Friday on my mind – “The greatest footballer you never saw” turns it on at Newport in 1975.

Posted on April 9, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

There was even something about the name Robin Friday that was out of the ordinary – if he had been called Bert Jones or something, I might not have paid too much attention to the Daily Mirror article I read about him when he was starring for Hayes in the FA Cup in 1973. Saying that though, you only had to look at the picture which accompanied the piece to realise that this was no ordinary footballer – I know he was playing in non league football at the time but come on, a Newcy Brown tee shirt and shabby track suit bottoms for your first taste of national media attention!

Hayes beat Bristol Rovers (who were a decent team back then) 1-0 in the First Round of the Cup and then faced a local derby at Reading in round 2 and after getting a 0-0 draw at the old Elm park were beaten by a lone goal in the replay. Every year the media run features on players from plucky non league clubs who have their fifteen minutes of fame during their FA Cup run and then disappear never to be seen again, but Reading boss Charlie Hurley was obviously impressed by Friday and paid Hayes £750 for his services. Friday signed initially as an amateur, but he was featuring in the first team within weeks and was soon rewarded with a professional contract.

Back in those days it was so much harder to keep track of footballer’s careers than it is now, but when I began to notice the name “Friday” appearing pretty regularly as a goalscorer for Reading, I thought that it meant that they had probably signed the bloke with the Newcastle Brown tee shirt I read about months earlier. I gave it no more thought than that though until after I went to see Newport County play Reading at Somerton Park on 20 October 1975.

I often used to watch County back then and had already seen a couple of games that year as they made a strong start to the campaign which saw them lead the old Fourth Division for a while (in true County style though, they fell apart completely in the New Year finishing up two places off the bottom of the table and having to make, another, application for re-election to the Football League the following summer) and with Reading also in the top six at the time, I was hopeful of seeing a decent game that evening.

In the event, the match finished 0-0 and would have been a complete waste of time if it wasn’t for the contribution of the visitor’s long haired striker who I had read about a couple of years earlier. Truth be told, I had forgotten about Friday beforehand, but it was impossible to do that once the match started. Tall and wiry, Friday soon showed he had the strength, as well as the courage, to cope with the physical demands of football in the league’s basement, but it was what he did with the ball which commanded attention. Although hardly looking or moving like a professional sportsman, you only needed to see the way in which the ball was brought instantly under control and never seemed more than a foot or so away from his body when he was in possession to realise that the football pitch was Robin Friday’s natural habitat.

There cannot be many footballers who never played in the top flight who have a had a biography that was sold throughout the country written about them, but Robin Friday did and the “Greatest Footballer you Never Saw” records that Friday provided his colleagues with three great goalscoring opportunities in a game in which the Reading goal was barely threatened. The lack of attention given to this game in the book though suggests that I was hardly watching Robin Friday at his best and yet he impressed me that night as the most complete player I had seen in the Fourth Division before (and probably since).

Based on what I saw, Friday was way too good for that level and I was soon telling friends that I had seen a player who City should pull out all of the stops to sign – although, in reality, I doubted if it would ever happen because he was too good for us. However, perhaps City had representatives watching Friday at Somerton Park that night because the Reading Evening Post apparently reported a fortnight later that the local club “had turned down  a £60,000 bid from Cardiff City involving Welsh International Derek Shallis” (presumably they meant Derek Showers!).

Over the next few months I expected to read about some big club or another signing Friday, but there was nothing and, with hindsight, that offered a clue that there might be a few skeletons in his cupboard. Eventually, some fourteen months after I watched him at Somerton Park, Friday did get his move, but you could have knocked me down with a feather when I found out that it was to Cardiff City for a fee of just £30,000! Once again, the size of the fee should have acted as a warning – I thought I had seen a £100,000 plus rated player at Newport (that would be about the equivalent of a £2 million player in today’s market), so why would Reading be selling a very popular and talented player (who was voted as Reading’s Player of the Millennium ten years ago) so cheaply?

Well, what happened a few hours after that game at Newport gives some of the answer as “The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw” details another Reading Evening Post story which tells how Friday was arrested and jailed after an altercation with police as he left a club in Newport in the early hours of the following morning – in the story Friday protests his innocence and talks of defending himself against all charges, but the book doesn’t say if the case actually made it to Court.

