Authors: Gordon Banks
The trip up to Sunderland was one of the longer away trips for Leicester and, like most teams, we undertook most such
journeys by train. The only motorway of note was the M1 and rail connections were still the most convenient mode of travel. Manchester City, however, took to the air in 1964–65, chartering a plane to take them to the majority of their away games, which that year involved visits to London, Plymouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Norwich, Ipswich, Cardiff, Swansea and Newcastle. At the time it was still quite common for a team travelling to the other end of the country to incur not only an overnight stay on Friday, but on Saturday too if there was not a suitable train to get them home. These Sunday morning rail trips were unpopular, not only because they kept players away from their families from Friday morning, but also travelling by train on Sunday was invariably subject to delay caused by track maintenance.
City’s chartered plane meant that in many cases the team did not have to leave until the morning of the match and were home the same day. Though it cost Manchester City £140 to charter a plane they made quite a saving in hotel expenses. City players were all in favour of flying because it gave them more Friday and Saturday evenings at home. While this decision to take to the air was taken up by a number of other clubs – primarily Newcastle and Sunderland when making trips to the South Coast, and Plymouth Argyle when travelling up to the North East – the emergence of the motorway network and the consequent cheaper costs of coach travel was to nip this new phenomenon in the bud. Air travel is used only occasionally today, and then primarily as a time-saving rather than cost-saving measure.
Back at Filbert Street the club’s wage structure continued to be a major bone of contention. I was still embroiled in talks with the club about wages and I wasn’t the only unhappy player: Frank McLintock was so unsettled he put in a transfer request, while Bobby Roberts and Davie Gibson refused to accept the terms on offer. Leicester were offering me £40 a week, a lower basic wage than any other First Division club was paying. To put this in perspective, Southampton of the Second Division were paying
their first team players a basic wage of £45, while at Fourth Division Bradford Park Avenue players could earn £40 a week with win bonuses. Frank and I were current internationals; to be on the lowest basic wage in the First Division was out of line with our contribution to Leicester City. Club loyalty is one thing, but downright unfair treatment simply wasn’t on.
The uncertainty continued for months, and was not finally resolved until December, when the club offered me £60 a week. I immediately accepted. Why they couldn’t have done this in the first place is beyond me. Perhaps the club had been hoping to persuade me to sign for as little as possible. Such a ploy wasn’t unknown. Clubs often tried to hoodwink players over their contracts and, without the advice of agents, many signed up for far less money than they should have done.
Bobby Keetch was a tough-tackling wing half with Fulham. Bobby was very much a stylish man about town, in a part of London known for style. Keetch was the original ‘Bobby dazzler’, a charmer whose swept-back blond hair and suntanned, athletic build made him very popular with the ladies. Bobby spent much of his spare time frequenting the trendy bars dotted along the King’s Road and would often appear after matches at Craven Cottage with some young debutante on his arm. Bobby was also a great character who possessed a marvellous sense of humour, but above all he was streetwise.
In 1964 the Fulham manager Vic Buckingham called Bobby into his office to renegotiate his contract. Fulham were in the First Division and though they could boast players of the calibre of Johnny Haynes, George Cohen and Bobby Robson, were almost always near the foot of the table. The football writer John Moynihan aptly and evocatively described Fulham as ‘a Saturday afternoon team, offering a feeling of animated recreation rather than solid professionalism’. They were indeed a team whose enjoyment of football, at times, appeared to be more paramount than their desire to win.
As Bobby sat down in front of him, Vic Buckingham placed
two contracts on his desk, indicating it was up to Bobby which one he chose to sign.
‘The first contract will pay you £60 a week. Win, lose or draw, that is what you’ll be paid,’ said Buckingham.
Bobby ummed and ah-ed, then asked what the second contract entailed.
‘With this second contract you stand to earn more money than you would if you were at Spurs or Manchester United,’ said Buckingham proudly.
Bobby, his enthusiasm aroused, immediately sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘Tell me more, boss.’
‘This second contract only pays a basic wage of £45 a week,’ Buckingham continued, ‘but, for every home win, you’ll receive an extra £25. For a draw away from home, you get the same bonus, £25, but for every away win, an extra £35. Should we win the League Championship, you’ll get a bonus of £500, and £250 if we finish in the top four. If we reach the final of the FA Cup, your bonus will be a one-off payment of £300 and if we win the Cup, you get £600.’
