to the press and exhibit all the other spoiled child characteristics.

Sir Tom at the side of his statue outside the Preston ground
-"the Splash" set in stone

Born within a stone’s throw of the Preston ground he was a small lad who would never have made it in today’s physique obsessed and brutal game where athleticism, power and strength rather than skill, guile and intelligence are the criteria for success.  Despite his slight stature and frequent bouts of ill health he gained a trial with Preston when he was 14. He stood just 4ft 9in tall and weighed less than 5 stone when he was offered a contract to join the ground staff, but his father insisted that he first learn a trade. How strange and unacceptable that would seem to today's young football "wannabes"! So, he signed, as an amateur part-timer, and became an apprentice plumber – an occupation that would run parallel with (and outlast) his football career and lead to his nickname,” the Preston Plumber”.

The iconic photo - "the Splash"

In one respect Finney was lucky, he joined a Preston side famed, as they had been for half a century, since they had been nicknamed the “Invincibles” for their quick skilful football. The old Invincibles had won the League and the Cup double in the late nineteenth century and been unbeaten in both these  competitions.  It made them the first team to achieve the English "double". Preston also won the Cup without conceding a goal. Of the seven teams to have since completed the double in England, Preston remain to this day the only one to have done so unbeaten. This historical and statistical fact was perhaps important as far as the young Finney was concerned for Preston, above all clubs, and since those far off days of glory, played “in the Scottish style”. The Preston team had for years been built upon Scottish players – the town was, after all the first footballing town of any significance on the road south from Glasgow  and Preston’s footballing style, developed first in the era of the Invincibles, was based upon the skilful, Scottish type of passing game where the ball was passed to feet in short sharp,movements. No booting of the ball up the pitch and chasing it! This was “football science” and it won games and won Preston a lot of fans for it was attractive to watch and brought results. It was into this footballing culture and skilful team that the young Finney came – and he added his own very great skills. Apart from his natural balance, unquestionable ball skills, intelligence, temperament, and footballing nous there was one other critical attribute the young Finney possessed - and something that not only set him apart from other great players of his generation but which would also, in the modern world of soccer, make him virtually unique and worth millions - he was two footed. And this meant that he could play virtually anywhere in the team. His natural position was outside right but, being equally skilled with both feet, could play just as well at outside left. He was world class anywhere on the forward line and for much of his later career spent his time as a deep lying centre forward. When playing for England he invariably played at outside left - the right wing position being given to the one sided Stanley Matthews. In May 1947 in Lisbon England routed Portugal 10-0. Matthews was irresistible on the right, but Finney, playing at outside left, was in such devastating form that his opponent, the Portuguese captain and right-back Álvaro Cardoso, walked off the field in the first half, demanding to be substituted. He never played for his country again!

Tom, the elder statesman in the Preston crowd.

The outbreak of war and his apprenticeship  postponed his footballing career and it was  August 1946 before he made his Preston debut as a  24 year old. Only twenty eight days later he was playing for England.The rest, as they say, is history – he blossomed to become the great player he did. He was twice named footballer of the year, was awarded an OBE in 1961, a CBE in 1992 and knighted in 1998. After his retirement from the game he built up his plumbing business and became part of the life blood of his beloved Preston North End. He became president of the club, and served his local community by becoming an ambassador for the town, a magistrate and chairman of the local health authority. One could not but feel this was a life well lived.

Am I on there somewhere? - I've certainly stood there and
watched him take a corner

His brilliance inspired and often carried the team – whether it was Preston or England. The great Bill Shankly, the famous manager of Liverpool and an established player for Preston when Finney joined the club, said of his great friend: "Tom Finney would have been great in any team, in any match and in any age … even if he had been wearing an overcoat." It was classic Shankly hyperbole, but none, like me, who saw him play would disagree. Another Shankly quote was made in the era of the great George Best. Shankly was asked if Best was a better player than Finney. Shankly’s reply, his thick Scottich accent tinged with  wry Liverpool scouser humour was spot on: “Yes", said Shankly,"Best is quicker, but then again Tom is 55 now so he has lost a touch of speed”. Shankly, like all the other greats of the game, was correct- Finney was quite simply the best. This weekend’s papers are full of comparisons – that Finney would be in any side that comprised the greatest of the all time greats, that the great Lionel  Messi is his footballing heir, that only Duncan Edwards, who died so young and so tragically at Munich, could in any way be equated with him as an England player – and so it goes on. Tommy Docherty, who played with Finney at Preston famously said a year or two ago that the great Lionel Messi is a wonderful player and he could pay him no higher praise than to say that Messi, at his very best, is a sort of immature Finney!

