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Terrace Heroes

The 1930s saw the birth of the football idol, the ‘terrace hero’ prototypes for

today’s powerful media sport stars.

The players of the 1930s were the first generation of what we now regard as

‘professionals’, yet until recently the lives and careers of footballers of this era

have been little studied.

During the 1930s British football became increasingly commercialised,

and the rise and development of both local and national media, in particular

broadcast media, enabled players to become widely recognised outside of their

immediate local context for the first time.

Tracing the origins, playing careers and ‘afterlives’ of several First Division

players of the era, Graham Kelly’s revealing history explores the reality of living

in Britain in the 1930s and draws comparisons with lives of our contemporary

‘terrace heroes’, the football stars of today.

Graham Kelly is Head of Postgraduate Programmes and Research at the

Lancashire Business School, University of Central Lancashire, UK. He is also a

founder member of the university’s International Football Institute.

Sporting Nationalisms

Identity, ethnicity, immigration and

assimilation

Edited by Mike Cronin and David Mayall

The Commercialization of Sport

Edited by Trevor Slack

Shaping the Superman

Fascist body as political icon: Aryan

fascism

Edited by J.A. Mangan

Superman Supreme

Fascist body as political icon: Global

fascism

Edited by J.A. Mangan

Making the Rugby World

Race, gender, commerce

Edited by Timothy J.L. Chandler and

John Nauright

Rugby’s Great Split

Class, culture and the origins of rugby

league football

Tony Collins

The Race Game

Sport and politics in South Africa

Douglas Booth

Cricket and England

A cultural and social history of the

inter-war years

Jack Williams

The Games Ethic and Imperialism

Aspects of the diffusion of an ideal

J.A. Mangan

British Football and Social Exclusion

Edited by Stephen Wagg

Football, Europe and the Press

Liz Crolley and David Hand

The Future of Football

Challenges for the Twenty-first century

Edited by Jon Garland, Dominic Malcolm and

Michael Rowe

Football Culture

Local contests, global visions

Edited by Gerry P.T. Finn and Richard

Giulianotti

France and the 1998 World Cup

The national impact of a world sporting event

Edited by Hugh Dauncey and Geoff Hare

The First Black Footballer

Arthur Wharton 1865–1930: An absence

of memory

Phil Vasili

Scoring for Britain

International football and international

politics, 1900–1939

Peter J. Beck

Women, Sport and Society in Modern China

Holding up more than half the sky

Dong Jinxia

Sport in Latin American Society

Past and present

Edited by J.A. Mangan and Lamartine P.

DaCosta

Sport in Australasian Society

Past and present

Edited by J.A. Mangan and John Nauright

Sport in the global society

General Editors: J.A. Mangan and Boria Majumdar

The interest in sports studies around the world is growing and will continue to do so. This unique

series combines aspects of the expanding study of sport in the global society, providing comprehensive￾ness and comparison under one editorial umbrella. It is particularly timely, with studies in the

cultural, economic, ethnographic, geographical, political, social, anthropological, sociological and

aesthetic elements of sport proliferating in institutions of higher education.

Eric Hobsbawm once called sport one of the most significant practices of the late nineteenth

century. Its significance was even more marked in the late twentieth century and will continue to

grow in importance into the new millennium as the world develops into a ‘global village’ sharing

the English language, technology and sport.

Other Titles in the Series

Terrace Heroes

The life and times of the 1930s

professional footballer

Graham Kelly

First published 2005 by Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Taylor & Francis Inc

270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2005 Graham Kelly

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with

regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book

and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any

errors or omissions that may be made.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and information in

this book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However,

neither the publisher nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility

or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of

drug administration, any medical procedure or the use of technical

equipment mentioned within this book, you are strongly advised to

consult the manufacturer’s guidelines.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog for this book record has been requested

ISBN 0-714-65359-4 (hbk)

ISBN 0-714-68294-2 (pbk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

ISBN 0-203-50102-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-58295-0 (Adobe eReader Format)

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s

collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

To the memory of my parents, Joan and Laurie Kelly

and

with thanks to my wife, Jenny, and our son, Ben

Contents

List of illustrations ix

Acknowledgements x

Series editor’s foreword xi

1 Professional footballers as ‘terrace heroes’ 1

2 The career path of professional footballers 6

3 Footballers as employees 16

4 Directors, managers, trainers and coaches 25

5 Footballers’ lifestyles 36

6 Footballers and the media 43

7 Jack Atkinson – Bolton Wanderers 53

8 Bob Baxter – Middlesbrough 61

9 Harry Betmead – Grimsby Town 69

10 Jack Crayston – Arsenal 79

11 Billy Dale – Manchester City 91

12 ‘Jock’ Dodds – Sheffield United and Blackpool 103

13 Harold Hobbis – Charlton Athletic 113

14 Joe Mercer – Everton 125

15 Cliff Parker – Portsmouth 135

16 Bert Sproston – Leeds United, Tottenham Hotspurs and

Manchester City 145

17 Conclusion 153

Notes 156

Select bibliography 165

Index 169

viii Contents

Illustrations

1 Jack Atkinson 52

2 Bob Baxter 60

3 Harry Betmead 68

4 Jack Crayston 78

5 Billy Dale 90

6 ‘Jock’ Dodds 102

7 Harold Hobbis 112

8 Joe Mercer 124

9 Cliff Parker 134

10 Bert Sproston 144

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to each of the following football club historians and statisticians,

whose valuable contributions have assisted me in the research for this book:

