“Denis Law’s in t’wash”
Half a century on, FFT hails the greatest football match in British cinematic history
The untold story of the greatest match in the history of cinema
Denis Law played and starred in many memorable matches over a long and distinguished career, but he missed out on a starring role in the greatest game in British cinema history because he was “in the wash” that week. When the gaggle of teenagers in ill-fitting kits lined up to be picked for teams at the start of a PE lesson in Kes, none of the players had the remotest idea they were about to make footballing history, not least as every player was making their (cinematic) debut.
Filmed over three or four wet days – no one involved can remember exactly how long it took – on the playing fields of Barnsley’s St Helen’s County Secondary School in the summer of 1968, most of the players on show were ordinary pupils.
For them, this was almost a normal PE lesson. There were no Hollywood stars in Kes. The lead, Billy Casper, was played by the unknown 14-year-old David Bradley, cast from another local school. On the pitch and in the changing rooms, Billy is victimised by self-important, sadistic PE teacher Mr Sugden, played by the equally unknown Brian Glover.
Based on the Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave and directed by Ken Loach, Kes is a bittersweet portrait of working-class struggle. It follows knock-kneed runt Billy, bullied by almost everybody in his life, who finds hope nurturing a kestrel and teaching himself falconry.
It was voted seventh in the BFI list of the greatest British films of the 20th century, although many would rank it even higher.
Football matches, like nightclub scenes, are notoriously difficult to pull off realistically on screen, but the football scene in Kes perfectly captured PE in northern comprehensives during the 1960s – drab, wet, grey afternoons on quagmire pitches; rusting goalposts with bowing crossbars and no nets; no one wanting to go in goal.
Anyone who attended a northern school in the second half of the 20th century will know a vindictive PE teacher like Mr Sugden who thought he was Bobby Charlton, and a poor lad like Billy, who often forgot his kit, was picked on by the tutor, always left until last when teams were selected and shoved between the sticks.
“It was shot in the rain,” producer Tony Garnett tells Fourfourtwo. “1968 was one of the wettest summers for a while and it was a really soggy few weeks in and around Barnsley. It helped the scene as all the kids, especially David, were soaked and looking miserable, which was how I had felt every games lesson when I was at school.
“I remember several fire engines turning up to douse the field with thousands of gallons of water to make sure it looked like a boggy cold day in November,” adds David Bradley. “We filmed on very chilly days, but I had the added insulation of that pair of triple extra large shorts!”
Unlike Billy, in real life the teenage Bradley loved football. “Billy hated anything to do with sports, whereas I was a kid who thrived on PE,” he says. “My favourite position was ‘inside left’. I was a goal-poaching terrier, quick on his feet. I was competent at cricket but football was my game. In the summer holidays, all the kids on our housing estate would be playing football until late in the evening, and on Sundays we would sequester the local pub car park for a game.”
The scene is dominated by Brian Glover’s brilliant representation of Mr Sugden, wearing a pristine Manchester United kit.
“Are you playing Denis Law again, Sir?” asks one of the cheeky kids. “No, Charlton today lad, all over t’field, too cold for striker… anyway, Denis Law’s in t’wash this week.” Sugden hectors his own side, elbows the opposition, and dives for a penalty that he takes himself, before demanding a retake when it’s saved. Despite equalising, Manchester United eventually lose the “fifth round cup tie” 2-1 to Spurs.
Glover’s performance is all the more remarkable given he wasn’t an actor, and the filmmakers had struggled to find anyone for the role. “Brian was a revelation,” says Garnett. “Ken and I didn’t have a clue who to cast for the part.”
They considered actor Colin Welland, who was a neighbour of Ken’s and had been a teacher in Lancashire, but he was far better suited to play Mr Farthing, the one empathetic teacher who takes an interest in Billy and his kestrel (a role for which he won a BAFTA). It was actually author Barry Hines who suggested Glover, an old teaching colleague.
“Barry saved our arse, because Brian was brilliant,” reveals Garnett. “He took to it like a duck to water. He loved it. He knew teachers like that and was like it a bit himself. He was also a wrestler, so was a bit of a showman.”
Glover wrestled in the evenings, under the name ‘Leon Arras the Man From Paris’, which meant he was already registered with the Variety Artistes’ Federation. But his nocturnal pastime also threw a spanner in the works of the football scene. “Oh the bugger!” says Garnett, still slightly annoyed. “During filming, he kept going off wrestling in the evening and I’d say to him, ‘Brian you’re in a movie!’ He wasn’t easy to discipline, though. He came back one morning with big bandages on his knee after injuring it wrestling, which buggered the continuity, so we had to reshoot some of the football scene. But you couldn’t be cross with Brian for very long.”
Glover wasn’t the only one still doing a part-time job during filming. Garnett and Loach noticed Bradley was looking tired on set, and were shocked to discover he was doing a paper round each morning.
