Boots bought from the Co-op... tourist buses and stopping at our house!
Ahead of a new film about his legendary father, Stanley Matthews Junior recalls family life with England’s original Wizard of the Dribble ...
Stanley Matthews calculates he has seen the new film about his father 50 times at various stages of the production process, and the emotion always takes hold and the tears flow in the same two places.
First is the euphoria of the Matthews Final in 1953, a centrepiece of Matthews:
The Original No 7, a feature-length documentary about sir stanley’s life and legacy.
‘I cry because I know how much it meant,’ says stan Jnr. ‘My father’s father said to him on his death-bed, “I want you to do two things for me son: take care of your mother”, which he did of course, “and win me the Fa Cup”.
‘he lost in two finals with Blackpool, against Manchester United and newcastle, and he was getting on. he was 38, this was his last chance. they were 3-1 down with about 20 minutes to play, he was down and he came back to win. It was a real-life Rocky story.’
Matthews always claimed the 4-3 wembley win against Bolton should have been named in honour of stan Mortensen, the only player ever to score a hat-trick in an Fa Cup final.
Mortensen’s third was Blackpool’s equaliser in the 89th minute and Bill Perry scored the winner in stoppagetime, created by Matthews who had changed the game’s direction with his dazzling wing-play.
It has gone down in football folklore as the crowning glory of a brilliant world star. the medal he won was sold by the family in 2001 to raise funds for old footballers and bought by tV personality nick hancock, a stoke City fan, who paid £20,000 and then sold it 13 years later for a record £220,000.
the boots Matthews wore at wembley fetched nearly £40,000 and his first professional contract at stoke, a document promising to pay £5 per week in the season and £3 per week out of season, was sold for more than £4,000, in august.
Perhaps most surprising is the fact it has taken so long to make a film about this son of ‘the boxing barber’ from hanley in the Potteries.
he remains among england’s greatest players, capped 54 times despite a career devastated by the second world war.
‘For a long time I didn’t realise how important he was,’ says stan Jnr. ‘Only later do you realise what a person he was. we could never take a walk without people wanting to shake hands and get an autograph.
‘he was very shy. as a family we would go to the movies and wait in the manager’s office until the movie had started before taking our seats, so as not to disrupt the show, and we would leave 10 minutes before the end. we never saw the beginning or end of a movie.
‘Our house in Blackpool was on a main road and when the buses brought the tourists to the Illuminations they would pull up outside and we’d see the driver pointing and telling people this was where stanley Matthews lived.’
Fourteen years at Blackpool were bookended by two spells with stoke, where he retired at the age of 50, with a testimonial played before 30,000 which featured Ferenc Puskas, alfredo di stefano and eusebio.
Matthews ran on the beach before training — there is footage in the film of him running in his flat cap — and devised his own dietary regime, fasting on Mondays, feasting on salads and fish, and drinking gallons of carrot and tomato juice.
‘we had a machine to make the juice,’ says stan Jnr. ‘he loved doing that, he thought it was good for him. the things he did were way ahead of his time.
‘there was a new boot designed for him by the Co-op, much lighter, without the big toe- cap. he thought it made him quicker but he would have to change them every few weeks because they were so easily damaged. when you see the clips, some of the tackles look like they could break your legs but he just climbed to his feet and brushed the mud from his shorts.
‘his shins and ankles would be covered in bruises and the big toenail on his right foot was always coming off.
‘at stoke, in his later years, he had the fire brigade come down to water the pitch to make it more slippery. now they have sprinklers to water the pitches.
‘at his funeral, the procession went around the five towns in the Potteries and stopped at the Victoria Ground, where they used to play.
‘and would you know it, it started to rain, only for a few minutes, and when we moved on it stopped. It was as if God was saying, “here you go stanley, I’ll water the pitch for you”.’
stan Jnr and his sister Jean Gough have worked on the documentary as executive producers.
the funeral in 2000 is the other sequence of the film guaranteed to move him to tears, a reminder of how his father’s life had touched so many.
‘there were just so many people lining the streets in football shirts and scarves,’ he said. ‘From the procession we could see some were cheering and singing and others were standing in silence. some were old and might have seen him play and others were younger and might have heard stories of him and they were standing with their children.’
the Matthews legend thrives in
Stoke with a wonderful sculpture outside the bet365 Stadium and the Sir Stanley Matthews Foundation, a charity established after his death to help children get into sport.
Two Olympic champions from Staffordshire — swimmer Adam Peaty and canoeist Joe Clarke — have been supported by the foundation.
His legend lives on, too, in South Africa, where Matthews defied the apartheid regime to coach children in the township of Soweto.
Using his connections to supply a red kit sponsored by Coca-Cola and blazers embroidered with the team crest, he formed a team called ‘Stan’s Men’ and took them on a tour to Brazil in 1975, where he introduced them to Zico and they posed for photos with the Jules Rimet Trophy.
A year later, plans for a tour to West Germany were scrapped amid the tension which followed the Soweto uprising.
Some of Stan’s Men were reunited for the film and explain how he changed their lives, alongside glowing tributes from former Blackpool and England team-mate Jimmy Armfield and surviving veterans of the Matthews Final.
‘Dad was very humble and also generous,’ says Stan Jnr. ‘The ’53 medal went missing for a while. He would lend things out to organisers for fundraisers and over time couldn’t remember what he’d done with everything. I still have one of his caps but he won more than 50 and I don’t know where the others are.
‘Towards the end of his career he was paid £100 a week by Stoke but he never complained when he saw the money going up and up in modern football. He had no regrets. He was happy with his life.’
Stan Jnr enjoyed a sporting life of his own. He won the Wimbledon Boys title in 1962, represented Great Britain in the Davis Cup and knocked Ilie Nastase out of the French Open during a decade on the professional tennis tour.
He settled in the United States in the Seventies and briefly coached a teenage John McEnroe at the Port Washington Tennis Academy.
‘They had me hit with him every day because I was relatively fresh off the tour,’ says Stan Jnr, now 71. ‘You could tell he had a lot of talent and they said, “Don’t try to change him,” which I never did.
‘ I’d try to offer some gentle advice, such as, “If you’re 30-40 on serve maybe you want to get the first serve in”. Very basic stuff.’
He bought a large tennis facility in Connecticut, now run by his son, which allowed him to retire to Florida and devote time to the film. Premiered in Stoke last week,
Matthews promises to introduce a new generation to the original Wizard of the Dribble.