“IT would be dead easy,” were the words of 101-year-old George Haigh, when asked how he thinks he would fare playing professional football today.
Of course, the game would have been quite different back when he played.
On November 21 it will be exactly 80 years since great-grandfather Haigh made his debut for Stockport County reserves, which makes him the oldest surviving ex-professional footballer in the world.
When asked what it feels like to have this title the former County player laughs and says: “It feels very good, long may I reign!”
Though he says on a more serious note: “When you think of all the football that’s played today, all over the world. To think that I might be the oldest still alive, and still able to kick a ball – it’s amazing, I can’t imagine it.”
Haigh was born on June 29, 1915 in Reddish, Stockport and he showed promise in the game from an early age.
His first appearance at his beloved Edgeley Park came when he was just 14, as he captained the Parish Church School team in the 1929 Stockport Schools Final.
In the same year he left school and was signed by Manchester City as an amateur; in that era clubs could not offer professional contracts until a player turned 18.
So whilst playing at City, Haigh got himself a job in a dying and bleaching factory so he could start earning some money.
It was at City where Haigh became great friends with another amateur by the name of Frank Swift.
Swift, the goalkeeper who went on to make over 400 appearances for City, before, during and after the war, as well as gaining 19 post-war caps for England.
He remembered those days and his friendship with Swift fondly: “Frank and I were very close. When he lost his life in the Munich disaster it broke my bloody heart.”
Swift had been working as a journalist in 1958 and was on the plane when disaster struck.
Though Haigh also recalled happier memories such as Swift’s heroics in City’s FA Cup final win in 1935, when Swift famously fainted on the final whistle.
The following year, in 1936, Haigh signed his first professional contract with Stockport County.
“I was paid £5.50 a week, and the limit for all footballers was £10 per week. It was good money in those days, I was quite happy.”
The £5.50 paid in 1936 equates to around £270 today due to inflation – as he said he was ‘quite happy’ with his wage but it comes nowhere close to the astronomical wages professional footballers receive in today’s game.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he outlined.
When all is said and done, football’s a team game and everyone in the team is responsible for what it does.”
However, saying that, the Reddish-born player admitted that he often attended Players’ and Trainers’ Union meetings in which they actually campaigned for higher pay.
He recalls once there were whispers of the players striking until they got the pay rise they wanted; the protests proved in vein as it came to nothing.
Haigh played at Stockport in 1936, 1937 and 1938 prior to the war breaking out; he left and joined the Royal Air Force [RAF] as a physical training instructor.
Therefore, he actually only made two first team appearances whilst at Stockport, still a relative youngster he played most of his games in the very successful reserve team, as well as the ‘A’ team, which played in the Cheshire County League and the Manchester League respectively.
The centre-back told me he can still remember the faces of some of the Stockport first team from that era, including the club captain Billy Bocking, the forward Alf Lythgoe – who caused him all sorts of trouble on the training pitch – and Lee Jones, the centre-back who ensured Haigh’s first team chances were limited.
His chance finally came to make his debut for the first team in 1938 as they played Lincoln City at home in Division Three North.
Stockport earned themselves a 3-3 draw in this fixture after goals from Reid, Bagley and Lythgoe, but the game was somewhat disastrous for debutant Haigh as he scored an own-goal.
“It was a terrible situation. Of course the goalkeeper blamed me. But I thought it might have been his fault.
“The cartoonist in the local paper (the Stockport Advertiser) did one of me disappearing down a hole in the ground.”
An undoubtably apt representation of how the young defender felt at the time, but now almost 80 years later he’s able to laugh about it.
Another area of green-eyed envy from Haigh emerges when the topic turns to modern day boots.
He recalled how Stockport used to distribute pairs at the beginning of each season to every player.
“We had a big case of football boots at the start of each year and if you wanted any you had to pick a pair, and if you could put them on in your bare feet they were yours,” he explained.
“Then you had to work at it to make them fit. We used to sit with them on in the bath after training, so they’d mould to your feet.”
During the war Haigh was posted to RAF Morecambe, but luckily he was able to continue playing football at the weekends for a number of clubs including local side Morecambe and Rochdale.
During his time at Rochdale, Haigh found himself up against the great Stanley Matthews on a number of occasions, as he played for Blackpool.
“He was a magician – there’s no doubt about it,” he told Quays News.
“If he got the ball, you were wasting your time trying to tackle him. Because if you tried to tackle him he’d be gone. How he did it I don’t know.”
Matthews was described as ‘a nice guy’ but also quite unsociable, preferring to keep himself to himself.
Yet, Haigh did manage to speak to him on a few occasions and he recalled those times as if they were yesterday.
“We used to have dinner together after the games, and I said once ‘How do you do it?’ and he just said ‘I don’t know.’”
Dubbing Matthews the best player of his generation, Haigh struggled to compare him to a modern day footballer – though when pushed, Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo was the name that came to mind.
“There was nobody that really was like him. He stood out alone for what he could do.”
He even took his own son to see Matthews play at Old Trafford for Stoke when he was 50-years-old and still playing.
“I wanted him to see what I had to play against.”
Much has changed since the Haigh era to the modern-day interpretation but the level of diving is something that struck a particular chord during the interview.
“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen – some of them make a real pantomime of it.
“I don’t think it’s an English thing, it’s the foreign players who’ve been brought in who started it; it’s ridiculous and not fair to the game.
Players wouldn’t have been allowed to do it [in my era], it would have been a matter of ‘Get up man, you’re not hurt!’ Get up and get on with the game.”
Whilst on the topic, the former City, Rochdale and County man spoke of one painful encounter of his own whilst playing at Turf Moor against Burnley.
“It was bitterly cold, and I was blocking the winger. And he must have got frustrated with me, because when he finally got the ball he let it fly – at me – and it hit me in the privates. It was terrible.
Laughing, Haigh remembers the St John’s Ambulance staff who helped him off the pitch and not allowing a female nurse to come near him, in an attempt to protect his modesty.
“Of course the players made a joke of it. And in the second half I was posted out on the left wing out of the way.
“In those days there were no substitutes so they’d rather have a man out there not doing anything, than be a man down.”
As the war was coming to an end, Lancaster Town approached Haigh and he agreed to play for them on the condition that they would teach him a trade.
As luck would have it they already had a player on the books who owned an engineering firm, so it was settled, Haigh would train to be an engineer whilst playing for Lancaster on the weekends.
Alas, his final hurrah as a footballer came at Rossendale United when he was given the role of a player-manager.
“I wanted to stay in football because it was what I knew, but it didn’t work out,” Haigh reflected.
“I was getting players to come and play for Rossendale, but the directors kept getting in the way saying ‘we can’t afford him’.
“That’s when I noticed, that even in those days, it was starting to be all about the money.”
So it was after parting ways with Rossendale that he finally hung up his boots after an extraordinary career in which he played either side of WWII, as well as whilst it was going on.
Still a lover of watching the beautiful game and a firm supporter of Stockport County where he spent some of his happiest playing days, Haigh remains as strong as enthused as ever.
Most recently he was at Edgeley Park to see County play Kidderminster Harriers on the 80th birthday of the Danny Bergara stand.
“It’s wonderful really, I can’t explain it,” he said of his recent visit.
“What it was like to be in the stand. It’s absolutely wonderful.”
By Matt Bullin
@matt_bullin01
Recent Comments