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142 pages

English

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Frank Barson's life story is one of hardship and hard-won fame, his tough tackling and prowess in controlled aggression earning him a reputation that lives on today. Rising from the factory floor to become a footballing giant, Barson lifted the fortunes of Aston Villa and Manchester United while earning more cautions than anyone before or since. Born in Sheffield's industrial district of Grimesthorpe, his no-nonsense football style was forged in the 20s when learning his trade with Barnsley FC's renowned Battlers. Even in an era of ruthless tackling he stood out as a notoriously powerful player, yet his frequent clashes with authority belied his status as an extremely intelligent player, an inspiration to his colleagues and a true leader. Although Barson only earned a single England cap, commentators and colleagues alike would bemoan the fact that he was not captaining the national side. Football's infamous 'hard man' set standards in deadly, focussed aggression which players such as Norman Hunter and Roy Keane have since striven to emulate.

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	26 août 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785316012
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019

Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Worthing
Sussex
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
info@pitchpublishing.co.uk
2019, John Harding
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright. Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, sold or utilised in any form or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 78531 529 9 eBook ISBN 978 1 78531 601 2
Typesetting and origination by Pitch Publishing
Printed and bound by TJ International, Cornwall
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A Note on Sources
1. A Burnt Offering
2. Sheffield
3. Grimesthorpe
4. Football Beginnings
5. Battling Barnsley
6. Barson s Bombshell
7. The Barnsley Punch
8. An England Cap
9. A Cup Final Warning
10. The Stormy Petrel of the Game
11. Fires Slumbering Beneath
12. Bouncing Off Barson
13. Barson Takes A Battering
14. Back in the Big Time
15. The Barson Bump
16. Football That Kills
17. Justice for Frank?
18. Barson the Roamer
Afterword
Barson and the Men in Black
Books Used
Barson ready for action
Dedication
To the Old Quintinians, who also took no prisoners
Acknowledgements
TO JOYCE Woolridge for allowing me access to her PhD material and general consultation and suggestions.
To Dean Beresford for details and pictures of his Grandfather Joe Beresford, who played for Aston Villa during the 1920s and 30s.
Introduction
I hold no brief for Barson s mentality. As a centre-half I regard him as the greatest player who has figured in English football in this position since the war. Steve Bloomer.
AS THE years have gone by, Frank Barson s image in the eyes of certain football writers seems to have become ever more extreme, to such an extent that he has morphed into a comic-book character possessing thighs the width of beer barrels, a chest as hard and deep as a medieval knight s breast-plate, and a broken nose with nostrils snorting steam and flames. Rampaging across the football field snapping legs and breaking heads, he has become an early Iron Man , endowed with superhuman strength and durability.
The Welsh international half-back Roy Paul must bear some responsibility for starting this metallic trend. In the mid-1950s Barson was Paul s coach at Swansea City and the two men saw eye to eye where hard tackling and on-field aggression were concerned.
Paul described how it felt trying to take the ball from Barson: It was like trying to shift a steel girder when you tried to move the ball away, with this tungsten-steel character s leg pressing firmly against it.
It s perhaps understandable that such an image has slipped into easy usage. Barson was a blacksmith, born in the Steel City of Sheffield, and learned his football trade in Barnsley, a mining town where Iron Men coal-cutting machines had become commonplace by the time he was born in the late 1890s.
Iron Man was not, however, a term anyone used to describe Barson in his playing days. Nor was he described as a hard man , in the sense that one speaks of players like Chelsea s Ron Harris, Arsenal s Peter Storey or Liverpool s Tommy Smith.
Sports academic Richard Holt has written that, There was a self-conscious cult of Northern aggression which applauded the violent antics of some players, with Barson being the most notorious example. Barson, Holt claimed, was one of a number of hard men who were never heroes in the sense of commanding wide admiration as athletes, but there was a side of northern masculinity that admired anyone who, could do the business . Barson was, according to Holt, only a hero of sorts .
Both the modern cartoon imagery and the earnest sociological analysis completely miss the point, however.
Barson was certainly tough, but he suffered many injuries; he was from the North but never suggested his birthplace had anything to do with his success on the field; he was certainly admired as an athlete by his contemporaries but was never a cult figure; yet he was quite definitely a hero to many on the terraces, a player who both thrilled and enraged football crowds throughout the 1920s.