R. Briggs of Grimsby Town FC; I. Cook of Arsenal FC; D.K. Clareborough of

Sheffield United; R.J. Owen of Portsmouth FC; and B. Dalby of Denaby United

FC.

Series editor’s foreword

After the ball was centred,

after the whistle blew,

Dixie got excited and

down the wing he flew,

He passed the ball to Lawton

and Lawton tried to score

But the goalie took a dirty dive

and knocked him on the floor!

This passionate partisan piece of doggerel in support of past Everton heroes

chanted en masse in my boyhood primary school playground, has continued to

reverberate in my head down the years. Heroes sometimes achieve immortality

in odd ways!

Dixie Dean and Tommy Lawton were ‘Terrace Heroes’ of my north-western

childhood. Graham Kelly has added to this small but sacred pantheon with his

study of the lives and times of his Topical Times Ten. He places them in their

cultural context, explains their social purpose and explores their common sig￾nificance. This makes good sense. His Heroes, in part or in whole, personified

period values. Such Heroes came in more than one form: ‘local’ heroes –

embedded in their communities, loyal to their team and parochial symbols of

success for the proletarians packed on the home terraces with precious few life

chances; ‘moral’ heroes who for some epitomised middle class missionary ‘fair￾play’ in a rougher working-class world; ‘anti-heroic’ heroes who were admired

for tilting at such conventions and offered vicarious escape from ethical rigidity.

These ‘heroes on a muddy field’ were actors on an outdoor stage, who offered

their audience momentary release from drudgery, restriction and boredom. Roland

Barthes put this point well when he commented that modern sports are analo￾gous to the theatre of antiquity – contemporary dramatic contests with epic

heroes from whose exploits the sporting public derives concentrated substitutional

excitement which compensates for drawn-out everyday monotony.1

Such cul￾ture heroes allow the non-heroic ‘access to catharsis in culturally consecrated

ceremonies.’2

Norbert Elias pushed his analytical probe deeper, and arguably put

the point even better:

If one asks how feelings are aroused . . . by leisure pursuits, one discovers

that it is usually done by the creation of tensions . . . mimetic fear and

pleasure, sadness and joy are produced and perhaps resolved by the setting

of pastimes. Different moods are evoked and perhaps contrasted, such as

sorrow and elation, agitation and peace of mind. Thus the feelings aroused

in the imaginary situation of a human leisure activity are the siblings of

those aroused in real-life situation – that is what the expression ‘mimetic’

indicates – but the latter are linked to the never-ending risks and perils of

fragile human life, while the former momentarily lift the burden of risks

and threats, great or small, surrounding human existence.3

Women, we are told, passionately venerated icons in early Christianity. Since

their existence required divine sanction to make it more sustainable, these

women clung to these icons tenaciously. Through them they had an outlet for

their pent-up emotions.4

What is sauce for the goose is often sauce for the

gander. In the England of the 1930s a rather different kind of intervention

resulted in Saturday icons which made the working man’s weekdays more bear￾able. The urge to find heroes is thus enduring. It serves basic needs. However, in

the modern world the mythical emphasis has shifted: ‘. . . myths are how heavily

associated with sport and are social in function and secular in content – and

since sport is now a substantial part of cultural existence, its myths, mythical

heroes and mythical messages are central to modern cultures.’5

‘I am specifically interested in sports popularly dismissed as ‘mere sport’

[and] . . . clearly separated in the American mind from serious activity or work’

wrote Michael Oriard in Dreaming of Heroes. In an English setting so is Kelly.6

In truth, of course, as Oriard also remarks, few activities embrace reality and

fantasy in such a paradoxical way as does sport: the realities of hard work,

discipline and failure jostle with the fantasies of freedom, perpetual youth and

heroism.7

There is, however, more, much more, to be added to this partial parade of

paradoxes: sport can purify and it can corrupt; it can motivate and demotivate;

it can stimulate team work and stifle individual expression; it can humanize and

dehumanize – and still the parade stretches back out of sight. Football is no

exception to this rule. In the Anglo-Saxon world of 1930s football, the game

and its players defined both patterns and polarities8

in English cultural experi￾ence and held up a mirror to social values that were both time-trapped and

timeless. Terrace Heroes melds performers, performance and period into a holis￾tic piece. Here is its attractive originality.