How many times did I lean over that wall to
shake his hand?

But all these comparisons of his footballing skills miss the point for those like me who regularly watched him. There was an extra quality that even in those far off days was unique. He was loved - not only for his football skills but for the way he played the game, for his gentleness and for his quiet humility. How many times did Nebber and I stand over the players' tunnel waiting for the team to come out lead by Finney. And, as they emerged onto the field and the scent of embrocation wafted out of the tunnel and into the crowd, people would lean forward to shake his hand and wish him well. And he always responded - not  seeking glamour or celebrity status, a thing unknown in those days,  but because it was the right thing to do. These were his people, he was their son. How many mornings in the school holidays did we stand with our autograph books or our well thumbed copies of "Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly" outside the Preston ground and wait for him to emerge after training. And he, always having the time to sign his autograph, to rub his hand through the hair of hundreds of little boys and ask if they were coming to Saturday’s game. His signature a neat script not some meaningless indecipherable scrawl scribbled down without even looking. And then he was gone, smartly dressed, suit or blazer and tie, shoes shining and his boots slung over his shoulder walking off down Lowthorpe Road and around the back of the ground and onto Deepdale Road and so home. No Ferrari to jump into, no gated mansion with high walls and security lights to hide behind. No, Finney, like other greats of the sporting world in those days, was a man of the people - someone who we recognised as one of us. For us little boys he was the perfect role model, and since he was so ordinary, he walked the same streets as us, lived in a house like ours, caught a bus like us, and had time for us he was something to which we could all realistically aspire. Unlike today's top sportsmen who are remote, who live lives alien to those of the ordinary man, who appear only on TV or who have come from far off countries to play in the local team for a year or two and then move on Finney was real and in being real, something we could imagine ourselves becoming - if we worked hard and were like him! He, and others of his kind, gave us all a dream and a compass by which to grow up. And, boy, did we want to be like him! This desire to be Finney (or one of the other top stars of the day) was not about wanting celebrity status or money for these two dimensions were largely unknown to such as footballers - indeed to anyone in those days. If fame and fortune came it was an "extra" - not the reason. It was the desire to be like him - or Lofthouse, or Trautmann, or Matthews, or Docherty, or any of the other footballing greats of the 1940s and 50s - as a person and a footballer. I have often said to younger people in more recent years that in those days (and, indeed, still today) I would have given my right arm to pull on  a Preston shirt - and I'm sure that thousands up and down the country felt the same way about their local club or sporting hero. But modern youth looks askance when I have said that - they see it in largely opportunistic, mercenary terms playing for a club for the maximum amount of money and then move on when more money or greater stardom beckons. To them it is about quick stardom and access wealth not human qualities such as pride or loyalty. 

 1956 - in Ealing London with
my dad and his friend Bert - my mother
and Bert's wife in the background. We
went to see Preston at Chelsea
on the day of "the Splash"!

I watched Finney perhaps hundreds of times, I saw some of his great goals and watched him play in different positions. I was at Chelsea in 1956 when the iconic photo “The Splash” was taken of him sliding through a puddle – but still in complete control of the ball. If you look at the photo carefully you can just see the Chelsea defender hidden in the spray trying to take the ball from Finney but such were his prodigious skills that he could control the ball and avoid the lunging tackle whilst dancing through he puddle -  a true footballing great, one of only a very small handful. The conditions that day would have meant the cancellation of the game in the modern world - modern players playing the modern kick, thump and run game are incapable of the sort of control required. Throughout his career Finney and his peers played on pitches that today's players would find unplayable and not conducive to their very limited skills. The ball that Finney magically controlled week in week out was a heavy "cannon ball" which soaked up the water on a wet pitch not the plastic covered lightweight, perfectly balanced ball of the modern game. And, not  unimportantly, it had  a lace. This meant that the ball, no matter how skilfully laced up was not a perfect sphere so it did not always roll true. If you ever went to head one of these balls you always hoped that the laced part would not come into contact with your head - it was extremely painful! Put all this together, unbalanced ball, muddy pitches, heavy ball, heavy boots and Finney's (and those of other greats from the past) skills become even more awesome.  But, on that long off day at Chelsea Preston won the game 0-1. The result, however,  is long forgotten  and unimportant – it is just another statistic. What, however, is not forgotten is Finney’s contribution  – and that photo which has become part of footballing legend and mythology.