‘I’ll take the sixty quid!’ said Bobby, not giving the matter a second thought.
The contract I negotiated with Leicester City included a bonus of £5 for every home gate in excess of 30,000. If we were to enjoy the successful season I was anticipating, I’d be quids in as the capacity at Filbert Street was up to 40,000. As it turned out, until my departure from the club in 1967 Leicester were only to attract a home crowd of more than 30,000 on seven occasions. In three seasons, then, my total crowd bonus was the princely sum of £35!
Frank McLintock’s unhappiness led to his transfer to Arsenal in October 1964 for what was a record fee for a Leicester City player of £80,000. However, Leicester’s reputation for paying low wages made it difficult for Matt Gillies in his attempts to bolster the squad. Matt and his scouts were very good at spotting emerging talent, but often lost out to better-paying rivals. In
1964–65 Matt was frustrated in his attempts to sign Colin Bell of Bury (who joined Manchester City), Southampton’s Martin Chivers (who signed for Spurs) and Francis Lee of Bolton Wanderers (who joined Bell at Maine Road). What success might we have enjoyed had those players joined Leicester?
After an encouraging start to the season in which we remained unbeaten until our seventh game, our form once again ebbed and flowed. We scored a double over Liverpool (if ever Liverpool had a bogey team it was us), Fulham were beaten 5–1, Spurs 4–2 and there was a thrilling and hard-fought 2–2 draw against Leeds United, a team that had quickly gained a reputation as hard men following their promotion from Division Two. But in the end our final position of eighteenth in Division One was a disappointment to everyone, though we did enjoy good runs in both cup competitions.
Our penultimate game of the season was away at Tottenham Hotspur. It was a meaningless end-of-season fixture for both teams; up at the top of the table Manchester United and Leeds were locked in a battle for the title, which the Reds eventually won on goal average. There were no high stakes to play for in our encounter at White Hart Lane, which was played in a very cavalier manner. Both sets of players were relaxed enough to display their party pieces for the 33,000 spectators.
With ten minutes of the game remaining, we were trailing 5–2 when Spurs were awarded a penalty. The grass at the back of a goal was rarely cut by groundsmen, and as Jimmy Greaves ambled into the penalty area, I stepped back into the goal to rub my hands on the long grass to clean them (I never wore gloves until 1970). As I was bending down with my back to him, Jimmy stepped up to place the ball on the spot. Seeing that I was preoccupied, he dinked the ball with the toe of his boot and sent it bobbling towards the right-hand corner of the goal. I turned just in time to see the ball cross the line. I immediately realized what Jimmy had done and started laughing along with the rest of the players. Party to the joke, the Spurs supporters on the
terraces gave an ironic cheer as the ball trickled across the line. With a cheesy grin on his face Jimmy walked up to retrieve the ball so that he could take the penalty properly, only for the referee to blow his whistle, signal a goal and retreat to the halfway line.
I couldn’t believe it; nor could anyone who witnessed it. I was furious that Jimmy’s joke penalty had been allowed to stand at my expense. I hadn’t even been facing play! With the Spurs players doubled up with laughter, I took off after the referee.
‘You can’t give that!’ I said, on catching him up. ‘It was a joke of a penalty.’
‘Played advantage,’ he informed me.
‘Played advantage?’ I queried. ‘From a penalty?’
‘Advantage. Best law in football,’ he said. ‘It lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.’
I calmed down eventually, if still a little peeved. Over a drink I asked Jimmy if he was ashamed to claim such a bizarre goal.
‘Naah,’ said Jimmy, ‘in years to come when someone is reading the statistics, they’ll all look the same.’ There speaks a true goalscorer.
Liverpool exacted revenge for our victory over them in the semi-final of 1962–63 by knocking us out of the FA Cup in the sixth round. We had beaten Blackburn Rovers, Plymouth Argyle and Middlesbrough, but for once our Indian sign over the mighty Reds didn’t work. Having drawn 0–0 at Filbert Street in front of a crowd of 40,000 – another £5 for me – a Roger Hunt goal put paid to our hopes of another semi-final. At Anfield during the pre-match kickabout four practice balls supplied by Liverpool disappeared into the Kop never to return. No amount of persuasion on my part could induce those Liverpool supporters to return the balls, which had obviously been taken as souvenirs. So we ended up having just one ball to kick about between us. I never brought the matter to the attention of the referee or the Liverpool officials. The Kop had only just forgiven me for the
Ian St John photograph and the last thing I wanted was to get them on my back again.
