All-rounder Wharton and rebel Franklin
‘WHAT a great Club we support!’
This relatively uncontroversial thought came to me the other day, as I was helping SCAN with their latest batch of certificates.
County, through the supporter driven SCAN initiative, reward players old and new with a specially framed, wax stamped and expertly calligraphied certificate acknowledging their time as a County player.
The current batch contain a number of great names from the past which excited my imagination.
I was initially struck by Neil Franklin’s name on the request list. Neil was a County player when I first stepped inside Edgeley Park in the 1950s. This was the time of the infamous ‘maximum wage’ which restricted players earnings, and Neil incurred the FA’s ire by heading off to Bogotá in South America to earn a tad more. He earned an FA ban as well when he returned, and I saw him as a magical rebel figure as he played with such distinction in the black and white of County.
But the most striking name amongst the certificate requests was that of Arthur Wharton, the first black professional footballer.
Arthur made his County debut on 7 September 1901 against Middlesbrough, and was a renowned goalkeeper , but could and did play out field, scoring many a goal.
He was a wonderful athlete and incredibly was the first man in the world to clock 10 seconds for the 100 yards, a world record at the time, and an AAA record that stood for decades afterwards.
Arthur ‘s ethnicity and not a little class bias has seen him air brushed from our sporting history