Search

Tag results

You are searching documents tagged with "Manchester City Fc"

  • Interviews and Storytelling: Bobby Kennedy

    [TRACK 1]

    TONY WRIGHT: 14th of June 2011. It’s Tony Wright and Adrian Burke talking to Bobby Kennedy in Hebden Bridge.

    ADRIAN BURKE:

    Okay. You started your career at Coltness United, but before we go onto your career as a footballer, what possessed you to become a footballer in the first place?

    BOBBY KENNEDY: I think it was just one of the things you did when you were a kid – you played in the streets and that was it....played at school and just progressed from there.

    AB:

    After a couple of trials with Queen of the South and Clyde you were signed by Kilmarnock where you made eighty-five appearances. You also became ill with a serious illness at the time.

    BK: Yeah I was in the army at the time and I got......an injury and then fluid on my lung and that, and it kept me out of playing for about a year.

    AB:

    Okay. But in the 1959 and 1960 season, Kilmarnock were incredibly close to doing a double. Sadly they ended up being runners up in both the League and the League Cup

    BK: That's right.

    AB:

    How influential was William Waddell as a manager?

    BK: Well he was one of these managers....in those days you didn’t see much of the manager because they were more an office job – they had a trainer who you went out training with during the day and that, and the manager was just somebody who if anything went wrong he put the team sheet up, and he was there on a Saturday telling you what he wanted and all the rest of it, but managers were a lot in the background in those days. As I say, they mainly were in their offices.

    AB:

    Okay. So they never took part in any training?

    BK: Even when I came down to Manchester City the manager then was Les McDowall and

    1

    you never seen him till match days or occasionally he would come down and watch the training, but as I say they were mainly all......office job workers, well not office job workers but they were in the office and they had a lot more to do with probably the running of the club than they do nowadays, I mean nowadays they probably.....they only look at the team, the players and that, and that’s them finished, a lot of them don’t even know about the money side of it, they tell you what they want and somebody else goes and deals with that, so it’s entirely different nowadays.

    AB:

    Okay. Did he actually say anything at half time or before a game?

    BK: Oh yes, you see them on match days and they come in at half time and......well they couldn’t alter much these days, I mean you’d eleven players, the names was on the team sheet and you went out with eleven players. I mean they’ve a pool of seventeen or eighteen players they can swap about with nowadays even when the match is on, but then if you were injured and you could stand up, you stayed on the field, simple as that.

    AB:

    I wouldn’t say you’d to describe a typical training session, what happened if obviously the manager wasn’t there, but what sort of exercises did you do?

    BK: In those days?

    AB:

    In those days.

    BK: Well probably we had at Kilmarnock quite a go-ahead young trainer, type of thing, and he probably started with doing more ball skills and things like that, whereas I think probably a few years before my time they went out and run so many laps around the playing field and that was it, but they weren’t full-timers don’t forget, it was only part- time. I had a job as an engineer, I was an engineer, at certain times I was an engineer and only played part-time. It was only in the latter years, I think it was the last year at Kilmarnock I played full-time and then come down to Manchester City as a full-timer, but up to then I was part-time

    AB:

    And there was a two-tier league system back then in Scotland, there wasn’t three divisions, just two

    BK: There was not.

    AB:

    2

    There was not? There wasn’t a three tier league system, it was two tiers, two divisions in Scotland back then

    BK: In Scotland?

    AB:

    Yeah

    BK: Maybe I’ve got that wrong.....I mean......the thing with Scottish football, it was so different from English football because I think all the teams......except Rangers and Celtic of course, they were all part-timers, they all had their jobs, I mean half the players at Kilmarnock, they didn’t even have cars, you know, you got a bus to the ground and things like that, I mean I lived in ... not in Kilmarnock, it was an hour and twenty minutes on the bus, a service bus and I had that before I trained two nights a week and come back; it was a very different thing in those days, particularly in Scotland.

    AB:

    Well Kilmarnock didn’t win a league until 1964, 1965

    BK: That was after I left, yes.

    AB:

    But you left in 1959, ‘61

    BK: ’61, yeah.