Manchester United historian Dr Percy Young, writing in the 1960s, went so far as to claim that Barson was a legend in his own day , so that spectators who had never seen him knew his image before he appeared.
Harry Godwin, born in 1914 and for many years a scout with Manchester City, confirmed this: The first time I saw United my Dad said to me, Which is Barson? We didn t have programmes, the players weren t numbered in those days and I hadn t seen any of them before. But I knew which was Barson. It wasn t so much that I picked him out as that he made me pick him out. He was so obviously what everyone had told me he was, the boss of the 18 yard box, a powerful man with his hair parted straight down the middle and sleek (Harry Godwin, interviewed in The Guardian, 19 March 1980.)
Barson s footballing creed was quite simple: if you played football for a living then you had to devote yourself to it wholeheartedly; winning was as much a matter of mind as of body; pain was something you would encounter in a game that involved a great deal of physical contact; and the team was always more important than the individual. He would have slotted seamlessly into one of Bill Shankly s Liverpool 11s (and strangely enough, Barson s boyhood nickname was Shanks), the only problem being his exact position on the field of play.
As for his rumbustious reputation, Percy Young reflected: To the thoughtless who do not discriminate between toughness and roughness, he was a rough player. Nor did a dominant personality and an instinct for natural justice endear him to referees. If Barson was maliciously treated by an opponent he issued due warning of the wrath that was to come. He also frequently advised the referee
Barson s heyday was in the years before the alteration in the offside law in 1925. He was a centre-half, but not as we once knew it. He was certainly not just a defender: he was a pivot around which the team revolved . His post-Second World War equivalent might have been John Charles or Duncan Edwards. Today, perhaps, a combination of Roy Keane and Virgil van Dijk.
Suffice to say, he was one of the dominant football personalities of the 1920s. This small book will endeavour to explain why.
A Note on Sources
THE 1920S are now almost a century away. Writing about a footballer who played in those far-off days is difficult but not impossible. The game was comprehensively reported in print at a time when there was little by way of radio reportage, hardly any cinema coverage and no television. The football journalists of the day performed miraculous feats of both endurance and erudition and it is upon them that this book will largely rely.
Athletic News s editor Tityrus (Jimmy Catton), his successor Ivan Sharpe, plus colleagues Harricus (A.H. Downs), The Seer, Brum, Cmyro, Northumbrian and Jacques; the Lancashire Evening Post s Perseus (John Brierly) and the Liverpool Echo s Bee ; the Derby Daily Telegraph s Outside Right and the Green Un s BC : these and many more unnamed toilers in the field will take us through Barson s long and eventful football journey. And it s quite a journey
Chapter One
A Burnt Offering
This has been a week in which one or two surprises have come upon the football world. Such, for instance, as the transfer of D.B.N. Jack from Bolton Wanderers to the Arsenal (who have spent a little fortune on their team in recent years) and the suspension of that great exponent of football - Frank Barson. AEM Between Ourselves Villa News and Record, 20 October 1928.
IN JULY 1928 Frank Barson, 37-year-old ex-England, Barnsley, Aston Villa and Manchester United centre-back, signed for Watford of the Football League Third Division South on a free transfer. On 29 September (a day after penicillin was discovered), eight games into the season, Watford entertained Fulham. Late in the first half trouble ensued, witnessed by the Sporting Life football correspondent:

Exactly how the situation arose it would be difficult to say - things happen so quickly in football. But with the centre of play some fifteen yards away I saw Barson and Temple, the Fulham outside-right, spinning round apparently locked together. Temple was clinging to Barson round the thighs and the Watford man was striving to free himself. Barson obviously annoyed by Temple s refusal to release himself, lifted his arm into what the police would call a striking attitude . Before any blow could or would have been struck, however, other players came between the pair.
Now the referee, Mr W.E. Russell of Swindon, was following the play and could not have been a witness to the incident. He at once went across to the linesman on that side of the ground and, presumably acting on what was told him, ordered Barson off. Barson argued his case in vain and though Barrett the Fulham captain added his entreaties, the referee stood his ground. Opinion was unanimous on the ground at the time that the other party was the aggressor. 1
Watford supporter Mr C.T. Edgar of Railway Cottages, Hatch End, claimed he saw the incident and that Barson was not wholly to blame: I say he has been most unfairly dealt with. On the other hand, a Fulham supporter, Veritas of Maida Vale, who said the incident took place directly in front of him, declared that, it was significant that the home supporters, who outnumbered the Fulham supporters by about 50 to 1, were silent and there was not the slightest demonstration against the referee. 2
Within a few days, a petition was drawn up, arranged by