THE GREAT ONES

TITLE		The Great Ones
AUTHOR		Joe Mercer
PUBLISHER	The Sportsmans Book Club.
ADDRESS		Readers Union Ltd.,
               	Aldine House,
		10-13 Bedford St.,
		London WC2
DATE		1966 (Originally 1964; Oldbourne Book Co Ltd)
ISBN NUMBER	Not applicable (out of print)
PRICE		£2.00 (secondhand in 1999)

This is another one of those 1950s/60s footballing autobiographies published by the the Sportsmans Book Club, clearly for a public which seems to have been a good deal less partisan than we are nowadays. I spotted this one in the window of a charity shop in Marazion in Cornwall, and on entering, discovered a whole pile of football books from this book club, evidently once owned by someone with a passion for football in general, not just one particular club. The original owner had paid 7/6d (37.5p), so £2 seemed like a bargain.

The book is quite lengthy compared with many of its contempories - 140 pages with 9 black and white plates. My copy still has the original blue and white dust jacket, which is extremely functional by today's standards.

The title is quite misleading as you almost expect to get Joe Mercer's views on the great players he played with and against. However, this is first and foremost an autobiography; the 'great ones' are there, but spread throughout the text, and tacked on in a small chapter at the end. The format is as you'd expect for an autobiography from this era; it starts off with his feelings on the pitch when he sustained the injury which ended his career, then quickly turns to his childhood and works right through his career chronologically. Although the more recent biography (by Gary James) paints a much fuller picture of Joe's life, and has the obvious advantage of covering his whole life (his latter years were somewhat eventful apparently!), this book is still well worth reading, as it contains many opinions directly from the horse's mouth. It also gives us an insight into the issues that concerned football players and fans at that time, many of which have been long forgotten. I remember being amused by Don Revie's assertion (in his autobiography) that the use of substitutes would lead to all sorts of underhanded tactics, i.e. people coming off who were not injured(!), a position which seems ludicrous today. Yet that book and this reveal that Newcastle twice won the FA Cup in the 50's when the opposition were reduced to 10 men - by injury - for the best part of those games, once against Arsenal and once against City!

I won't attempt to summarise Joe's life here, but will confine myself to mentioning some of the more interesting anecdotes and trivia that are thrown in along the way. For instance, Joe describes his early footballing days and his introduction to Everton, where he played alongside the great 'Dixie' Dean. It never occurred to me before to question why he was called 'Dixie'. Apparently he had a mop of black hair and a dark complexion and got his nickname at school - he also hated it; everyone in the club called him Billie, as his name was actually William Ralph Dean. We also get a look at the tactics of the day, and the developments in the game; for instance, the change in offside rule from 3 players between attacker and goal to 2 (still applies nowadays). Before the change, the only real way of attacking was dribbling and speed, so teams were full of these types of players. After the change, the offside trap became much more difficult and reliance on dribblers was much reduced; this period saw the advent of the more typical big English centre forward.

Joe also asserts that the 'double' was much more difficult to achieve before the advent of floodlights, as any team which got through to the latter stages of the FA Cup suffered severe fixture congestion (sound familiar?). The target of this statement was Spurs who did the 'double' in the early 60's. Interestingly, and digressing to the Swamp, Ferguson was recently criticised for his rather anodyne autobiography (by Colin Shindler I think) and especially for omitting any mention of selling his son, and the associated heartache that it surely must have caused him. Here in contrast, Joe talks about the anguish he had to go through at Aston Villa when he had to tell his son - who was an apprentice - that he was not going to make it.

It's quite interesting to contrast this book with the much more detailed and excellently written biography from Gary James. Joe's book was written in a period when you didn't really criticise authority figures, even when they had treated people in the most appallingly shabby manner. Joe contents himself with stating that there had been disagreements, but deliberately omits to tell us exactly what they were about, and just how relationships had degenerated to such a point that the two individuals felt that there was no other alternative than a parting of the ways. Gary's book provides a much fuller background to these events, and of course, as Gary is the biographer rather than the subject, he is free to give his own opinion on these matters, where Joe - even in his twilight years - was probably still reticent about doing so in print.

Lastly, the book finishes off with Joe talking about how he still feels that he can prove he is a good manager, given the chance; he's just waiting for a phone call to bring him back into the game! Anyone know who might have taken him up on it?