By Howard Borrell
I've recently been lucky enough to make contact with someone who, whilst not considered to be a youngster, remains young enough to recount some of his wonderful memories from working at a professional football club immediately after the war.
Robin Needham, who now lives in Bournemouth and continues to follow the Spireites via actual attendance or the internet commentaries, completed his School Certificate and a few weeks later became an employee of the club at age fifteen on the salary of £1 per week.
Robin reflected: "World War Two had finished less than two years earlier and many servicemen were just being released from duty. Rationing was still in force and the club secretary, Eric Willey, considered it necessary to keep the tea and sugar under lock and key in the boardroom -and only he had a key !"
People, in such austere times, craved entertainment and Saturday afternoon meant almost exclusively watching football with virtually everyone travelling by public transport. When Chesterfield beat Newcastle at St James Park on a Wednesday night in September of that year 58,334 were there to witness the triumph and Robin was one of them!
This was Chesterfield's halcyon period playing in the 2nd Division and finishing 4th in 46/7 and 6th in 48/9. One thing that made it possible for smaller clubs to compete was the rule that allocated a 20% share of gate money to the away team. Obviously a share of a 58,000 crowd would be a lifeline to a smaller club and it helped to create a better club balance than we see nowadays.
Back row, l-r: Milburn, Goodfellow, Middleton, Parker, Booker, Watson
Front row, l-r: Hudson, Lyon, Marron, Linacre, Roberts.
That rule disappeared in the early 1980s as we got ready for the modern day "look after yourself" thinking. Believe it or not the capitalist US still maintains a similar approach for all of its major sports and an article I read recently attributed a large part of the success of the small town Wisconsin based Green Bay Packers Football Club ( I know American football isn't really football) to that very rule.
Robin added "Players wages were capped too. The maximum was raised to £12 per week in 1947 plus a £2 win bonus. This applied to all divisions and the maximum wage stayed in place until 1961 when Jimmy Hill led the fight for it to be abolished. If I remember right all the first team players at Chesterfield received the £12 per week pay level as would those at Wednesday and United. £12 may not seem much nowadays but you have to remember the average weekly wage at the time was just £5.
The day-to-day management structure of the Club was simple and straightforward. Bob Brocklebank looked after all playing matters and Eric Willey oversaw everything else, including all aspects of administration, finance and all ground issues."
. Bob Brocklebank
It does make you think. Nowadays the Premiership dominates with the bottom club getting £30m in TV revenue and the top club in the division below approximately one thirtieth of that figure. Even at the top of the Championship there is little interest in creating a fairer share of the cake with clubs lower down the league structure.
Maybe the football world could learn a little from Robin's memories: The re-introduction of the sharing of gate revenue would lessen football's inequality overnight. Some sort of salary cap (similar to what is in place in Coca Cola League Two at the moment) would not only make the leagues more competitive but would give clubs a better chance of staying solvent.
I'm not one for dwelling in the past but, in the current economic climate, a little bit of reappraisal of where our priorities lie would do everyone in the football world a bit of good. The worrying thing is that few would vote for anything that made their club even one penny worse off!
