Football in the Seventies

By: Dave Boylen
Date: 28/03/2006

LET me introduce myself, many people might know me, others not, I played for Town in the sixties and late seventies. I have been asked by the Fishy to explain what the football scene was like in my day compared to today's generation of Footballers .

Dave on football as a whole.

The Football season when I was a player was shorter than today's, and the squads consisted in general of a mixture of young players alongside experienced Professional Footballers. The players all had bona-fide contracts and the loyalty of players to their football clubs was never in doubt. As always in Football there is always a difference of opinion of who is the best player at any football club, and it was no different in my day. Great players that spring to mind are Matt Tees, Stuart Brace, Harry Wainman, Nigel Batch, Joe Waters, Kevin Drinkell, to name a few.

Dave on the lifestyles of footballers.

Also in my day you had to get a job in the summer, because the pre-season was ten weeks long, the wages also went down, the club had no source of income coming through the gates and therefore the players had to take a summer cut. So we all had to get a part time job to supplement the cost of living, i.e. bills, electricity, gas, all the usual. Some of the jobs I had for instance were selling Ice Cream; me and Dave Worthington worked for Ada Ices. Dave covered one half of the town and I did the other half, great fun we decked the vans out in Grimsby Towns colours and all the supporters loved it and it was great fun for both of us, then the rival ice cream vendors lodged a complaint against Ada Ices saying it was unfair competition. Other jobs I had in the summer was believe it or not window cleaning, delivering meat for a well known butcher, delivering glass for one of the clubs directors who had a glazing firm, now that was great fun because we broke more than we delivered. Great memories indeed, would not swap them for the world.

Dave on present day football and the treatment of referees.

Going to present day football, I think with the advent of foreign players coming into our game they have brought with them the diving and dramatics that get players sent off; it is now comical to see the antics some of them do. Gary Lineker had it right when he said for diving give them a pink card to show them up for what they are. In my day there was always a lot of respect for the referee, especially the good ones you knew how far you could go with them. Today there is a camera in nearly every position in the ground and at times I do feel sorry for the ref when he gets it wrong, the replays show him up and sometimes make him look a right fool, not very nice.

Dave on crowd trouble.

Crowd trouble use to be a problem in the sixties and seventies. I was playing at Millwall and we were winning with just twenty minutes to go and I was taking a throw-in when all of a sudden I felt a blow at the back of my head and looked round and somebody had thrown a pint glass at me as I was taking the throw. What did I do? I picked the glass up and handed to a steward and continued to take the throw-in and carried on as if nothing had happened. It was rough in them days with the crowds that we played in front off and there were some idiots who at the end of a game wanted to run on and punch you especially if you had had a good game, but that was football in them days.

Dave on money in football.

On a final note the money today's players get is sometimes obscene but that is only in the two top leagues, the Premiership and the Championship. In the two lower leagues everybody is on the same footing; there is not much money about and there is not a lot of good time Charlie`s who could hack it in those leagues.

Dave Boylen

Thanks to Dave Boylen for taking the time to answer these questions, and to Jake Olley for organising this article.

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