None of that bothered me too much at the time though as I went around telling anyone who’d listen that we had signed a great talent and. although I went to Friday’s first game against Fulham on New Years Day 1977 nursing one of the worst hangovers of my life, nothing would have kept me away from Ninian Park that day as Friday announced himself with one of the great City debuts of the past fifty years. So, why is it then that I now remember Robin Friday’s time with us with a mixture of anger and sadness?

Well, some of the anger comes from the way he has been turned into a “City legend” by supporters who are, mostly, too young to have seen him play – the romanticised version of Robin Friday’s City career is nothing like the reality in my book. Although I accept that it is hard to completely divorce what Friday did in terms of playing football for us from the likes of his encounters with Bobby Moore and Mark Lawrenson and his off field antics, I have to say that he was a poor player for us.

When you take away the sending offs,the suspensions and the broken cheekbones, what did Robin Friday actually do in a Cardiff City shirt in his twenty five appearances (that’s all he managed) for us? For me, there are only three games in which he played to anything like his potential – his superb debut against Fulham when he gave the great Bobby Moore a very uncomfortable afternoon in more ways than one, the game against eventual Champions Wolves when his appearance from the bench was the catalyst to a City fightback which saw them get a 2-2 draw by scoring twice in added time and the “v sign” game with Luton where he scored twice and was the best player on the pitch. For the rest of his games with us Friday was a petulant and unpredictable performer who was lucky to keep his place in the team.

I daresay those who never saw Friday play, and a fair few who did, will label me as an old fuddy duddy for being critical of a City legend, but unfulfilled talent annoys me and Robin Friday was one of the biggest unfulfilled talents of the British game in the past forty years – I really think he could have been that good. I have always liked footballers with attitude and still do, but it needs performance to go with that attitude and, although Friday’s best in a City shirt was very good, it didn’t happen often enough.

No. if the image that defined Robin Friday’s career came from his days with Cardiff City, then I believe that the nearly all of the football which defined it was played at Reading. We ended up with a shell of a footballer who still had it in him to occasionally influence games at Second Division level but we didn’t see enough of the player that I watched at Newport that night before all the off field madness took over completely – as far as I am concerned, Robin Friday should be recalled as he is here in a You Tube clip which contains pictures of him in action.

I mentioned remembering Friday with sadness as well and, of course, that really doesn’t need much explaining. Knowing what we do now, his death at the very early age of 38 in December 1990 had a sense of inevitability to it and so all we are left with now are memories and way too few images of him playing, be that photos or video clips. It could have been so much better if Friday didn’t have that self destructive streak, but would he have been the same player then – we are talking about someone who, seemingly, made other 70’s hellraisers like Worthington, Bowles and Hudson look like schoolchildren after all and, if he had only half fulfilled his potential, then I don’t think we would have ever seen him in a City shirt.

20 October 1975

Newport County 0 Reading 0

County; Macey; Screen, Aizelwood (Hancock), Elliott, Bell; Hooper, Godfrey, Jones, White; Parsons, Woods

Reading Death; Henderson, Barker, Youlden, Moreline; Whitham, Cumming, Dunphy, Stuckey; Hiron, Friday

HT 0-0

Att. 2,955

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Think of a word.

Posted on April 6, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

On 6 March Cardiff City faced Middlesbrough at the start of a thirty day period which they appeared ill equipped and unready to emerge from with their Play Off position intact. Our squad faced a month in which they would play ten times and this period would end with three matches in six days against the teams who occupied third, fourth and fifth positions at the start of our month of destiny. As for us, we were clinging on to the last Play Off spot a point ahead of seventh placed Sheffield United with a further four clubs (including Middlesbrough) within three points of them.

We did have at least one game in hand over all of our rivals for what appeared at the time to be the only Play Off spot still available, but the signs were that all of the off field rubbish and the disruption and fatigue caused by an injury, illness and suspension list which meant that our squad, which was too small really when everyone was fit and available, had sometimes got less than the full quota of substitutes available was catching up with the players.

City went into March in terrible form – in their previous match they had given away a pathetic penalty and a comic cuts goal in losing 3-0 at Deepdale to a Preston team that had played more than half of the game with ten men. In the match before that a very ordinary Barnsley side had scored twice in the first twelve minutes as they strolled to a win at the Cardiff City Stadium and our other four matches played in all competitions in faltering February had seen just the one win to go with a couple of very heavy away losses. After the Preston debacle, Peter Ridsdale had an argument with Dave Jones after our Chairman burst into the dressing room and started to read the riot act to the team – this altercation told us two things, first that our Chairman obviously does not subscribe to the maxim “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and second the sort of pressure being put on the players and manager to secure, at the very least, a Play Off spot because, without new investment or a top six finish, we are Donald Ducked.