I was only about ten when I went to that game. We were in London because my dad, occasionally, as part of his work, acted as a chauffeur for the aircraft test pilot Roland Beaumont. At that time dad’s company (English Electric) were building the P1 Lightning fighter plane and it was being tested at Boscombe Down near Bournemouth. When tests flights were taking place every few months dad was Beaumont’s chauffeur taking the pilot from his home in Chichester to the test site at Boscombe or up to meetings at the Ministry of Defence in London or bringing him back to Preston where the plane was being developed (at Wharton). Dad would often be away all week or maybe longer while the test flights were under way. In 1956, dad took me and my mother with him from Preston to London - dad was due to begin chauffeuring stint for Beaumont and we travelled in style down to London in the very posh car (a large comfortable, leather seated, Humber Hawk, I think) that was used to chauffeur the pilot. We didn't own a car so had never travelled so grandly! We stayed with my mother and dad's war time friends in Ealing in London while dad went off  to work at Boscombe ferrying Beaumont. My mother had lodged with this couple, Carol and Bert, during the 2nd World War when she and Carol were nurses at a military hospital in nearby Uxbridge. When my dad returned to England in 1943 injured with a badly broken arm he was in Uxbridge hospital and it was there he met my mother. And that weekend in 1956 I went  with dad and Bert to Chelsea. North End were in town and we went to see Preston play. I never suspected that I would witness one split second of that game on that bright afternoon that would become a footballing moment of history. Indeed, I don't remember it at all - it was a split second event - but some clever news photographer took the picture of Finney sliding through the puddle and it made instant headlines in the sporting press. I never suspected that half a century later that picture would be made into stone and stand outside Preston's Deepdale ground as an eternal reminder of this great man.

Tom's final appearance and after match speech

 I was there, too, with Nebber on that April 30^th evening in 1960 when Finney played his last game for Preston -  against Luton. That end of season game was a nothing encounter – neither team had anything to play for.  But the ground was filled to capacity,  all there to see Finney’s last appearance. At the time the local newspapers showed people who had travelled from Arsenal, Newcastle, Wolves, Sunderland, Manchester  and throughout the UK to see the great man’s final game. I can still remember the coloured scarves in the crowd – not just the colours of Preston or Luton fans but the gold of Wolves supporters, the red of Arsenal, the black and white of Newcastle, the tangerine of Blackpool, the claret and blue of Burnley – all had come to see the end of an era. The Brindle Brass Band (for whom my Uncle Ken sometimes played) regularly provided pre-match and half time entertainment at Deepdale playing and marching up and down the pitch  and as always, when Preston ran out of the tunnel and onto the pitch the band struck up with the familiar strains of "Margie, I'm always thinking of you, Margie....." Preston's unofficial anthem. But then the two teams stood in a circle in the centre of the pitch linking arms. The Brindle struck up again.........and everyone, players and fans sang “Auld Lang Syne”.  Nebber and me like 30,000 others, linking arms, we two uncertain of the words, but knowing that this was the right thing to do. And at the end of the match, on that balmy April evening, we stood on the pitch watching Finney give his farewell speech, thanking the people of Preston for their support and good wishes – each of us, even Nebber and me as callow teenagers, knowing that we would never see his like again. And then, spontaneously, the crowd erupted into "For he's a jolly good fellow......." as the great man left the field.  The result of the game was totally unimportant (indeed, I have just had to Google it to remember!), nobody cared that he had never won any silverware, it was all about the man and the sport.

