Kissing and Cuddling: Extract 1 From Jimmy Hill’s Striking For Soccer
Jimmy Hill (2nd left, beard), Chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, shakes hands with Joe Richards, President of the Football League, and John Hare (striped suit), at the Ministry of Labour in London. * …after attending a successful four-and-a-half-hour meeting to discuss football players’ conditions and pay. A strike was called off as agreement was reached between the football league and the PFA in the presence of John Hare, Minister of Labour. Date: 18/01/1961
HIGHLIGHTS from Striking For Soccer, Jimmy Hill’s 1963 book on his part in the end of the maximum wage. In 1961, Hill, the then Professional Football Association chairman, led footballers to victor in the abolition of the maximum wage with the threat of a players’ strike. The top wage a player could legally earn was…£20 a week. Hill’s Fulham teammate Johnny Haynes soon became the first £100-a-week player.
The book was published by The Sportmans Book Club, a members-only, mail-order publisher based in London and Letchworth Garden City.
Today’s extract is from “Chapter 8: Kissing and Cuddling“:
Critics argue, of course, that there is far too much of this ‘petting’ on the field….
I am not against the occasional ‘cuddle’, for it can be manly; but I must say that I am against kissing, which I feel is best left to the end of the game, and then preferably with the opposite sex. This is a facet of the game in which we have emulated our Continental and Latin friends, but we are still a little behind them in histrionic ability…
More highlights from the man who became the face of BBC TV football to follow…
Posted: 1st, March 2014 | In: Books, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
