Ted moved like he was on casters!
Yes and I think his best days were certainly behind him, didn’t he once score a triple hat-trick for Bournemouth in a cup game?
Remember that there were a full 2 sides of the ground filled with Pool. Left late from work with some mates expecting a few hundred to attend at most. What an atmosphere.
No Kenyon joined in October 1981 when Allan Brown was manager. He was on a short term contract till the end of the season. However he suffered an injury in training soon after signing and that kept him out for the rest of the season. He left in June 1982 without making an appearance. He then went into non lg football for the rest of his career.
The passage of time does have its effects on the clarity of memory. I was sure it was Bally. Anyways as team mates they made Whitecaps very happy in their glory year of 79. Roger went to a 40th year celebration over there a few years back.
Was that just one season think he relegated umpteen clubs
.bally was at vancouver white caps 79 80 season
I used to play in the same local team (under 16’s) as Roger and Eric Curwen who captained England schoolboys and also went to Everton. We were sponsored by Billy Cartmell who paid for our kit and put on a party at his hotel when we won the Kenny Shield
Everton were known in the early 60’s for being generous with the” brown envelope” when signing up schoolboys. Against the rules but hard to prove etc. Other clubs did it as well.
I remember that night well. We were In a pub after the game somewhere between Rotherham and Manchester celebrating.
Alan Ball was sacked by Blackpool in Feb 1981 after just 34 League games in charge. Allan Brown was in charge when Blackpool were relegated to Div 4, however I am not saying if Ball had stayed that Blackpool would not have been relegated. Ball’s most successful period as a Manager was at Portsmouth (first time around) and at Southampton.
Alan Ball was 34 and still a very good Div 1 player when he became Blackpool Player Manager, he was also doing two jobs at Blackpool. When he was sacked by Blackpool, Ball rejoined Southampton and played a further 63 games in Div 1.
It’s all about perspective I suppose.
I still think the demise of Blackpool started in the late 70s when in 1978 Blackpool inexplicably sacked Allan Brown when we were challenging for promotion to Div 1 and after that we won just 1 game and got relegated instead and then brought in Bob Stokoe for another stint of asset stripping,
The demise began in the early 60s when the maximum wage was abolished and immediately disadvantaged the 'smaller' clubs who couldn't offer
Yes they’d go and bribe the parents with new cars etc. They did that with John Hurst
Blackpool still had some great players in the 1960s & 197Os after the maximum wage was abolished and spent the entire period in the top 2 tiers of English football, often challenging for Promotion to the Top Tier. It was a very exciting time to be a Blackpool fan. The surprise sacking of Allan Brown in 1978 took us into a completely new ball park as we won just one Div 2 game in the last 16 games after he left and ended up in Div 3 and then shortly afterwards in Div 4.
Everyone knew what a hopeless manager he was.
The Rotherham win was preceded by wins at Oxford and and Reading. Although Bally was in Canada? He resigned immediately after an away game at Brentford where we lost and seemed quite a shock to the staff. By that time we were doomed and saddled with a major wage bill.
Freddie Scott was de facto manager in the season we stayed up as Ball was playing in Canada.
Bally is still highly rated as a Manager by Portsmouth & Southampton fans.
John Hurst yes he went to St. Georges. He lived in a prefab on Lawson Rd as a kid.
Great player for Everton, as a kid he was so much bigger than the rest of us and could literally dribble past us all and score.
Not by my family.
He couldn’t afford me, so I became his Number 1 fan instead.
If I had been Bally’s agent I would have advised him not to take the Blackpool Player Manager job.
It was in the days before agents. Bally took advice from his dad and no one else.
I remember Trevor Francis having an agent (Dennis Roach) when he was transferred from Birmingham to Forest for £1M in the late 1970s. High profile players like Alan Ball would also have agents, certainly in the early 80s when Ball came to Blackpool as Player Manager and handling the complexity of his ongoing contract with Vancouver Whitecaps. Yes in the early days of his career Alan Ball did take advice from his Dad and nobody else, unfortunately his Dad died in early 1982.
Forgot to mention that I employed Alan Ball as an after dinner and motivational speaker in the 1990s at three events I organised, he was brilliant and I got to sit next to him on the top table. I also enjoyed the Q&As, Bally didn’t know what questions were coming and he answered them all with honesty.
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