Nebber and I are on there, listening to Tom's speech.
We stand at the back along the top of the photo

That night, as on all the other occasions, we had watched him, in awe. When Finney got the ball the whole crowd became expectant. He had the knack of making lesser colleagues great players and it was jokingly commented that when playing for Preston or England he should claim income tax relief – for the ten dependants that he had in the rest of the team! When Finney got the ball we all knew what he was going to do – or at least we thought we did - but such was his magic that it was always a surprise and something to be treasured. He would cut in from the wing, towards the penalty area, the ball jinking at his feet, the full back, back peddling, unsure what to do. Would Finney suddenly put on a burst of speed that carried him past the full back and into a scoring position, would he find a colleague with an inch perfect pass, would he mesmerise the defender with his deft footwork and leave the poor player looking at the space where he and the ball had been a micro second before, or would he in the blink of an eye unleash a shot that would find the goal? These were all skills that Finney had in abundance. But there was one more trick up the sleeve – and something that he became a master at: he would approach the penalty area, ball at his feet the full back watching and waiting unsure what to do. Finney would hold the ball, tempting the full back to make a move, waiting, waiting, waiting as he slowly drifted closer and closer to the penalty area. Once there he would show the defender just enough of the ball to make him think he had a chance of getting it. The defender would lunge in but sometimes Finney was gone – too fast, and had left the defender standing. But, if the defender was quick his lunging tackle to get the ball would almost certainly  bundle Finney to the ground and the crowd, as one, would shout “Foul” – and the referee usually agreed and pointed to the penalty spot. We all knew what Finney was going to do, tempting defenders to foul him – and so did the defenders  - but we, the crowd were never bored with it and the defenders never learned to counter it! And as I sit writing this the words of the song we so often sang as we stood by the pitch each week springs into my mind:

The Splash decorated with marks of remembrance
on Tom's passing

‘Finney passed to Wayman,

Wayman passed it back,

Finney took a flying shot

And knocked the goalie flat!

Where is the goalie,

The goalie’s in the net,

Hanging on the cross bar

With his shorts around his neck’!

Finney was quite simply the best.

Finney, the modern Deepdale in the background
 standing in the streets that I used to walk along with
thousands of others each Saturday afternoon

And as I read of Finney’s passing in the newspaper I noticed another footballing item alongside. I shook my head with sorrow and no little anger as I read the latest utterances from the half witted and arrogant Jose Mourinho, manager of Chelsea – a boorish man who has the gall and conceit to call himself “the special one”. A man who is all that Tom Finney was not.  Mourinho’s latest offering on the subject of sporting greatness is that Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal, is a specialist in failure. Mourinho said: “......the reality is he's a specialist in failure because, eight years without a piece of silverware, that's failure. If I did that in Chelsea I'd leave London and not come back."  Clearly this man knows little about sport if he equates success with the acquisition of silverware. Of course, sport is competitive that is its essential nature but not to win is not failure, sport has many other, more important, dimensions. And, to walk away when you do not win is the action of a coward and not a sportsman. Given Mourinho’s reasoning Finney, too, was a failure – he won nothing over many years. Finney, however did not walk away, he inspired and brightened the lives of millions and he was loved for it.

We live in a world today where winning is the name of the game - we binge upon winners and losers – our schools are put into league tables recording their “success” or “failure”, our hospitals, too, are ranked  - the number of deaths, the relative costs of surgery – you name a criteria and there will be  a winner or loser for it. Our TV shows increasingly are about competition – “The X Factor”, “The Apprentice” and the rest. Our children are encouraged to scramble for top school grades. No longer is a GCSE the mark of a successful education, no longer is grade A good enough – it now has to be an A*. Our governments constantly remind us that as a nation we have to be winners and have the highest GDP or the lowest interest rates if we are to succeed. We have, in all walks of life jumped onto the winners and losers bandwagon. It increasingly defines us. So besotted are we with winning and unable to  countenance losing that I have just heard today that an English athlete at the Winter Olympics has been receiving abusive and threatening text messages because she was disqualified from an event and so missed a chance of a medal. She "failed" the nation. But not everyone can be a winner or an A*, there can only be one hospital at the top or one nation with the highest GDP or one football team to be the champions  and the rest,  the vast majority, are by definition “losers”. That is not to applaud losers – the winners should be praised – but society and sport has lost the ability and awareness that there are other factors other than winning, medals or silverware – and these things are always more important. Results are soon forgotten – other things, of more substance, long remembered.