    AB:

    And you moved to Manchester City for forty-five thousand pounds which was quite a bit of money.

    BK: It was the highest paid for a wing half in those days.

    AB:

    And.......how hard was it, or was it easy to adjust to life down in Manchester? Was it a little bit different?

    BK: ........it was alright, it was easy to adjust; football is football you know, you just went out and played and that was it, so I didn’t feel I was held back any by not playing down in England; I came on and......I think one of the main things was......problem with the training which was more physical and that, because the type of football they played was

    3

    probably more running than what it was in Scotland, so no, I soon adapted to it.

    AB:

    And you started off with Manchester City and obviously it didn’t start well because your side were relegated to division two in 1963. How tough was that, not just for on yourself but for the team in general

    BK: Well it was very hard......you know when you’d just been there for a couple of years and they were going down; you begin to get into the way of English football and...the teams that were good in those days – there was Blackpool, there was Preston, there was Burnley, they were all top teams in those days and it was very, very hard for a team like Manchester City in that area to go down and these teams were still playing in the first division you know, so it was a bit difficult.

    AB:

    Now you mentioned Les McDowall before. He was replaced as manager in 1963 by Joe Mercer who was appointed with Malcolm Allison, and did you feel they had the right attitude to get Manchester City back into the top

    BK: Well the regime changed quite a bit, and at that time the coaching side of it was changing. Malcolm was a bit ahead of his time with regards to other coaches, bringing in his methods and what not, and it was actually changing then, and I think....I mean I only played about one year under Malcolm even though I was there a couple of years, I was coming to the end of my career anyway, so the year they did get promotion I played nearly all that and.....but then we went up into the Premier, the First Division as it was in those days; they were always looking for better players and younger players, so that was just a change in my career you know.

    AB:

    And then Colin Bell signed and how good were they?

    BK: Well I think you can rate them with anybody who’s playing in the Premier League today, you know, all the good players in that time, they would have been good players in this time because they knew how to play, it is just the way they play nowadays, they would have been big players now just as well.

    AB:

    Two seasons after promotion you were part of the 1967, ’68 squad which won the league, finishing two points clear of arch rivals Manchester United. Unfortunately you never got a medal for that.

    BK: No, I didn’t play enough games. At that time substitutes, you would have one substitute

    4

    in those days....the thing was that if you didn’t play then that was it, and I mean I think I played about four or five games; I didn’t play that many, but the amount of weekends that I went with the team, because they always took thirteen players so you know, you were involved in it but as I say, you had to play so many games before you got a medal.

    AB:

    And playing against Manchester United as Manchester City, it was obviously tough back then because you had sixty thousand people watching which was quite a lot back then, but.....how tough is it now and do you think it’s easier now to play in those games, or was it hard back then?

    BK: I don’t think it’s any easier but it’s different you know, it’s just a different type of football. The crowds that go don’t expect to see football that they played in our days.....I think the thing about it nowadays is they keep the ball longer, whereas you would never have seen four, five, more passes going along the back – the defence at the back – that you do now, I mean sometimes you see even twenty passes and they’ve not got over the half way line, but you would never have seen that in my day you know. The crowd wanted the ball forward, so the first place you looked was to go forward.

    AB:

    You needed a bit of a licence to play back then because it was very physical?

    BK: A what?

    AB:

    A licence to play because it was a very physical game

    BK: You needed a?

    AB:

    Licence to play

    BK: Oh yeah, I mean it was one.....it was one of these things; you’d be in trouble if you lost a couple of times [laughing] it was one of these things you know, if you passed the ball square and it was intercepted, you’d be in a terrible lot of trouble for passing it like that, yeah you would.

    AB:

    You have a taste in modern football?

    BK: A what?

    5

    AB:

    A taste in modern football in a way because in 1968 you were part of the Manchester City side which travelled to America, to face Atlanta Chiefs at the Fulton County Stadium. How different was playing there to the Maine Road or anywhere else in England or Scotland?

