Gordon Banks

Passion for football in England shifted in the second half of the twentieth century. Forty odd million folk entered at the turnstiles in the 1948/49 season peak, but this figure fell: from 1960 to 1974 attendances dropped in the first division by an average of 10 per cent in all but one season. But [...]
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Passion for football in England shifted in the second half of the twentieth century. Forty odd million folk entered at the turnstiles in the 1948/49 season peak, but this figure fell: from 1960 to 1974 attendances dropped in the first division by an average of 10 per cent in all but one season. But whatever the reason, players in the sixties and early seventies were real stars, and they won the World Cup. This book is about one of them. Gordon Banks: still regarded as England's finest goalkeeper. His club career took him to Chesterfield, Leicester City and Stoke City. He was paid GBP2 a match at Chesterfield and his transfer from Leicester to Stoke was for GBP50,000 - below some current Premiership player's weekly wage! The youngest of four brothers from Sheffield, he abandoned plans to become a bricklayer when Chesterfield came looking. He was later to marry and have three children, and joy and sadness. He saw the abolition of the maximum wage for footballers, and their wages rose. Television moved a Saturday afternoon shiver into an armchair by the fire, or evening at the pub. That team in 1966, that save in 1970, club cup wins, then an accident.