Johnny Haynes by James Gardner

Author:James Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The Swinging Sixties

‘Looked back upon with the unblemished vision of hindsight, the sixties seems a wild, degenerate decade. It was the time of Swinging London, of miniskirts, promiscuity and the pill; the time when adolescence found itself for the first time with serious money in its pocket and began to dictate, as it has never ceased to dictate, the fashion in clothes, music, films… It was the time when the authority of parents was challenged and overcome by their children; when indeed the absolute authority itself – by which I mean government and the political and social Establishment – was loosened forever.’

Barry Norman’s foreword to The Pendulum Years (1970) by Bernard Levin

GENERALLY, footballers of Johnny’s generation did not fling themselves wholeheartedly into the ‘swinging sixties’. By nature, as illustrated in Hunter Davies’ book, The Glory Game, published in 1972, footballers were conservative-thinking and suspicious of change. However, as the decade progressed it did offer star players more opportunities to meet celebrities and those who in the past would have been considered their social superiors. According to the journalist John Moynihan, ‘By the 1960s soccer had become “trendy” with society hostesses wrapped up like mountain hares coming to watch matches at Craven Cottage.’

The King’s Road, Fulham and Chelsea were places to be for celebrities. Fulham had Honor Blackman, known in those days as Cathy Gale (The Avengers) and Pussy Galore (Goldfinger). It was said that there were more showbiz faces on the terraces than could be found at the Royal Command Performance. Sport was becoming part of showbiz and Johnny used to complain that sometimes there were more celebrities than players in the Fulham dressing room before a big match. ‘You couldn’t imagine that happening at Liverpool or Leeds in the 1960s,’ he later said.

The sports journalist and writer Frank Keating recalled watching Johnny and Fulham in the 1960s:

Fulham were, as John Moynihan said in his joyous chronicle of the times, The Soccer Syndrome, ‘a Saturday afternoon team offering a feeling of animated recreation rather than solid professionalism… a side of sometimes comic triers watched by garrulous actors, serious actors, pantomime players, bandleaders, stuntmen, starlets; tweeds, black leather, green leather, pink ankle-length knickers, baggy overcoats, over armour-plated suede, cheroots between thumb and first finger.’

They were days when a joint was a jazz cellar, LSD was a couple of Friday fivers, a trip was a moonlight bedsit flit – and dope, more often than not, was Bedford Jezzard’s latest signing from the Hellenic League.

Liquid lunch, long walk alongside the cemetery past tiny, prim houses called ‘Hazeldene’ to marvel in wonder at Haynes – and to groan and wring our hands with him when the little men forgot to run on to – or even run away from – those lancing, expansive long passes. He was too good for us, too; and really we turned up to love the fellows who forgot.

For Moynihan, ‘Haynes was the hero of the show-business crowd. They flock to “Johnny”… the provider of the most beautiful reverse passes in England since the war, defence cutters as lethal as steel shears.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.