    BK: In America? Well I had been to America before so I knew what it was like. I went in....I’d been ten years before that with Manchester City, with Kilmarnock, I’m sorry, and we had been five to six weeks over there playing at different places so I knew what it was like. A lot of them had a lot of good players, the likes of Atlanta where we played, they had South Americans, players like that, who were very skilful and what not, so the games weren’t that easy......and it was a lot different because it was hot and you know, when you’re used to playing during the winter and you’re playing, you know, we played New York one time and it was ninety-eight, and ninety-eight humidity.....well you know what that’s like – imagine trying to play against that, and there was these South Americans and Africans, and they weren’t even breaking sweat you know, so that wasn’t so good.

    AB:

    Were the stadiums different?

    BK: The stadiums – well there were some big stadiums, I mean when you think of Maine Road where you’d the Platt Lane end and you hadn’t a cover over one end; two or three of the places we did play in were baseball crowds you know, so half the time it wasn’t a football field you know, but they’d all these great big stands so it was a bit different.

    AB:

    You had some good players there, Francis Lee being one of them. Could you tell me a little bit more about some of the players you did play against or who you played with?

    BK: Played against?

    AB:

    And played with.

    BK: Well I suppose the best player I’ve played against was Johnny Haynes of Fulham; he was one of the best centre forwards that I ever played against, and probably ever seen you know, he was the first hundred pound player you know, and he deserved to be that because he was one of the best, but to play with, I would say Colin Bell, I played behind Colin quite a few times and Colin was extremely great, you know, because and Mike Summerbee, so the two of them, it was just a matter of getting the ball and giving them

    6

    and they got on with it, so it was......I wouldn’t say easy you know, but it was good. AB:

    You also played European football at a time when it was in its infancy

    BK: Yeah, I think I only played one European game because there wasn’t that many in those days

    AB

    But how different was it back then to what it is now? Did you just get on and play and go out there and play a game and come back, or did you stay over?

    BK: Well we went to Istanbul and played Fenerbahce and it was just like......I mean.....we just flew there, played the game, flew back the next day, there was no trimmings or anything like that, it was just basic – flew there, stayed in a hotel, played the match and back as soon as you can and that was it, but I mean they did that for London games. You’d go on a Friday afternoon, stay overnight in a hotel, play the game and back Saturday night you know, so it wasn’t any different than.....you know, that type of thing

    AB:

    Now you end your Manchester City career and you were signed by Grimsby Town. Your Manchester City career ended and you were signed by Grimsby Town as a player manager

    BK: I went there.....I went there just before they got to the.....the Cup Final actually, and Grimsby was.....I think they were twenty-third, bottom of the league in the fourth division and it looked as if they were going......in those days we had to re-apply for election, so it wasn’t the best of starts you know

    AB:

    But did you adopt a different approach as a manager than Les McDowell and the others you’d worked with?

    BK: Well they had gone; there was only Joe and Malcolm, they had gone you know. I knew a few managers but I was only there a year and a bit and that was it, so it was very difficult. It was one of.....Grimsby was one of the clubs that had, I think in those days......they had thirteen directors, thirteen directors, and it was a vote on everything that was done to keep thirteen happy, you know, it was very difficult......so I didn’t last long there, then I went to Bradford of course, well I went there as a youth coach to be honest.

    AB:

    Yeah and you than had a short spell at Dundalk in Ireland

    7

    BK: Oh Drogeda, oh aye yes, that was just an experience that....when I was at Bradford a lad called John Connington, he was the first team coach there and a lad, Mick Reagan, who he used to play with at Huddersfield, he was an Irish lad; he was associated with Drogeda and he asked.......if we would fly over and play, there was about a month left in the season and we had to fly over from Manchester at eleven o’clock, played the match at 3 o’clock and we had to then fly back at six, I mean I was finished playing at that time, I was only coaching the youth team but I mean they asked us to go, but the lad Stevens from Bolton, he was another one, because he played with him at Everton, and he came over as well, so that was how I got involved with that.