“We were already filming before I discovered this!” explains Garnett, shaking his head. “He was in a film and getting paid, but he’d kept up his paper round and didn’t want to give that up. It was one of the most difficult negotiations I’ve had to do in my life. He bargained with me, cheeky little sod, but he was a lovely lad.”
It wasn’t just his paper round, either. The 1968-69 football season kicked off while Kes was still filming, and Bradley also had a Saturday job selling programmes at Barnsley.
“I used to watch the games for free,” he remembers. “Prior to that, I used to scale the wall when I didn’t have any pocket money to pay at the turnstile. And yes, the negotiations with Tony and Ken were hardball. I held out until I got an extra £1.50!”
The football scene was shot on long lenses to help the boys forget they were being filmed. “You want to take away the paraphernalia of filmmaking as much as you can, so nobody’s playing to the camera,” explains Garnett. “You want to encourage people to be in the moment.
“I’ve spent my life, and Ken is still spending his life, as enemies of acting. If you can see anyone acting in your film, you’ve failed. There’s a great quote from Spencer Tracy; a young man came up to him and said, ‘Mr Tracy, I’m an actor too!’ and Tracy said, ‘Well, don’t let them ever catch you doing it’.
The scene acted as a breath of levity in the finished film, helped by the addition of the BBC’S Sports Report theme tune and score popping up on screen, as if it really was Match of the Day that Mr Sugden was imagining in his head.
“That was the idea of the editor, Roy Watts,” says Garnett. “Lovely guy. But he used to sell me secondhand cars that weren’t as good as he said he was. It’s against the style of the film in a lot of ways, but it was irresistible, and it worked because of the self-importance of Brian.”
Despite the bullying on screen, Glover and Bradley hit it off on set. “We got on,” says Bradley, “apart from one sequence in the changing rooms when Billy tries to go home without having a shower. During the technical setup, Brian would catch me off guard and practise cracking me on the head with his hand to make sure it had a loud whack to it.
“But he was a great guy. I saw him just before he died in 1997 and presented him with the back page of the Barnsley Chronicle, featuring him tucking into fish and chips to celebrate Barnsley’s promotion to the Premier League. He was unable to communicate verbally by then, after suffering a stroke, but his cognisance and energy were still very evident, as was his delight at seeing me.”
In complete contrast to Mr Sugden, a PE teacher who fantasises about playing for Manchester United, in reality Kes author Hines had turned down the Red Devils to be a PE teacher.
“I was 11 when a United scout knocked on our door,” Barry’s brother Richard, who trained hawks and was the original inspiration for Billy, later recalled. “My pride turned to dismay when Barry turned down the offer of a trial because he wanted to be a PE teacher.”
Nowadays, the idea of Marcus Rashford or any of his peers snubbing Manchester United to become a PE teacher seems farcical, but back in the days of a maximum wage for footballers, it was a less surprising decision. “I think it was £20 in those days, and you didn’t have a long career,” says Garnett. “Being a PE teacher was a better prospect.”
Hines went to Loughborough College to study PE teaching as well as continue his love of football, and it was there that a friend gave him a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It was the first novel he would read from choice and affected him in a way that Kes would later affect many others, so he started to write.
His debut novel, The Blinder, is a semi-autobiographical tale about Lennie Hawk, a young player torn between his love of the game and his college studies. When Hines was told by a professional footballer that the writer knew “what the game was all about”, he considered it one of the best critiques he ever received.
Kes is rightly hailed as a cinematic classic, but the producers initially struggled to secure the funding to make it. Even after it was finished, the film was shelved and might never have been released, as United Artists had no idea what to do with a movie full of unknowns talking with thick Yorkshire accents.
There were even suggestions it needed subtitles. “They didn’t know how to publicise it because there were no stars, no sexy young women – just this little lad,” explains Garnett. “They finally decided to open it in six Yorkshire cinemas, and I think they thought, ‘We’ll open it and it’ll die, but at least we’ve opened it and then we can forget it.’ But it broke the house records in every one.”
These days, Bradley maintains a website devoted to the masterpiece – www.kes-billycasper.co.uk – and still follows Barnsley. “The club have done fantastically well to win promotion after last season’s relegation from the Championship,” he enthuses. “Considering the average age of our players is under 24, it’s quite an achievement.”
He’s delighted that Billy and Kes are now featured on fans’ flags and a mural on one of the walls at Oakwell. “Now that, from my favourite football team, is praise indeed,” he smiles.
Did he have any idea during filming that he was taking part in what would go on to become one of the most loved football scenes in British cinematic history?
“I can’t speak for Tony, Ken or Barry Hines, but we kids had no idea,” he admits. “I do bump into some of my old mates from the football scene occasionally, and I can say without a doubt that for the majority of us, it was an experience of a lifetime.”
“HE WAS In A FILM AND GETTING PAID, BUT HAD KEPT UP HIS PAPER ROUND AND DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE THAT UP, THE CHEEKY SOD”