Mourinho - all that Finney was not

I once read a quote which I liked – not about football but about teaching. It said  “Kids don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”  I’m sure that is right. I look back and can remember little of what I was taught at school or what I studied for at exam time - but boy, can I remember the teachers who influenced me for good or ill: Mr Seed, Mrs Barge, Mr Williams, Mr Parkin, Mr Sharples, Dr McEwan, Mr Wolstenholme, Miss Bolton, Jack Balmer, Bill Middlebrook, Mr Calderbank........ I can remember their inspirations, their idiosyncrasies, their kindness, the way in which some of them instilled fear or pride, their humour, their anger when things went wrong, their praise when things went right, their enthusiasms, their insight or apparent cleverness, their advice, and so the list goes on. They are what I remember, not the exam scores, not the certificates passed and now long lost, not the educational successes and failures of  myself and the friends who were once important to me.  And in sport it is the same, people will long remember the game or the person or the event, but the actual score or the competition will slowly slide into oblivion.

Finney's autograph - so often collected and swapped with
friends for other stars of the day

In that context two of this weekend’s comments about Finney are supremely apposite. One from Bobby Charlton, the player who perhaps, more than any other, took over Finney’s mantle as the supreme footballer and sportsman of the nation. On hearing of Finney’s passing Charlton commented that his one abiding memory of his (Charlton’s) England debut was that  "He [Finney] passed to me ......and I had never been so proud”. And Dave Whelan, now owner and Chairman of Wigan Athletic, described Finney as the perfect gentleman. He went on to explain that as the opening match to every season Blackburn used to play Preston in a pre-season game ( I remember them well!). “It was my first match back after two and a half years following a broken leg and I would be marking Finney the finest player there has ever been. He never took me on at all. I took the ball off him three times in the first half and when we were coming off I went to him and said: ‘Tom, you’re not taking me on.’ I’d played against him before and I knew he was, a phenomenal footballer. He said: ‘You’ve had some bad luck, son, and I’m not going to take you on, I want you to get through today’s game and get back into the first team.’  I’ll never forget him saying that to me. He was a total gentleman.”

There’s more to football, sport and life than winning and silverware but I do not think Jose Mourinho could understand Charlton’s or Whelan’s comments or Finney’s response to Whelan. When his time comes Mourinho will not be mourned as is Finney today. Mourinho’s medals and cups are just statistics, they are not of the stuff of legend and of great sportsmen. Finney was loved in his time and is mourned greatly at his passing because of what he was and what he represented. Jose Mourinho, unfortunately, will not be mourned and loved in the same way - his successes, such as they might be will simply be statistics on a page becoming increasingly dusty and irrelevant as the years pass. In fifty years time people will, say "Jose Who"? In listening to the man I am reminded of the old saying "An empty bucket makes the most noise".

The teams at Deepdale on the day following  Finney's death  paying
 their respects. Each Preston player has Finney's name on his back

I'm reminded also of two quotes from the famous American football coach Vince Lombardi - a man so committed to winning that he has become the icon of competitive sport. But even Lombardi knew there was more to life, sporting or otherwise, than just winning silverware:"You show me  a man who belittles another and I will show you a man who is not a leader. You show me a man who who is not charitable, who has no respect for the dignity of another, is not loyal and I will show you a man who is not a leader". Finney knew how to be a leader, he ticked every one of Lombardi's boxes; Mourinho hasn't a clue. And secondly, "After all the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty. After the headlines have been written and you are back in the quiet of your room with the championship cup in the drawer then the enduring thing is how you played the game and the dedication of doing the best that you could........" Sir Tom Finney understood this well, he let his skills, his sportsmanship and his humanity and humility talk for him. He played the game - both of football and life - supremely well.  Mourinho and others of his ilk - Alex Ferguson, John Terry, Luis Suarez, and the rest simply rattle their empty buckets in public.