Farewell to Reg, our last FA Cup hero
CATHEDRAL HEARS MOVING TRIBUTE TO 97-YEAR-OLD RAMS LEGEND
DERBY has bid farewell to Reg Harrison, the last member of the Rams’ 1946 FA Cup-winning team.
Reg, who died last month at the age of 97, was laid to rest following an emotional service at Derby Cathedral yesterday.
The Dean of Derby, the Ven Peter Robinson, welcomed the congregation, Derby County chaplain the Rev Tony Luke, conducted the service, and the eulogy was delivered by author and journalist Anton Rippon.
The procession arrived to the FA Cup anthem Abide With Me.
Due to the current Covid-19 restrictions, only 30 people could attend the funeral, which started at 9.30am. Supporters were still able to pay their respects by watching the service on a live stream on the club’s website. After the service, the family left for a private burial.
The funeral of the last member of Derby County’s 1946 FA Cup winning team has taken place.
Rams legend Reg Harrison, who died last month at the age of 97, was laid to rest following a service at Derby Cathedral yesterday.
The Dean of Derby, the Ven Peter Robinson, welcomed the congregation, Derby County’s chaplain, the Rev Tony Luke, conducted the service, and the eulogy was delivered by author and journalist Anton Rippon.
The procession arrived to Abide With Me, the hymn sung at the FA Cup Final Reg played in at the age of 22.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, only 30 people could attend the funeral, which started at 9.30am. Supporters were still able to pay respects by watching on a live stream on the club’s website.
After the service, Mr Harrison’s family left for a private burial.
Here is Anton’s eulogy in full...
THERE’S this wonderful photograph of the 1946 FA Cup final. Derby County players are carrying skipper Jack Nicholas around Wembley with the Cup, and, just a yard or two away, slightly detached from it all, is a little outside-right, staring down at his own winner’s medal – as though he wants to make sure that it isn’t all a dream.
Reg Harrison wasn’t just Derby County’s last surviving FA Cup winner, nor was he just the oldest surviving FA Cup finalist of all. He was also one of the last of a generation of footballers who came from that golden age when a local boy did well, stayed with his hometown club for all of his top-flight career, travelled to games on the same Corporation bus as the fans, and, when his own playing days were over, got an ordinary job and became a fan, too.
Reg was a household name in Derby when I began watching the Rams in the early 1950s, and, ironically, one of my earliest memories of him playing was when he was in the Boston team that won 6-1 at the Baseball Ground in the FA Cup in 1955.
A few years later, I asked Reg if he would play in a charity match, and he said “Yes” in a flash. In fact, I’ve never known anyone keener to put on a pair of football boots.
Reg was a true Derby lad. Born in May 1923, he left school at 14 and trained as a painter and decorator. But he was always going to be a footballer. In 1941, playing for Derby Corinthians, he caught the attention of Derby County. Of course, by now there was a war on, and there was no proper football structure, not in the way we know it.
Reg was called up to the Army, and guested for Sheffield United, Charlton Athletic, Notts County and Hartlepools, and in 1944, with the game getting back to a more recognisable format, he signed professional forms for the Rams.
In 1945-46, when the FA Cup run began, he was understudying that great pre-war England winger, Sammy Crooks. Sammy was injured in the quarter-final at Villa Park, and Reg had his chance.
He said: “Sammy was brilliant. He said that he knew that I wouldn’t let him down. Then he took me to one side and told me a few of his secrets.”
Well, Reg stayed in the team. When the Football League resumed, and Derby County was one of the leading clubs in the land, Reg’s was one of the first names on the team sheet each week.
Reg had a wry sense of humour. When he began a game at Villa Park by racing past his full-back, the defender said: “Do that again son, and I’ll put you on top of that clock,” pointing towards the huge dial on top of the main stand. Reg shouted out to Tim Ward: “If you get the ball and I’m not on my wing – have a look on top of that clock!”
And of course, in November 1947 there was that famous win over Arsenal – unbeaten until then – at the Baseball Ground. Thirty-five thousand packed in, and Reg scores the winner after 39 minutes. Normanton End. First-time shot. George Swindin beaten all ends up. In Monday’s Telegraph, Frank Nicklin said that “Harrison had Wally Barnes looking anything but a Welsh international full-back.”
Maybe Reg might have played for
England, had it not been for a chap called Stanley Matthews. Who knows?
But anyway, in 1955, after 59 goals in 281 appearances for the Rams, he left for Boston, and there was that amazing game, without doubt one of the FA Cup’s biggest ever upsets.
Reg said that, afterwards, he went to the Derby dressing room to commiserate, and manager Harry Storer said: “You can clear off for a start.”
“Only he didn’t say ‘clear’,” chuckled Reg.
Of course, Reg is also well-loved for all the patience and care he showed when he was coaching children on those Derby’s parks schemes. The one on Stockbrook was known simply as “Reg’s”.
So, perhaps the greatest tribute that we can pay to Reg is that his name is as revered to those who were once the children that he’d coached – but who’d never seen him play – as it is to supporters who remember those nimble feet skipping over the Baseball Ground mud in the 1940s and 50s.
I used to see Reg and Wynn around town, and they were always holding hands, and Reg always had that twinkle in his eye, and that infectious chuckle. He always gave the impression that life was a joy, and, without exception, you always felt better for having met him. Reg had a remarkable talent for brightening up every moment.
In 1929, in The Good Companions, JB Priestley wrote: “To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.”
And it’s true. Football is woven into the fabric of our lives. And Reg Harrison was famous because he was a footballer. More even than that, he was an FA Cup winner. But, if he’d just remained an ordinary painter and decorator, he’d still have been loved just as much by everyone who ever met him.
Reg Harrison was a star footballer. But he also an ordinary man with no airs and graces, a man who took whatever life gave him with a smile.
It’s such a great shame that there can’t be more people here today. This cathedral would have been packed. Nor can 20,000 Rams fans at Pride Park applaud Reg’s life.
But we’ll remember today as a very special day, on which we paid our last respects, and bid a sad – but very fond – farewell, to a man who we were all so very, very privileged to know.
The family has requested that anyone wishing to donate in memory of Reg can do so by donating to Marie Curie or Treetops Hospice Care.
He always gave the impression that life was a joy, and, without exception, you always felt better for having met him.