CLOWN PRINCE
DAVID DOCHERTY LOOKS BACK AT THE CAREER OF THE LEGENDARY LEN SHACKLETON…
Recalling Len Shackleton
WHILST Paul Gascoigne may lay claim to being the crankiest footballer to be associated with the North East, 40 years before he made us laugh or cringe, or both, with his daft antics on and off the pitch, the unorthodox Len Shackleton of Sunderland was the self-proclaimed “clown prince” of British football.
Shackleton, like Gazza, was a huge natural talent and entertainer given to taking the mickey out of opponents during matches with a whole repertoire of tricks.
Popular with his Roker Park teammates, a notable exception being Welsh international centre-forward Trevor Ford, his controversial, outspoken anti-authoritarian views about the people who ran the game and his failure to toe the line ultimately cost him dear in the inter- national arena. In later life, he became a respected sports journalist which showed that not all his brains were in his feet! It was Shackleton who put Brian Clough’s name forward for managerial appointments at both Hartlepools and Derby County.
Yorkshire-born Shackleton started his career with Arsenal before the Second World War but after only 12 months and just two appearances in the famous
red and white shirt in non-competitive matches, they sent him packing.
He recalled the Gunners’ famous manager George Allison – the originator of the oft-used phrase “back to square one” - telling him to go back to Bradford and get a job as he would never make the grade as a professional footballer.
He spent the war working as a radio assembler and later as a miner and on a Saturday turned out for his local club Bradford Park Avenue. More of a finisher in those days, in six seasons of “unofficial” football from 1940-41 to 194546 he scored an amazing 165 league goals (19, 24, 36, 34, 40 and 12) finishing as the club’s top scorer in all but one.
He also scored three goals for Bradford City in three ‘guest’ appearances and an FA Cup goal for Park Avenue in their 1945-46 run to the sixth round during which they beat Manchester City, with the great Frank Swift in goal, 8-2 away from home having lost their home match 3-1.
He eventually caught the eye of promotion-seeking Newcastle United and joined them at the age of 24 for a fee of £13,000 within six months of being chosen to play for England in a Victory International against Scotland at Hampden Park in a match in which, by his own admission, he had been poor.
The attendance figure of 139,468 and the meagre amount he personally received from that and other stadium-bulging matches rankled with him, causing him to question where all the money had gone?
As we now know, it was never re-invested in better facilities for supporters who were treated like cattle up until the time that the far-reaching ‘Taylor report’ brought about much-needed and long-overdue changes.
His first league match for Newcastle at St James’ Park proved to be particularly memorable as Newport County were massacred 13-0. Shack helped himself to no fewer than six goals that day.
Charlie Wayman shrugged off a penalty miss within five minutes to score four and Jackie Milburn with two and Roy Bentley completed the incredible scoreline. It remains Newcastle United’s club record score.
The United line-up that famous day in October 1946 was: Garbett; Cowell, Graham; Harvey, Brennan, Wright; Milburn, Bentley, Wayman, Shackleton and Pearson.
Disputes over a series of matters ranging from housing to taxi fares led to Shackleton being branded a troublemaker and in February 1948 he made the move to their arch-rivals Sunderland where he would go on to achieve legendary status. The fee was a British transfer record of £20,050.
Whilst praising the Geordie club’s fans, he also castigated their board of directors and the fact that despite playing in 25 matches before his move he received no ‘talent’ money payment for his part in their successful promotion campaign.
A true football genius, showman and crowd-pleaser with amazing ball control and a lethal shot, Shackleton went on to make 427 league and cup appearances for the Wearsiders over nine years, scoring 134 goals.
Like many maverick footballers since – Peter Osgood, Rodney Marsh, Matt Le Tissier and Charle George - he was continually overlooked by the England selectors and would make just five official appearances in the colours of his country in his otherwise outstanding club career.
Three of those five resulted in wins over Wales and the others were a goalless draw in Denmark on his debut and a win over West Germany. An amazing quick-thinking lobbed goal against the then reigning world champions in a 3-1 victory at Wembley in 1954 was to prove his personal high point. Having scored his Wembley wonder goal, he was never picked again!
He never won any of the game’s major honours with either Newcastle or Sunderland – three FA Cup semi-finals and a third-place League finish being the nearest he ever got to top silverware.
He was not the first footballer to note the disparity between the huge crowds which football attracted in those days and the money in his pay packet but he was one of the first to voice that in the media.
He railed against many things and
once wrote: “Money invariably brings soccer success, and that money is distributed so evenly in England that no club is wealthy enough to corner the market in players. In Scotland, Rangers and Celtic have practically all of the cash – so they win the League and the Cups with monotonous regularity, a state of affairs which could never occur South of the Border.”
That particular statement proved that he was no Nostradamus as the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City have since demonstrated.
He believed that footballers were little more than slaves and referred to the transfer market as bartering in human flesh. His share of his £13,000 transfer fee to Newcastle was just £10.
Of the England selectors at Lancaster Gate who had made their personal fortunes as greengrocers and lawyers etc, he pulled no punches when he wrote that one would be a better selector of cabbages than footballers, another gorgonzolla than goalkeepers and chairman Mr Joe Mears “should be better equipped to pass judgment on boats and buses than on ball players”.
He had a valid point. These men were simply selecting their own fantasy foot- ball teams with little regard for balance and compatability. It would be fully seven years before Alf Ramsey took over as England manager from Walter Winterbottom on the strict understanding that he, and only he, would pick the team.
It is true to say that in his 1956 autobiography Shackleton had very little good to say about anything in football at that time – Newcastle United, club directors, England selectors, players’ contracts and the players’ union, the football pools, coaching methods – they all got it in the neck, making his book the most controversial ever published by an active footballer.
Had he been alive today, it would have been interesting to see what he would have had to say about the complete role-reversal where top footballers hold all the cards and player power is the order of the day. Some even take their personal hairdressers to international tournaments with them these days to ensure that they are groomed to the max. Why? Because they can, and they have the money to do so.
Shackleton was forced to quit at the start of the 1957-58 season as the result of a serious ankle injury. It has been said that Sunderland had not been prepared to pay him a rightful benefit until he threatened to blow the whistle on them regarding illegal payments but this writer has found no evidence of that.
Someone did? In April 1957 the club were fined a record £5,000 plus costs for making illegal payments to players disguised as orders for tarmac for repair work and for straw to cover their Roker Park pitch over the winter months!
Two directors were banned for life, two others received sine die (indefinite) suspensions and six players were also suspended sine die. The bans and suspensions were later rescinded but the reputation of the “Bank of England” club was in tatters.
Shack and seven others were found guilty of receiving illegal payments during the club’s Cup runs in 1954-55 and 1955-56 and, as punishment, they were docked six months accruals of benefit.
Typically obdurate, Shackleton, who died in 2000 at the age of 78, refused to sign a cleansing confession prepared by players’ union boss Jimmy Hill. That refusal did cause some dressing-room unrest. A year later the six-times League champions were relegated to the Second Division for the first time in their history.