FRIENDLY FULHAM

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 11

FRIENDLY FULHAM

I By

BRIAN SCOVBLL

rpHE comedian Tommy Trinder is the man who started English League soccer clubs on their downhill path to economic ruin because he was the first man to pay a footballer £lOO a week in England. The player, of course, is Johnny Haynes, one-time England captain. The claim that it was all Trinder’s fault was made in this week’s “Economist.” In a senoiis investigation into the state of soccer, they found that while clubs are earning less and less through the turnstiles, they are paying out more and more to affluent players. Well, the economic drift to bankruptcy has finally caught up with Fulham for in spite of paying Haynes a Cabinet minister’s salary, and the England right-back, George Cohen £B5 a week, they are at the bottom of the first division. The joke is now at Fulham's expense: for they cannot really afford to pay Haynes. And they cannot afford to buy new players. Haynes has two years to go on his contract and at 31 he cannot expect to carry on at £lOO a week. This is a problem the football clubs have yet to face. How to give their fading stars a decrease Fulham is an unique club. It has an open air ground on the banks of the Thames in west London (the Boat Race goes right by its terraces). They treat soccer as an extension of one of their chairman’s jokes. Mr Trinder makes jokes about Johnny Haynes, Fulham’s League position and what George Cohen said to him in the bath. And out of the field, one always got the impression that the players were enjoying the fun too. The then manager. Bedford Jezzard, a Fulham player himself, was one of the boys and though they just scraped up in the First Division every year, no-one worried. But last year Mr Trinder wanted things to be taken more seriously. Mr Jezzard, too nice a man to drive players as other bar-

der managers were doing in more successful clubs, resigned. The directors —Mr Trinder, dance band leader Chappie D’Amato, a retired butcher Jack Walsh and two shop-blind manufacturers. Messrs R. A. and C. B. Dean—decided to appoint Vic Buckingham, a flambuoyant, 49-year-old Londoner who was managing a Dutch club The laughter died as he sold Chamberlain and Langley. And last week the Fulham sound turned to yelps of anger as Mr Buckingham dropped three of his leading players from the team— Bobby Robson, 20 times an England international, Terry Dyson, a member of Spurs' double-winning side of 1961, and last season’s leading scorer. Rodney Marsh “He's always making changes,” Robson told me. “Six this week. Four the week before. How does he expect a team to win?” The fact that Fulham had lost six matches in a row seemed to support his argument. Buckingham replied that Robson was dropped because he wanted a more buccaneering type of player to counter the finesse of Arsenal’s George Eastham. Football is so full of cliches from people in official positions that this fresh word, buccaneer, was seized on by the Press. “Fulham hoist sail," “Buckingham’s Buccaneers” and “Pass the pieces of eight” were some of the headlines that brightened the sports pages The man Buckingham selected as his buccaneer was 24-year-ol< Bobby Keetch, an intell gent, self-taught modernimage player who spends his time with debs, artists and authors. There was a happy ending to Buckingham’s buccaneer story Keetch did destroy Eastham (not that Eastham was sweating too hard because he wanted to be fit for England’s match against Poland five days later). And Fulham’s 1-0 win over the improved Arsenal gave them new hope for the New Year.