KEVIN BEATTIE 1953-2018
There is Bobby Charlton and Jimmy Greaves, but outside of George Best he was the best player these isles have produced — Sir Bobby Robson
Sir Bobby robson worked with some of the finest footballers the world has ever seen but whenever he was asked to conjure a list of the very best, he never failed to include Kevin Beattie.
robson had been the manager of ipswich Town when Beattie first arrived from Carlisle, stepping from a train at the age of 15 with a pair of football boots and nothing else by way of luggage.
The following day, after Beattie played for the youth team, the club’s chief scout ron Gray told robson: ‘Boss, we have got a colossus, wait till you see this boy. He’s got a neck like a bull. i’ve seen the finest thing i’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘The Beat’, as he became known at Portman road, went on to be voted time and again by supporters as the club’s greatest player.
‘Obviously, you’ve got Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves and people like that,’ said robson. ‘But i would say that outside George Best, he must be the next best player this country has produced.’
Those who knew Beattie well always insisted nine England caps did not do justice to his talents. robson once told him he would win 150.
‘People never appreciated what a player he was,’ said Allan Hunter, his partner in central defence in the 1978 FA Cup final.
Terry Butcher, who would inherit Beattie’s No 6 shirt, said: ‘He was my hero, the player i aspired to be and the best i’ve ever seen in my position apart from Bobby Moore.
‘He and Bobby Moore would have been the ultimate partnership at centre half. We called him Monster; he was a monster of a guy, a monster of a player and a monster of a character. i was never going to reach his level, never in a million years, but he was the best player to model yourself on.’
Beattie was a rugged defender, prepared to engage in a physical test of courage or strength, and yet with talent to spare.
Once challenged to an arm wrestle by rocky actor Sylvester Stallone on the set of Escape to Victory, where he was Michael Caine’s body double, Beattie emerged victorious, further evidence of his brute strength.
‘He could run like a sprinter and jump like a gazelle,’ said former ipswich chairman David Sheepshanks. ‘He excited all of us who stood on the terraces. He had touch and vision, and an explosive left foot.’ Alan Hudson, his captain in the England Under 23 team, once likened his all-round ability to Duncan Edwards. ‘He possessed poise and confidence rare in a defender,’ Hudson wrote.
‘He thrived in an age when defenders could tackle with more than their handbags and yet he was never mentioned in the same breath as the gangsters at that time in the shape of ron Harris, Peter Storey, Tommy Smith, Norman Hunter and Johnny Giles. But, believe me, he was as tough as any of them. Not so much a gangster, but the clinical assassin.’
Beattie made his debut for ipswich as an 18-year-old against Manchester United in August 1972 and his England debut against Cyprus in 1975. There would have been many more caps but for his succession of injuries.
Beattie won the FA Cup in 1978 and broke an arm in a semi-final against Manchester City three years later, the last of his 296 appearances for ipswich. He received a UEFA Cup winners’ medal, though he was not fit for the final.
The damage from knee injuries and operations forced him into retirement in December that year when he had just turned 28. There were attempts to return with Colchester and Middlesbrough and spells in Scandinavia and non-League.
Beattie struggled with financial problems, ill health, drinking and depression when his playing career ended, much of which he laid bare in an autobiography, The Greatest Footballer England Never Had, published in 2007.
in his book, he told how he had picked up discarded cigarettes from the streets and contemplated suicide, joking darkly: ‘i would have tied a hose to my exhaust pipe but my car had been repossessed.’
For a player once compared to Edwards and Moore, it was a tragic post-football slide.
At 37, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis and was so ill a local priest was called to administer the last rites, but he would confound medical experts by surviving for nearly 30 years more.
Beattie remained a popular and friendly figure, and a regular visitor to Portman road. He often worked as a pundit for BBC radio Suffolk and appeared on the station’s lunchtime show Life’s a
Pitch on Saturday. He died yesterday at his home after suffering a suspected heart attack. ipswich will pay tribute to ‘The Beat’ at tomorrow’s home game against Brentford.