J.A. Mangan,

Series Editor,

Swanage, August 04.

xii Series editor’s foreword

Professional footballers as ‘terrace heroes’ 1

1 Professional footballers as

‘terrace heroes’

‘We simply must have heroes. They give us blessed relief from our daily lives,

which are frequently one petty thing after another’.1

Societies have always

created heroes for themselves, not only to provide this ‘blessed relief’ but also to

provide a vehicle to communicate, both internally and externally, the essential

values, aspirations and ambitions that (if anything does) bind their populations

together. Heroes also provide a means by which societies can celebrate their

collective achievements and those of key individuals. Myths and legends inevit￾ably develop, and become the subjects of story-telling across the generations.

Historians clearly play their part in this process of intergenerational commun￾ication, seeking to set heroes, as R. Holt and J.A. Mangan have put it, ‘in their

cultural context, to explain their social purpose and to explore their communal

significance’.2

Arguably, sport increasingly provides an arena in which individuals and,

indeed, teams can display ‘heroic’ levels of performance and achieve success far

beyond the wildest dreams of those who only stand and stare. Sporting heroes,

whether Olympians, world champions or, indeed, FA Cup winners, all achieve

their status by providing other people with sufficient vicarious excitement to

establish a distinctiveness in those people’s minds. There are clearly many winners

in sport; in fact, this is the key characteristic of sporting contests. Very few

spectators find drawn matches, dead heats or no-score draws quite as exciting as

when there is a clear winner. Winners, however, do not all become heroes.

Heroes, similarly, may not themselves be winners either. What, then, makes

one person achieve the status of ‘hero’ and another, often equally successful, fail

to achieve it?

The ‘terrace heroes’ who form the subject of this book have been given this

epithet in an attempt to reflect one of the essential dimensions of heroes, and in

particular professional footballers as heroes: that there needs to be a ‘terrace’

before there can be a ‘hero’. The power lies with the mass, the crowd on the

terrace, to confer a specific social status on an individual and then celebrate it.

Such a status can bring benefits with it, but it can also impose significant

responsibilities. Heroes, once ‘ordained’, can easily fall from grace. Many sporting

heroes have found, to their cost, that it is far easier to achieve such a status than

to maintain it, for the ‘terraces’ can be very fickle with their affections. A true

2 Terrace heroes

‘terrace hero’ may best be seen as one who is able to maintain power as a hero

over a sustained period of time, in contrast to a footballer who rises in the

collective rankings and then falls quickly away.

This book is focused on one sport, professional association football, in one

country, England, and in one decade, the 1930s. It is argued and demonstrated

that these years saw the emergence of what can now be recognised as modern

professional football, with tactically minded team managers, increasing levels of

organisation and planning, and players who, primarily through the medium of

newspapers, radio and, ultimately, television, have become national as well as

local ‘terrace heroes’. While players were not given much celebrity or status

by their employers, the League clubs, or by the public during the 1930s, the

essentially working-class supporters who followed the game were already being

exploited by the national press and the emerging BBC radio service. Relatively

few football supporters were able to watch their favourite teams other than at

the fortnightly home matches, but increasing newspaper and radio coverage of

professional football enabled a growing band of ‘stars’ to emerge. Match attend￾ance figures were influenced by the appearance of certain ‘star’ visiting teams

and individual players. For example, Arsenal, the dominant team of the decade,

drew larger than normal gates wherever it played, as did players such as Stanley

Matthews or Bill ‘Dixie’ Dean.

Despite this growing media attention, many ‘terrace heroes’ remained embed￾ded in their immediate local communities. While players did clearly make progress

in their careers by moving around the country, sometimes by being transferred

but more often than not following release by their previous club, there is an

identifiable category of ‘terrace heroes’ who achieved their status by demon￾strating a sustained commitment to one club, often a club near their birthplace

or the community where they grew up; such a player was commonly referred to

as a ‘one-club man’. Their type of ‘heroism’ had a lot to do with being seen to

place the needs of the club and, in particular, the supporters over and above

personal ambitions. Cynics may claim that such players were often not good

enough to attract the attention of other ‘buying’ clubs, while being good enough

to warrant the employing club’s retaining them rather than subjecting them to

the normal end-of-season ‘release and retain’ system that was prevalent in the

1930s. It is clear, however, that most supporters of football clubs gave credit

to those players who demonstrated the same loyalty that they themselves

exhibited. They did so even though, while the social and economic mobility of

most working-class male football supporters in the 1930s was about as low as

one could imagine, many professional footballers were men from similar back￾grounds who had, by good fortune, genetic endowment and/or sheer hard work,

managed to claw their way out into the relative affluence and social prestige of

professional football.

Other types of ‘terrace hero’ emerged both at the club and the national level.

Some players demonstrated personal traits and patterns of behaviour that had

traditionally been expected more of amateurs and ‘gentlemen’ than of working￾class professionals. Jack Crayston, a long-serving player and later manager at