    AB:

    And you then went into Bradford City as a manager after becoming the honorary manager

    BK: That’s right. Bryan Edwards left and I took over from him. We were......the first year we went to the fifth round in the FA Cup, which was extraordinary for a fourth division club because I think it was the fourth.....it would be the fifth round we beat Norwich then it was the quarter finals; we played Southampton, who went on to win the cup that year, so we had a really good year that year, then the following year we finished up, I think it was second in the league and got promotion, but I’m afraid after that, in the higher league, it didn’t last long and I gave up after that; they finished me after about two months in the season

    AB:

    But you got a Manager of the month award as well...

    BK: Oh, I think I won three, when we won the league. We were on top for a number of weeks. It was only I think the last four weeks of the season that we dropped down to second but we were at the top for quite a while.

    AB:

    Did you do things differently at Bradford City as a manger and did you get involved in the training aspect?

    BK: Oh yeah. We did it all, did it all. We did the grounds as well, yeah we looked after the grounds – we’d no money! [laughing] No money whatsoever, so you just did what you had to. The groundsman was a part-time lad from the university, so you had to help out, you had to do that.....one of those things. The lower clubs in those days, they had to do these jobs because they just didn’t have the money to warrant it, not like today when you look on the bench a lot of these clubs with as many physios, masseurs and psychiatrists, managers than there is players sitting on the side nowadays, whereas I sat on the side of

    8

    the players and that was it AB:

    Was there no coach or anything?

    BK: Oh we had a coach, we had a coach; John.....his name’s gone....and he.....well he played off and on, you know, and that was the way, but I mean I had a pool of fifteen players for the full season, you know, so that’s how you’d to get on in those days.

    AB:

    So there was fifteen – same eleven every week; when someone’s injured you’d replace them

    BK: Yeah that was it, you just played with your fifteen - fifteen full-time pros; I think we had a couple on the sidelines that were part-time professionals that played with the youth and reserve team; well the youth team was a reserve team because we couldn’t afford the reserve team and the youth team, so the youth team was an under nineteen team, so anybody in that, that I needed, I had to take from them to fill in.

    AB:

    Okay. Was there any special moments as a manager in games?

    BK: I think.....you know, I think.....the most special was when we went to Norwich; John Bond was the manager of Norwich and they were in the first division side. I’m sure it was the fifth round and there’d been quite a.....controversy before it because at that time there was a big flu outbreak and we had to cancel the match because we didn’t have enough players; a lot had flu and it was all over the papers – ‘if you cannot field a team you shouldn’t be in the league’ and all the rest, however the league did postpone it, and gave us time and I thought ‘thank you very much’ [laughing]

    AB:

    So it was a case of prove the press wrong in that game?

    BK: .......We enjoyed it, you know, it was very nerve-wracking you know, very nerve- wracking because......they had more skill playing, it was as simple as that but we broke away and scored

    AB:

    And then after the end of your Bradford City career there you went off to Blackburn Rovers to be a coach...

    BK:

    9

    Yeah well, Jim Riley was there and I knew, Jim was manager of Barnsley when I was at Grimsby. We got on with each other quite well and he took over as manager of Blackburn, and I think he took over in.......February and I went not long after he did, so I wasn’t there that long, and he got the sack, and he’d only been there three months, and I thought ‘well, better look for another job’ and that was it. I finished there and off I went, you know. And I thought ‘well it’s happened two or three times, I’ve had enough’

    AB:

    Do you still keep up-to-date with football?

    BK: I still go and watch Manchester City you know, because Manchester City are one of the best clubs for looking after ex players, you know, we belong to the Players Association and they have a lad called Fred Eyre who looks after the Players Association and if you want to go to any of the matches he fixes us up with match tickets and they also have a room where we all meet and there is sandwiches, teas, coffee, the best seats in the house I don’t think there’s any other club looks after the former players like Manchester City.

    AB:

    Okay. Looking at the players today, do you think there’s too much money involved?

    BK: Yeah well it’s hard to say that, I mean it’s not the players’ fault they’ve too much money, you know, I think you must put it down to television really. They’re plying money in for people to watch it, so the players obviously want their share which is only natural, but it does seem a bit obscene when players at the top at some of the best clubs in the world want away. I can’t understand that, you know, and the other I can’t understand about a lot of them is, they’re quite prepared to sit on the bench and play two minutes, three minutes and if they just want to.....if they’re right football minded, why don’t they just move down where they’re going to get a game every week, you know, because even though they don’t get that much money, they want to play and life in football is short, I mean you can be two or three years sitting on the bench and suddenly you find ‘well I’m getting on a bit’ you know, ‘why haven’t I played all that football that I love playing,’ but that’s how a lot of them think these days.

