Glyn Pardoe
Stalwart of the great Manchester City football team of the 1960s
GLYN PARDOE, who has died aged 73, was the youngest player to appear in a senior shirt for Manchester City, making his debut a few weeks before his 16th birthday.
He became a linchpin of their great team of the late 1960s and the early 1970s, when they won the League title, the FA Cup, the European Cup-winners’ Cup – and the League Cup, in which Pardoe scored the winning goal at Wembley.
He was born on June 1 1946 and brought up in Winsford, Cheshire, where his father was a tailor. He played up front for Midcheshire Boys, and was tapped up by Everton and Manchester City, plumping for the latter as his cousin Alan Oakes was on the books there.
He made his first-team debut in April 1962 aged 15 years and 314 days, against Birmingham. For the next couple of seasons he made sporadic senior appearances as a forward, and played in the 1964 FA Youth Cup final against Manchester United; he scored City’s only goal in a 4-1 first-leg defeat, and twice more as United won the second leg 4-3.
City had been relegated from the top flight in 1963, but prospects brightened when the formidable managerial partnership of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison took over. Pardoe established himself as a first-team regular, scoring 11 goals in 50 games as they won the Second Division title in 1966.
His career went up a gear a couple of months into the new season; with both left-backs, Bobby Kennedy and David Connor, injured, Pardoe, though right-footed, stepped up and made the position his own. In the 1967-68 season he played all but one game as City played a swashbuckling brand of football every bit as thrilling as their rivals across town.
They went into the season’s final game needing to beat Newcastle to take the title. In front of 20,000 travelling fans they won 4-3, holding off Manchester United by two points.
Their title defence was undistinguished – they finished 13th – but they did reach the FA Cup final against Leicester City. Pardoe was a doubt after picking up an injury, but passed a fitness test. On what Joe Mercer described as “a cabbage patch” of a pitch, City won 1-0 with a goal by Neil Young.
That put them in the
European Cup-winners’ Cup, and they cruised through to the final in Vienna the following year; with Pardoe at leftback they beat the Poles Gornik Zabrze 2-1 to take what remains City’s only European trophy.
The following season they reached the League Cup final, against West Bromwich Albion. Jeff Astle put the Midlanders ahead after only five minutes, Mike Doyle equalising from a Pardoe corner to take the game into extra time.
In the 102nd minute, Francis Lee hared down the right wing and sent in a cross to the near post. Colin Bell flicked on and Pardoe held off a defender to steer the ball into the net. But the following December, in a Manchester derby, a George Best foul left him with a broken leg: at one point amputation was feared, and Pardoe missed the next two years, ending his hopes of an England call-up.
By the time he returned Willie Donachie was City’s first-choice left-back, and thereafter Pardoe’s appearances came mainly on the other side of the defence. He retired in 1976 after 380 games; so versatile was he that centre-back was the only outfield position he had not filled.
He stayed at Maine Road on the coaching staff for 16 years, helping City reach the Youth Cup final in 1986. He later worked as a match summariser on BBC Radio Manchester.
Glyn Pardoe – “a wonderful guy with a lovely personality”, according to Colin Bell – is survived by his wife Pat; their daughter Charlotte married the son of his old team-mate Mike Doyle, and Pardoe’s grandson Tommy Doyle is a promising City youngster.
Glyn Pardoe, born June 1 1946, died May 26 2020