Cult hero Dickie was a masterful operator
FORMER Bristol City player Dickie Rooks passed away on April 6, the morning of Sunderland’s recent match with Bristol City. He was 83. Rooks had ended his league career with 96 appearances for Bristol City, having begun with 40 games for his hometown club, Sunderland.
In between he made 150 appearances for Middlesbrough, for whom he once scored a hat-trick as a centre-forward, although he spent most of his career as a centrehalf, where at Sunderland he understudied Charlie Hurley. Rooks signed for another legend in Raich Carter when he moved to Middlesbrough in the summer of 1965, later playing under the guidance of his old Sunderland teammate Stan Anderson.
Rooks was an experienced figure as Bristol City reached the League Cup semi-finals in the 1970-71 season. A former Sunderland junior, he signed professional in June 1957 and sampled top-flight football as
Hurley’s understudy before moving to Middlesbrough for £20,000 in August 1965 and helping to regain Second Division status at the first attempt in 1966-67.
Lean, lithe and tough as whipcord, Rooks was a cult figure at City. A masterful operator at the heart of the City team, a polished, contemporary talented all-rounder whose composed, almost serene presence radiated confidence to teammates, imperturbable almost to the point of listlessness, a very rum sort of hero; Popeye in the flesh.
Carter, then the Middlesbrough manager, satisfied his thirst for regular first-team football by seeing him as an ideal replacement for another capped player after Welshman Mel Nurse’s transfer to Swindon Town.
But he could scarcely have had a more harrowing debut for the Teesiders. Huddersfield hammered in six goals, three of them by the man he was marking, Allan Gilliver. On the last day of that 1965-66 season, Rooks strayed from his defensive duties to score that hat-trick. It was not enough, however, to avert the defeat at Cardiff that sent Boro down from Division Two, but he helped them straight back and clocked up exactly 150 league and cup appearances.
His omission two games from the end of the 1968-69 season cost him an ever-present record and provoked the transfer request that led him to Ashton Gate.
City manager Alan Dicks landed a bargain in snapping up Rooks for £17,000 in 1969.
With City, Rooks, as captain, took over the position held for so long and efficiently by Jack Connor, who was by then into his mid-30s. Connor went to Everton as reserveteam trainer, but left there in the summer of 1973.
“I eventually became captain at City, and we got to the semi-final of the Milk Cup, losing after extra time to Spurs in a replay at White Hart Lane. That was the nearest I got to playing at Wembley; a big disappointment. Mind you the directors there did us out of a few bob. They had told us as the cup run progressed that if we got to the semifinal we would get £300, and another £300 for getting a replay. We only ever got one of those payments. It wasn’t a massively big thing, but you can’t imagine them getting away with that sort of thing nowadays,” remembered Dickie.
Rooks reached another century of league and cup games in City’s colours, scoring four times before being given a free transfer at the end of 1971-72. He went back to the North East as the Willington club’s player-coach, then had an unhappy experience of management at Scunthorpe, where he was unable to avoid an application for re-election and was sacked soon afterwards as the team continued to struggle in the depths of Division Four.
He then coached Zanzibar and was a FA coach for Tyne and Wear, linked with Sunderland’s School of Excellence, and becoming a selfemployed builder.