    AB:

    Well just one more last question......what’s the best team you’ve ever played against?

    BK:] The best team?

    AB:

    Club team.

    BK: .......it’s hard that.......I mean I remember playing at Wolves when Wolves were a top

    10

    notch team. They beat us 6-1 with Eddie Clamp and all them and I thought ‘my goodness, what a team they are!’ but I mean even Fulham – Fulham was a great team with Bobby Robson and Johnny Haynes......they had a lot of English players playing for Fulham. You see the thing in those days is, players didn’t need to get a transfer because they couldn’t get any more money in another club as they got in their own club, so it evened it out more; you had the Blackpools and the Prestons and as I say the Burnleys could compete with, you know, the Man Cities, the Arsenals, the Tottenhams, they could compete with them because they couldn’t give any more money than what they could. I think Fulham, they were about the best and the great Wolves side in the late fifties and early sixties, when they were going because I think Wolves in those days were one of the teams that went into Europe a lot and they played against the Moscow Dynamos, teams like that, you know, because I mean they had Billy Wright and all these players you know, so they were a great team in those days.

    TW:

    I’m gonna ask a few now. I wanted to ask about your wages. What kind of wages did you get from like.....from when you first started playing until.....through your career did it change that much, and how much was it?

    BK: Well the Scottish part-time players were better off than the English full-timers because they had a job, and they had...... their wages from the football. I mean they only got.....I mean you had....you had wages for not playing and wages for playing, and the bonuses – whereas it was two pound for England, I mean, I don’t think there was many games that we were on two pound for a bonus, I mean you’d want fifty pound in those days to play Rangers and Celtic but you didn’t meet them that much, so they could put you on a hundred pound if they wanted [laughing], but that’s what you were on, and....so it wasn’t till the maximum wage was taken on that more Scottish players and that started to move down south, but I mean as a part-timer....I was an engineer you see, I mean Ian St John, he and I served our time as engineers together, you know, he went to Motherwell, which was our home town, and I went to Kilmarnock – we both worked, we both played for our individual clubs, but as I say, with the two of them put together, we were as well off as the English were, so you didn’t have to go south.

    TW:

    So it was......you didn’t have a......wage for the year, you got paid by the game, that how it worked?

    BK: Not by the game. You got paid if you didn’t play – you got more if you played. You could be on day ten pound and fifteen pound if you played, and during the summer when there was nothing on, you could be on eight pound, that was the type of thing – there was less in the summer, then if you were.....at the start of the season you’d so much, then if you played you’d so much you’d that extra, that’s how it was done.

    TW:

    11

    You said earlier about Malcolm Allison bringing in a new regime, and new methods and that, but what was it that was so different that he did? BK: Well the thing that was so different was.....we played more with the ball, I mean a lot of the time before that we were training, it was physical training and things like that; the thing was that he come in and we started doing more skilled work with the ball and things like that and he didn’t go in as much for running round the tracks and all the rest of it, but I’m saying that......we got promotion that first year, but I mean we had a good team, you know, and promotion was in our sight because we should never have been relegated but that was how we did things then and we won promotion, and the first thing he did was bring in Terry Ibbotson.....and a lad called Joe Lancaster, who ran against the great Sanope and they brought them in and they had a training group team which was very difficult. Terry Ibbotson would be on the front, they would run in the park and then they would take them on a running track, and they did that for six weeks and then they rested you for six weeks, so it was very much an athletic thing, so the thing was, you made sure you weren’t injured and missed it, cos if you missed one week, it was hard the next week, you know, but that changed, but we still did all the ball skills for all the rest of the week, and worked on things they were gonna try in the game, which was things that we probably never did - working free kicks and things like that – we started doing things like that.

