Tributes as Brewers’ top goal scorer Richie dies at 80,
BARKER DOUBLE HELPED WIN SOUTHERN LEAGUE CUP – THE CLUB’S FIRST TROPHY
RICHIE Barker, who has died aged 80, may well always remain Burton Albion’s leading goalscorer.
Over the course of seven years, Barker amassed 157 goals for the Brewers, forming a potent partnership for part of that period with Stan Round, who scored 149.
He went on to add 14 goals in 45 matches for Derby County after Brian Clough and Peter Taylor signed him from Burton and was fondly remembered as a manager of Stoke City, in particular.
Popular, and one of the game’s gentlemen, Barker remained in and around football after his retirement.
He and Round had a road, Barker Round Way, named after them on the site of the old Eton Park ground, both happily coming back to see it happen, and Barker was a regular at former Derby County player dinners and a guest of the Brewers on numerous occasions.
He had played football for fun in his early days and, indeed, thought that was all he would do for a long time.
Of his time with Burton, then in the Southern League, he said: “I was earning good money as an architectural draughtsman, which, coupled with my wage from non-league football, probably made me better paid overall than some full-time players.”
When Barker first signed for Burton, in the 1960-61 season, the club were in the midst of one of their financial crises and finding Southern League Division One hard going.
Barker played 25 times in his first season and scored only once as the team finished third from bottom.
But he was the top scorer with 19 from 35 games as fortunes picked up a little in his second season.
He was not with the club for the 1962-63 season but, for 1963-64, his return was one of the master strokes pulled off by Peter Taylor, who had stepped up from being the club’s goalkeeper to his first managerial post.
Taylor splashed £200 to sign Stan Round from Hinckley and persuaded Barker to come back and join Round up front. He added Jamaican winger Lindy Delaphena to supply them with chances.
Now the Brewers finished eighth, Round scoring 41 and Barker 13, but it was Barker who took centre stage at the end of the season when, with Round out injured, they ovterturned a 2-1 first leg deficit, beating Weymouth 4-0 in the home leg to lift their first silverware, the Southern League Cup.
In front of 5,869 at Eton Park, Barker scored the first and last goals. Delaphena moved on for 1964-65 and Albion, although they scored more goals, slipped to 10th, Round scoring 29 goals and Barker 24. Taylor was only even more determined and the 1965-66 season was exceptional at any level. Round scored 59 goals in 56 games and Barker was close behind, on 56 from 58 games, as they finished third and secured the club’s first promotion. Four teams topped 100 goals in the 46-game season but even champions Barnet were seven behind the 121 Burton netted. The Premier Division was harder work the following season but they finished just below halfway and, this time, Barker outscored Round with 38 goals in 61 games to his partner’s 20 in 57 games.
However, Taylor’s friend, Brian Clough, had now lured him away to begin their management partnership and financial problems were never far away for Burton.
Round was sold to Worcester City. Barker played 12 games of the next season, scoring six goals, before Clough and Taylor came calling to join their Baseball Ground revolution.
It was not an easy decision for Barker, who lasted two seasons at Derby as the stakes got higher, as he reflected later.
“Cloughie sold me the idea and I reasoned that if it didn’t work out then I could also go back to Burton and resume my day job,” he said.
“But when the time came to move on, then I found it wasn’t so easy to do that. Plus, Derby wanted a fee for me, so the pressure was on.
“I was now a football person, not someone who had a job in the week and played the game at the weekend, more or less just for fun.”
When he moved on it was to Notts County, where he helped them win the Fourth Division in his third season before going to Peterborough United, where he played 36 times in the 1971-72 season but also broke his leg, hastening a move into coaching and management, initially assisting former Rams team-mate Alan Durban with Shrewsbury Town.
Managing Stoke from 1981-1983, he had them pushing for Europe and developed a midfield that included Sammy Mcilroy, signed for £350,000 from Manchester United, Mickey Thomas, Mark Chamberlain and Paul Bracwell.
Full of ideas, Barker was always open-minded and after a brief spell managing Notts, he went to Greece to coach Ethnikos Piraeus and then Egypt to take charge of Zamalek, who he guided to the African equivalent of the Champions League.
They were interesting times indeed and not a little scary.
“I always maintained that it was important for coaches to have some experience abroad and I was lucky, certainly in Egypt, that many of the players knew a little English,” he said in an interview with Backpass magazine.
“We won the African Cup in 1986, which was a huge thing, a massive competition.
“We’d fly all over the continent to the games in Cameroon, Zambia
As a draughtsman, with my non-league wages, I was probably better paid than some full-time players. Richie Barker
and Zimbabwe. In the final we beat a team from the Ivory Coast in a shootout.
“But the flying! I was not always confident that the planes were actually going to get over the next range of mountains!
“There were some hairy moments, don’t get me wrong, and a few occasions when we needed armed guards and so forth. The fans are so fanatical. But I had a great 18 months out there.”
Back in England, he was assistant of Sheffield Wednesday and chief scout for West Bromwich Albion, a hugely respected figure in the game.
In Burton, though, it is the goalscoring for which he will always be revered.