Bearing all of this in mind, how do you think most people would have expected the Cardiff City team to fare fare over the thirty day period starting on March 6 and then consider further the following;

1. In the High Court on 10 March, Mrs Registrar Derrett (the lady who has the authority to wind the club up) said “On the face of it this company is not able to pay its debts as they fall due. The only basis, I’m being told, on which there is a prospect of this being resolved is through a third party investor, but there is no evidence before the court. However, I take note that it is only the second hearing. I will grant an adjournment for 56 days and that is for settlement in full.”

2. The Player’s wages were not paid on time at the end of March.

3. Apart from Crystal Palace, all of the sides we played had brought in players on loan which enabled them all to indulge in varying degrees of squad rotation, a luxury denied to us by the transfer embargo we are under.

4. If anything, the injury, illness and suspension absentees became even more marked over the thirty day period as, out of all the players who could realistically be called first team contenders, only David Marshall, Gavin Rae, Tony Capaldi, second choice keeper Peter Enckelman, Darcy Blake and Ross McCormack  were available for each match (and some of those were playing while carrying knocks or had to be substituted during games due to injury).

5. In the home match with Leicester on 30 March, the team finished up with ten players (one of whom was a hobbling passenger) and a back four consisting of an eighteen year old at right back, two more full backs at centreback (one of whom had probably never played there before in his career) and the division’s leading scorer at left back – there was not one outfield player on the pitch in the final twenty five minutes of that match who could match the aerial prowess of at least three of their opponents.

Surely all of the above represents a recipe for disaster over that vital thirty day period? Well, for a week or so it did appear that way – after an encouraging win over Middlesbrough to start things off, a feeble defeat at lowly Ipswich in one of the games in hand followed by a single goal loss to rivals Leicester meant that defeat at in form Coventry would see City lose their top six spot to the Sky Blues. Things were going according to the form book when Clinton Morrison put the home side ahead, but then City did something that they weren’t supposed to – win after conceding the first goal!

Okay, the win came courtesy of a controversial penalty in added time, but, even at the time, there was a feeling that a corner might have been turned and since then, on the pitch at least, things have just got better and better. Seven points from the next three matches (I still can’t figure out how we didn’t beat Sheffield United to make it nine), sent us into that trio of games with our Play Off rivals in good spirits but I don’t think anyone could really have believed that they would go so well. Firstly the return match with Leicester was won in heroic fashion, our South Wales rivals were beaten courtesy of an added time goal and then we finished off with a point at third placed Nottingham Forest.

Yesterday saw the last of those matches as we played out what was a fairly tame 0-0 draw in which we had the better of things in the first half but individual errors presented Forest with the better chances in the game and, by the end, we were hanging on pretty desperately. However, when you consider that Mark Hudson, Kevin McNaughton, Gabor Gyepes, Paul Quinn, Chris Burke and Peter Whittingham were all out injured, that others like Mark Kennedy, Anthony Gerrard, Kelvin Etuhu and Joe Ledley do not have the luxury of gradually becoming “match fit” after their recent injuries and that we were playing against  a team that was trying to set a club record for successive home wins, then yesterday’s result is another outstanding one.

So, the ten matches which I was pretty convinced would see our Play Off challenge falter and, probably, die, in fact ended with us having a record which reads;

P 10   W   6   D   2   L   2  f   13   a   9   Pts   20

During this period we overtook Leicester and Swansea and that one point gap over seventh place has grown to six.

Nothing has been achieved yet of course – people only need to cast their minds back twelve months to when we blew a better position than the one we find ourselves in now to realise that and, if things were to go wrong for us again, then people like me would be just as critical of our manager and players as we were last year. However, if last night’s, regrettable bust up between Gerrard and Marshall proved one thing, it is that we will not be able to accuse this group of players of not caring.

After using about a thousand of them to reach this point, I can now say that I entitled this piece “Think of a word” because I wanted to come up with one word to describe how I felt about our player’s efforts over the past thirty days, I used “Proud” to describe our tremendous win over Leicester, so “Delighted” will do this time around.

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