Book of the Month: Football Wizard - The Billy Meredith Story

This autobiography had been sat on my footie books bookshelf for a while so I have a sense of satisfaction to have finally read it. There's a personal family connection with Billy Meredith because he played for Wales alongside my Great Uncle Tommy Matthias either side of the First World War.

I knew that Billy and Tommy were both in the Wales team that beat England for the very first time, in a British Home Championship game at Highbury in 1920. What I didn't know, until this past week in fact, was that Billy played in Tommy's benefit game for a "Wrexham and Welsh XI" in 1922. (I found this out from Anthony, a new contact via a vintage sports collecting group, who specialises in Wrexham's history.)

Billy was a fascinating character at a time when football was emerging as the sport of the masses. There is a great scene-setting chapter explaining how coal miners in the Black Park Colliery in Chirk, where Billy worked as a young man, would leave the pits at the end of the shift and go straight to watch - or play - football without even washing the coal dust off. Billy lived in Chirk and commuted to Manchester to play and train until he was offered a contract as a professional footballer. 

His upbringing wasn't conducive to playing football for a living. His religious parents thought it was a silly pursuit. His dad apparently only ever attended one game where Billy was playing, and reportedly was unimpressed. Despite this, Billy soon made a name for himself at Chirk - they won the Welsh Cup in 1894. The next year he was playing for Manchester City, and soon helped them win promotion to the First Division and then their first FA Cup win.

He was then involved in a scandal, when he was accused of trying to bribe the captain of Aston Villa to throw a match. His punishment was a lengthy ban from football. When he returned to playing, he was in the colours of Manchester United where he was part of the team that were League Champions for the first time in 1907 and then won the title again with them in 1911. In between those league titles was another FA Cup win. He also played in the first Charity Shield match, and was on the winning side.

Billy felt doubly hard done by with regards to the match-fixing scandal. Firstly, he felt he was unfairly treated due to being Welsh and that an English player wouldn't have been censured so severely. Secondly, he felt his club let him down badly and didn't have his back. Throughout his career he got into arguments with his clubs, often revolving around money. He was a big champion of the 'Player's Union' but this wasn't motivated by solidarity as much as feeling players weren't being paid enough when they were the reason people came to football matches. 

The author, John Harding, is pretty even-handed in how he writes about this. One can sense that Billy was a spiky fellow, with a focus on money that probably stemmed from his relatively poor upbringing. But there are several times when it seems like Billy let his pride guide him into rows that he could have avoided if he'd had a bit more nous.

But Billy was a superstar - as it evidenced by how he drew a crowd whenever he played in a testimonial, benefit or charity game. His was usually the name on the adverts for the game.  He tried his hand at endorsing products, set up a sporting goods store, and even appeared in a film playing a version of himself as a trainer and mentor to an aspiring footballer. Sadly, that film doesn't survive. He was regularly depicted in newspaper cartoons, which always included his trademark toothpick. 

Billy's professional career stretched over 30 years, although with a chunk of it lost to the First World War, when he played in several wartime league games. After the war he was back playing for Wales and for Manchester City and continued playing into the 1920s. 

If I was going to be critical of this book, it does rely a bit too much on reports in newspapers and magazines, particularly the Athletic News. This is a common problem faced by a lot of football writers; the story can just become a string of results and match summaries. The book could have done with a list of the honours that Billy won. It's also a bit annoying that some team photos have the players identified and some don't. I'm certain that one of the team photos includes my Great Uncle, but it's not confirmed in the book.

Tommy Matthias circled

Those are really quite minor quibbles. An updated version of this book has been published and some of those issues might have been dealt with. Overall this was a fascinating and enjoyable glimpse into the early days of soccer and I learned a lot from it.