    TW:

    Oh right. Did you have any sort of......like diet regime as well then; did they make you eat certain kind of foods or that sort of thing, you know.....did they tell you what to eat?

    BK: Not really, the only thing that Malcolm brought in was, he wanted.....he wanted us to have a breakfast in the morning, which a lot of people don’t have, you know, you’ve a coffee and a slice of toast or something, and then you get off to the ground for ten o’clock, whereas he made the training eleven o’clock and asked us to make sure we had had a decent breakfast before we started, so that was all......the pre-match lunch was virtually the same; a steak which is frowned upon nowadays, but in those days that was the standard thing; you’d a fillet steak two hours before the match, but I think that’s frowned on – you don’t have meat, it’s pastas and what not, so things change over the years.

    TW:

    Right. I read somewhere that your daughter played football as well.

    BK: Oh yes, my daughter, aye.

    TW:

    Oh right.

    BK:

    12

    She’s played for Scotland. She’s played quite a number of times, so she’s very interesting. She’s a season ticket for Manchester City because she’s always been brought up with Manchester City, so she goes to all their games; she’s very Manchester City orientated.

    TW:

    I see. Did.....did you teach her anything then when she was little, you know, when she was young?

    BK: Not really, not really. The way that she happened to get into it was.....one of the directors at Bradford City ran a girls’ football team, so she asked.....she was always doing running, she was always very sports minded, so we took her along there to start....she was only about eight years old or something like that, so she started early and she just progressed from there, I mean, after she got to......probably about twenty, she had quite a lot to do with the running of the girls’ football club....coaching and that, she’s done all the coaching badges, she’s qualified to coach a senior team because she took all the coaching badges, so she’s quite clued up on it and that, so I’ve got to watch what I say about her[laughing]

    TW:

    Well isn’t it true, the......is it this year I believe they’re.....they’re making the women’s game professional and full time isn’t it now?

    BK: It is.

    TW:

    Is she anything to do with it at all?

    BK: No, no. She’s coming on fifty now, she’s more in the background now; she helps out with the local team if they need help with the coaching, things like that, but....I mean, the team she’s connected with....she sort of made that her type of place to be because if she had......when she was younger..... went on to Doncaster Belles or one of the top teams something like that, she’d probably have played for England, you know, but she didn’t and it was only a friend who went up to play in Scotland who mentioned her name, I mean I took her up for trials and things like that you know, that’s how she started playing for Scotland, but she knows quite a lot of people but I don’t think she would ever turn professional.

    TW:

    Do you have any sort of regrets, you know, something that happened in football, I mean obviously winning the FA Cup or that sort of thing, nobody who’s ever won it might have wished they’d want to, but is there anything that happened that you regretted at all?

    13

    BK: Not really......things have gone pretty well for me, I mean.....in Kilmarnock I got the two cup finals that happened against Rangers which we’d have beat anyway, but I mean there was a hundred.....well over a hundred and twenty thousand there, when you think.....I watched the Cup Final this year, I think there was about sixty-eight thousand, and I think.....the games in my day were really big, and that was it. Man City I got Second Division medal, Grimsby we didn’t get anything, with Bradford we got promotion so that was a thing and we got to the quarter finals of the FA Cup from the Fourth Division so that was satisfying, so every club I’ve been at except Grimsby, I’ve done pretty well and I’ve had some success so I’m happy with that.

    TW:

    Yeah. I’ll just ask you a little bit about the modern game now. The way they play these days.....there seems to be a lot of diving and this kind of thing that goes on

    BK: Well they seem to talk about that, but Franny Lee was a good diver [laughing], Rodney Marsh was a good diver. He used to trip hisself up, so it’s a thing that’s always gone on, you know, and I think people with television just seem to look for it more. Most of the time I think the referees get it right.

    TW:

    Do you think the referees should be professional and that should be their job, and nothing else?

