Newspaper Clippings - Loose - Volume 2 - page 3
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FINAL CHAPTER ( HAPPY MEMORIES ) Team work led to a top career I T'S more than 50 years since he last wore it but Eddie Johnson still treasures the crumpled red and white shirt . Also the badge that went with it , denoting the famous motto ' Always Ready . ' A whole soccer - playing career that took him to the heights of the First Division separate him from those days with South Shields Ex - schoolboys . But they were happy times and he has never forgotten them , he says . Eddie , who celebrates his 73rd birthday today , was thrilled when a friend alerted him to that picture we had of the Ex - schoolboys ' side in the late 1940s . The 1946-47 season actually , Eddie reckons , when they were winners of the north - east industrial league , the north - east industrial cup and the Palmer memorial cup . What a side they were . Let's run through them again as Eddie remembers them : Tommy Cum mings who went on to play for Burnley ; Tommy Shawyer who went to Leeds Utd ; John Burn who later played for Chelsea , and Fred Harvey who went to Southampton . There was also John Powles , Tony Lanaghan , Brian Dolan , John Kim mett , John Ford ( who went to Bolton Wanderers ) and Edmund Gibbons . And Eddie himself , who went on to play for First Division Manchester City , and later Gateshead in the Third Division , as well as South Shields and North Shields in the North - Eastern League . Eddie , who has lived with his wife Olga in Ryton for many years now , was born and brought - up in Welling ton Street in South Shields . He served his time as a joiner at the old Brigham and Cowan's yard and over subsequent years , until he eventually retired from the field at the age of 35 , he managed to combine his soccer - playing career with , first , National Service in the RAF and then his continued employment in the shipyards . He finally ended up working for himself as a builder . Today he looks back on an era , in the 1950s , when young players like himself could make three times more at soccer than the average wage earner . IN THE PINK ... Eddie Johnson in his Ex - schoolboys ' strip , with a copy of the Gazette . of those coming towards your face ! Tackling rules have also changed . " And the goalkeeper couldn't move when you took a penalty . " Says Eddie : " The most famous of the Ex - schoolboys in the past was the great Stan Mortensen who went to Blackpool and scored three goals in the Cup Final in 1953 against Bol ton , winning 4-3 . " When we played at football league level the wage was £ 20 a week , at time when the working man's wage was only £ 6 or £ 7 a week . " There was a bonus of £ 2 if you won , " he recalls . But how does football now com pare with the game then ? Epic tales of long voyages " He played centre forward for England and was a prolific goal scorer . " Interestingly , Eddie also still has some documentation relating to the old Ex - schoolboys founded in 1935 - which is illuminating . If I read things right , Stan Mortensen actually became an hon orary vice - president of the club . Another was the late Ald Barbour . Cookson Country restha 139 " We were all born too soon , " he reckons . " They play with a light ball now . We played with a heavy leather And the honorary medical officer ball , and leather boots with nails sticking out of the studs . You can was Dr Cohen whose surgery was in imagine what it was like seeing one Laygate Lane for many years . ( WHOS THAT OLD MAN ) T XXL |
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