General Chat

Rollo. No, I was the professional statistician. Right hand man to Gordon Brown for years ;-)

Thanks Gin. That Billy Gillespie of SUFC sounds quite a character. What is making me chuckle is all this "they are much fitter today". They are most certainly not. Most footbalers worked then in pretty heavy jobs where you had to have immense stamina and fitness. Johnny Hancocks of Wolves (right wing) worked in an iron foundry and, during WW2, he was an Army fitness instructor. He could run 100 yards in fractionally over 10 seconds. The top players were very dedicated and very fit.

With the old style managers, there was no booze, no fags and not much of the other until the "swinging sixties". I cannot see some of the modern prima donnas punting a ball as hard as them. In fact, some of the £200,000+ a year stars would probably break their toe on their first kick - and, as for heading one of those lead footballs, they would be carted off with serious head injuries.

No JJ, that is not him. He was born in Ireland in 1891


1911 England Census

Name:William Gillespie

Age in 1911:20

Estimated Birth Year:abt 1891

Relation to Head:Boarder

Gender:Male

Birth Place:Kerrykeel, Donegal, Ireland

Civil Parish:Holbeck

County/Island:Yorkshire-West Riding

Street Address:17 Back West View Beeston Hill Leeds

Marital Status:Single

Occupation:Profesional Footballer

Registration District:Holbeck

Registration District Number:502

Sub-registration District:Holbeck

ED, institution, or vessel:10

Piece:27186


Name

Age

Charles Edwin Thompson 43
Marion Elizabeth Thompson 39
Lilian Thompson 13
Marion Thompson 5
William Gillespie 20
George Affleck 22

LFC 1st team players in the latter half of the 70's (Keegan, Clemence era) were paid around £400 a fortnight with substantial bonuses if they scored (a goal, that is!).

Between about 1975 & 1980 the cost of a ground ticket went from £1 to £2, but wages stayed substantially the same.

Keegan went to Hamburg in 1977 for £500,000, I believe it was a record at that time. The money was tfrd by telephonic transfer in those days and I actually wrote out the payment slip which credited the club's account!

£1 in 1977 is equivalent to £5.25 now in terms of retail prices, £8.45 as far as wages are concerned (wages rise faster than prices, despite what many think) so the the £400 per fortnight from the '70's would only be the same as a measly £3,380 per fortnight today.

Average player wages at Liverpool FC in 1921 were £ 6 5s. At that time Billy Boyd would have been 15 so he was probably not the first UK footballer to crack £ 5 pw. First in Scotland? Manchester City were paying more than £ 5 even earlier though it was under the table as there was a national wage limit in force.

Why do you say he played for Ipswich ? He did play for Sheffield and later Southampton.

Some of my long gone relatives played for the Arsenal when it was located in Plumstead. The club hit hard times when the Torpedo Factory was moved to .... Clyde ! They ended up ok though in Highbury :-)

btw I am not and never have been a professional statistician for the government or anybody else.

William Gillespie "Billy" Boyd (27 November 1905 – 14 December 1967) was a Scottish professional footballer, whose regular position was at centre-forward. He is most notable for playing at Clyde, where he won his two Scotland caps, and Ipswich Town, (Sufc), for whom he scored 30 goals in 42 appearances.

Is that your man, Gins? Just had a lovely google and, if I have to do it again, it is throwing up American footballers who were earning $5 a week.

£7/£5. All the same to a man of refinement who used to be a Government statistician, Rollo. And Rollers are only lumps of metal. An uncle was a farmer in Victoria, Aus and used to drive his sheep round his farm in his Rolls Royce in 1930's and 40's. So they always have a suggested smell of sheep droppings for me. :-)

The average UK men's weekly wage in 1952 was over £ 7. In London and some industrial cities it was over £ 10 (eg Rayleigh Cycles Nottingham ).
Tax and deductions were far less than they are today.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2094769/Workers-1950s-worked-longer-hours-tougher-conditions-holiday--happier-now.html

I had an uncle who played 1st division football in the late 50s/60s - I have no idea what he got paid but I do remember his Roller! He used to go golfing with Bruce Forsyth. Sadly he died recently.

JJ

How very dare you :-P

Neither does SUFC. The only team I can think of in SUFC is Ipswich Town :-S

Billy Gillespie (SUFC) was the first player to be paid a 'whole' £5pw

If, I'm proved wrong.......I'll direct you to the history of SUFC

Google.............means nothing

my hubbys granddad played for hull city
he got 12 shillings a week
and did his day job as a train driver

think that was in the 1930s :-D :-D

My old aunt must have been wrong then, Rollo. She had worked her socks off in her early days for £20 a year. Now this nice young man was earning that in a week for punting a pig's bladder round a park. She thought he was earning "fabulous" wages.

Your old man was doing fabulously well too. What was the average wage then? Probably about £5 or £6 a week. No wonder you have had a cushioned life style since of a wonderful education, honours and priviledge. Not the same for all of us, you know. ;-)

Football was a working man's game then. They would happily pay George Formby or Gracie Fields a fortune and call them "stars", but footballers were heroes who lived very similar lives to their fans. Caught the same buses, drank in same pubs and clubs. Now the top football stars (almost all the Premiership and some top teams in Championship too) are treated like the movie stars and pop stars of the 50's.

Fabulous wages ? My old man was making £ 20/week with the London Met. in 1952 inclusive of overtime.

Since then footballers have done rather better than engineers and policemen. I was friendly with Dave Mackay snr, the ex Spurs player during his coaching days in Kuwait. He was paid a fortune compared to most other ex-pats!

When I had tea at my aunt's house in 1952 one Sunday afternoon, Billy Wright (who was a footballer and a bachelor who lived in digs round the corner) joined us as he often had tea with my elderly aunt, who was an avid Wolves supporter.

She told me after he had left that Billy was on fabulous wages. £20 a week!!! And him "no wife yet", though he was "walking out" with a show business star. He seemed such a nice, modest and lovely chap to me - even if he did earn such astronomic wages and was Captain of England :-D :-D ;-)

Yes, but even back in the 1960s the game was pretty poor - just have a look at the videos - and the players unfit. Smoking was the norm as was a big plate of steak n chips before the match .....

Like anything else the earnings of soccer players are subject to supply and demand ... there is a shortage of men with the ability to control a round slippery ball at high speed and with the guts to risk serious injury.

At the level of League 1 and downwards earnings are nothing to get excited about and life for ex-players can be very hard.

In all parts of the entertainment industry - which includes professional sport - earnings for those at the very top are very high for a while but rarely a lifetime. There is no point in getting antsy about it.

Even at less exalted levels software engineers and designers have widely different remuneration which can vary from £ 120 - £ 1 000 on a daily basis with a mean of around £ 400. Contracted in employees with stock options can of course make a whole lot more.

France is about to implement a 75% income/social security tax on all residents earning over € 1M gross p.a. All it is going to achieve is to destroy their top soccer teams while the biz community push off to Monaco, Geneva, London and small villages in Belgium nr the border with France. However the sharp drop in up market propery prices and lettings is good news for incoming barons from points east.

On the 30th December 1946 Football League players threatened to strike over the proposed maximum wage of £11 a week - these days qith all their sponsorships it is probably around £250,000 per week for some players.