Wilkins, Ray: The jet-setting teacher-player

Ray Wilkins shaking hands with Malkinson at Burnaston Airport in September 1954

NEWS that the president of Real Madrid values David Beckham so highly that he is prepared to lay on a private jet to fly the England star to matches wouldn’t surprise anyone in today’s crazy world of football extravagance.

But 51 years ago, there were plenty of raised eyebrows when the owner of Lincolnshire minnows, Boston United, provided an aircraft to fly Derby schoolteacher Ray Wilkins to play against Rotherham United Reserves.

It was September 1954 and Ray didn’t finish work at Sturgess School until 4pm, only two hours before kick-off. So, the Midland League club simply laid on an aircraft to take him the 62 miles to play at York Street, Boston. Their action made national newspaper headlines.

Today, Ray (77) of Mickleover, can look back more than half a century to the days when, despite being a part-time footballer throughout a career which also saw him play for Derby County, he was considered such a valuable asset that his chairman would come calling in an aeroplane.

He recalls: “Boston was owned by the Malkinson family, who also owned entertainment venues along the East Coast. The chairman, Ernest Malkinson, was desperate to compete with Peterborough United, who in those days were the real East Anglian giants of non-League football.

“For instance, Peterborough had two ex-League goalkeepers as player-manager, Jack Fairbrother of Newcastle United, who was born in Burton, and George Swindin of Arsenal, who followed him.

“So, Mr Malkinson decided Boston should have one, too. That led to him signing up Ray Middleton, Derby’s former goalkeeper, as player-manager. And, in turn, Ray took several ex-Rams players, including me, to play for Boston.”

For Ray Wilkins it was a chance to extend a professional playing career that had begun in whirlwind fashion.

“I was studying at Loughborough College, having just come out of the Royal Navy after three years’ compulsory service at the end of the Second World War. I played a couple of games for Moira United in the Christmas holidays of 1949 when Jack Nicholas, who was Derby’s captain when they won the FA Cup in 1946, asked me to go for a trial at the Baseball Ground.

“To my astonishment, the next time I heard from Derby was to say that I was playing for the Reserves at Burnley. I hadn’t even had the trial. Then things moved even faster. After only a couple of Reserves matches, I was in the first team against Liverpool, facing Laurie Hughes, who would play for England in that year’s World Cup finals in Brazil.

“Jack Stamps was injured and I suddenly found myself playing centre-forward between two world-class inside-forwards, Johnny Morris and Billy Steel.

“Years later, after my mother died, we were clearing out her house and I found she’d kept all my old school exercise books.

“I was flicking through them one day and came across an entry I’d made in my English book in 1938. It read: ‘One day, I shall be a professional footballer and my team will be Derby County. I hope I shall score lots of goals’.”

Ray cannot remember writing these words, but they were certainly far-sighted, even down to scoring those goals – 11 in 30 games for the Rams alone would be a fair return in any era.

Ray was born in the South Derbyshire mining community of Albert Village in August 1928. When he was a year old, the family moved to Swadlincote, where Ray eventually went to Hastings Road Infants and Junior Schools. Then, a scholarship took him to Ashby Grammar School, from where he went into the Navy and then to Loughborough College.

Throughout a professional football career which took him to Derby, Boston, Wrexham, Oswestry Town and Macclesfield Town, he remained a part-time player, with teaching posts at Derwent and Sturgess Senior Schools in Derby, and St David’s, a brand-new school in Wrexham, where he went back into League football with the Third Division club.

“We would have stayed in Wrexham, but my first wife became very ill and we had to come back so that her mother could help care for her.”

Back in Derby, Ray became head of PE at Mackworth School and played for local clubs, Gresley Rovers, Wilmorton and Alvaston, later managing Crewton FC.

He went on to become head of the fifth year at Mackworth and, later, senior teacher – effectively a deputy head – before retiring when the school became a comprehensive in the education upheaval of the 1980s.

He says: “I had long decided that when I was in my mid-40s, I would give up teaching PE and concentrate on academic subjects. I didn’t want to end up like my old PE teacher at Ashby Grammar, who, because of the war and the shortage of young teachers, had to carry on well past the point where he could perform. It wasn’t his fault but I didn’t want to end up the same.”

There is one memory which stands out above all others when Ray assesses his football career. In December 1955, Boston United came to the Baseball Ground to play Derby County in the FA Cup, with six ex-Rams players, including Ray and 1946 Cup winner Reg Harrison in their ranks.

In one of the greatest Cup upsets of all time, Boston won 6-1 with ex-Rams reserve player Geoff Hazledine scoring a hat-trick.

That morning, Ray had been the subject of a newspaper article which had the schoolteacher-footballer claiming that Boston “would teach Derby a lesson”.

Says Ray: “It was all tongue in cheek. We never expected to win, although we didn’t expect to do badly either. Our plan was to play good football and show supporters of the club that had sacked us that we were still decent players.

“The result was beyond our wildest dreams. About an hour after the final whistle, Reg Harrison and myself decided to pay our respects to our former colleagues. We went into the Derby dressing room and stopped in our tracks. The players still hadn’t changed out of their kit and it was deadly silent.

“Harry Storer, the Derby manager, just swung round and glared at us. We retreated, closed the door gently, and tip-toed back down the corridor.”

Another of Ray’s memories is the startlingly different temperaments of Johnny Morris and Billy Steel, Derby’s two British record signings of the late 1940s.

“Johnny, who came from Manchester United and was an England international, was absolutely wonderful. He couldn’t have been more helpful to a young player just starting out. He was always taking you to one side, offering advice.

“Billy, who’d played for Scotland and Great Britain, was just the opposite. He wanted the ball to his feet and wouldn’t move a yard for it. If you gave him a less than perfect pass, he’d just let the ball go by and shrug at the crowd as if to say, ‘Did you see that? What a poor pass’.

“A lot of the senior players resented him because, in those days of a maximum wage for footballers, Derby found him a ‘job’ at Bennett’s, thanks to one of the directors. They also got him a company car when others were still catching the bus.”

Today, Ray still attends every home game at Pride Park and is an enthusiastic supporter of the Derby County Former Players’ Association – and a keen golfer.

“I love Derby County and just wish they’d sort out the financial situation and get the club back on an even keel.”

Until then, the chances of a private aircraft to ferry the occasional player about are remote indeed.

Pages linking here