    BK: I’ve often thought that there should be more footballers going into the refereeing side of it, but by the time footballers have finished.....they would need to start at the bottom, and by the time they’ve worked through...the retirement age for referees, they’ve had it, so they weren’t encouraged to take it up, so I mean, the players nowadays are making too much money; they wouldn’t want to referee anyway, but I always thought that more players should have been enticed into it and probably start at a higher level, things like that, because when you look at Rugby League and that, the referee they all played rugby and that, it was one of my pet things, but I don’t know, I think referees on the whole do a good job. I was always one of those who thought ‘well that foul went against us – maybe the foul next time will go with us’ and I think it all evens itself out in the end; you get some for, you get some against. What’s the good in arguing about it?

    TW:

    Yeah. Were there a lot more injuries when you played than there are now? These days, one of the reasons they say they have such big teams is because people get injured so much, so you need a back-up squad, so do people get injured more these days do you think?

    BK: It looks like it, I think so, yes, it looks like it. They’re either, it’s their ankles because I

    14

    mean the boots they play in these days are like carpet slippers aren’t they? I mean in my day they were up over your ankles you know. You see a lot of them going off with pulled muscles and things like that, and no, I think actually it’s right, there seem to be more...they must do - the physio and the masseur and a doctor all ready to run on...

    TW:

    Is that because they’re soft do you think? [laughing]

    BK: Well I don’t think they’re soft, but when you see somebody that tackles nowadays where they’re jumping in from two and three yards, you think ‘my goodness you could have broken that lad’s leg’ and I thought ‘well you should have sent him off’ because it is dangerous play.

    TW:

    Was there a code amongst the players then in your day, that you didn’t try to hurt anybody, or do you think there was a bit more sympathy for the other team?

    BK: I don’t think....I don’t think it was that you didn’t try to hurt anybody, but you knew you were gonna let them know you were there kind of thing, you know, but you didn’t go out to sort of......jump at players and that, I mean there was players that you knew.....I mean the Bolton of then, were always known as a very tough hard side, but that was what they were known for, you know, but I don’t think they would have done any more injuries to other players than any other team, even though they were known for their badness in those days.

    TW:

    Yeah. Is there any rules, any football rules you’d like to see changed?

    BK: Yeah.

    TW:

    What?

    BK: Putting subs on two minutes from time [laughing] – I think it’s a disgrace! I know....I can see the logic in it, that they want to break up the play at the end of the game, but in my view I would make fifteen minutes from the end – no more subs, you know, because to me it looks a bit humiliating and degrading bringing a player on, even in injury time, and stopping the game, you know, I think it’s disgraceful.

    TW:

    Right. I’ll ask you about this – if I had a rule to change, it would be....when a penalty was given, the person who was fouled would have to take

    15

    BK: Take the penalty.

    TW:

    Yeah. What do you think about that?

    BK: It’s a difficult one that, you know, you’re either for it or against it, but I think the one thing is that lots of people are trying to keep changing the rules. The rules are alright to stick by and that’s it, you know, I mean, America was trying to change them, I mean their penalty kicks, they used to have to run from the half way line with the ball and beat the goalkeeper [laughing], but they were great ones for trying to change rules you know. No I think the rules are alright. The only thing, the other thing that you’ve probably got to do is get all the technology for the score line thing because there’s so many ifs and buts about it, and if there’s technology that can prove it, it should be used.

    TW:

    Yeah. Right.....I suppose that’s about it really. There was something else in my head but it’s gone out of it now. Well I suppose we’ll leave it there then if that’s alright, unless there’s anything else that you would like to say.

    BK: No I think you’ve covered pretty everything – more than I thought you were going to.

    TW:

    Okay. Well thank you very much

    BK: So long as you are happy with it.

    TW:

    Yeah, yeah. Are you okay?

    BK: Yeah I’m fine.

    TW:

    Okay, well thank you very much.

    BK: Oh you’re most welcome, you’re most welcome.

    [END OF TRACK ONE]

    Read more

About Us

Wild Rose Heritage and Arts is a community group which takes it's name from the area in which we are located - the valley ("den") of the wild rose ("Heb") -  Hebden Bridge which is in Calderdale, West Yorkshire.

Get in touch

Pennine Heritage Ltd.
The Birchcliffe Centre
Hebden Bridge
HX7 8DG

Phone: 01422 844450
Contact Us