We fared better in the League Cup, where a terrific run took us to yet another final. Once again we made a modest start, struggling to dispose of Peterborough United, Grimsby Town and Crystal Palace in the early rounds. At the time of the Palace tie, I was harbouring thoughts of a move should my wage negotiations not be resolved. But following our 2–1 victory over Palace, I found the press were batting for me: ‘No one could ever accuse transfer-seeking goalkeeper Gordon Banks of playing to get away from Leicester City,’ wrote Steve Richards in the
Daily Express
. ‘His display for the League Cup holders in last night’s fourth-round replay at Selhurst Park was one of his greatest for the club.’ Having claimed that it was my ‘incredible reflexes’ that put us through to the quarter-finals, he said that it was to be hoped that my ‘dissatisfaction with the club will be resolved soon’.
As far as I was concerned my dissatisfaction was with Matt Gillies and the board over wages, not the club. Deep down I never wanted to leave Leicester City. I had been very loyal to the club and enjoyed a great relationship with both my team mates and the supporters. Sometimes a player in dispute with his club over wages can feel out on a limb. Press reports can imply he is solely motivated by money and has no club loyalty. Steve Richards’s report of our League Cup tie against Palace went some way to dispelling such a notion. However unhappy I was with the terms on offer, I never let it affect my game.
Our lacklustre performances in the early rounds of the League Cup failed to inspire the enthusiasm of the Leicester fans, but that all changed in round five when we were involved in a tie at Coventry City that erupted like a volcano and made up for all the modest football of the previous rounds. A crowd of 28,000 turned up at Highfield Road to witness what turned out to be a sensational night for us. An own goal from the Coventry centre half and skipper, George Curtis, gave us an early lead. Minutes
later I bent my thumb backwards in a challenge for the ball with the Coventry centre forward, George Hudson, and spent the following five minutes on the touchline receiving treatment for what was more of a nuisance than a debilitating injury. Luckily the thumb wasn’t broken and I returned to the fray. At the other end, almost every shot we had resulted in a goal. Left back Richie Norman helped himself to two, but blotted his copybook when he was put clean through by Mike Stringfellow and, in typical full-back fashion, with only the Coventry goalkeeper Bob Wesson to beat, blazed wide. Richie’s miss wasn’t costly; both Billy Hodgson and Mike Stringfellow also helped themselves to a couple of goals and a fine effort from Davie Gibson saw us win by an amazing scoreline of 8–1.
We accounted for Plymouth Argyle over two legs in the semi-final which took us through to a final against Chelsea. Although the League Cup final was still a two-legged affair, the competition was given extra kudos in this season when the Football League announced the winners would receive a place in the Fairs Cup (now the UEFA Cup) the following season.
This added incentive gave the final an extra edge and the first leg at Stamford Bridge was hotly contested. Chelsea gained the upper hand courtesy of a 3–2 scoreline, our goals coming from Colin Appleton and Jimmy Goodfellow. Although we had approached the game with every intention of winning it, we weren’t too despondent as we were confident we could overturn it in front of our own fans. It wasn’t to be. We laid siege to the Chelsea goal for much of the second leg, but their defence held firm and their goalkeeper, Peter Bonetti, was in inspired form. George Graham and Terry Venables were in that Chelsea team but their stars on the night were in defence. Marvin Hinton, Ron Harris, John Hollins, Johnny Boyle and Allan Young, whom Chelsea had signed on a free transfer from Arsenal, all contrived to form an impenetrable back line. For all our concerted efforts to break Chelsea down, the game ended goalless, giving Tommy Docherty’s side a 3–2 aggregate win. I was bitterly disappointed,
as was everyone at the club. Not only had we failed to retain the League Cup, we had missed out on a lucrative place in Europe.
Leicester City made a profit of £44,000 on the season, and though we hadn’t made it into Europe, the club was presented with a great opportunity of making extra income and offering our loyal supporters a football treat when the Football Association offered us a prestigious friendly against one of the greatest club sides in the world. Santos of Brazil were on an eight-date tour of Europe. The opportunity of hosting a match against a team boasting six of the current Brazil national side, including the world’s greatest player, Pelé, was too good a chance to turn down. That, however, was exactly what the Leicester City board did.