 Saturday, 28th Apr 2012 14:43 Sir Alf never had a great rapport with the press, did he? The way he looked at it was that he specialised in his job and you specialise in yours. He specialised in football and he didn't expect people outside football to specialise in football. He didn't like talking about football with people from outside the game. How's he going to have a genuine chat about football with someone who has never played the game? This was how he saw it. He always wanted to talk to people who understood the game. He also learnt that the press would misquote him and he didn't trust them. What was he like to work for? He was a players' man. He would do anything he could for the players and he was aware that he had got to help them. You didn't do silly things on the pitch. If we were having a practice match and anyone did anything silly he'd blow his whistle and he would correct it. He was a perfectionist really. The whole team cost £32,000. I remember Tottenham had paid nearly £100,000 for Greaves the day before we played them. Greaves was worth three times our whole team! He was very different from Scott Duncan his predecessor, wasn't he? Sir Alf was a tracksuit manager, the first one there was. Scott Duncan before him was a financial man with a reputation throughout the game for being very careful with his money. He knew everyone in football and kept the club's head above water. He was incredibly tight-fisted in fact! He was good, but he wasn't a coach like Alf was. Ted Phillips used to give Scott Duncan's team-talks before he did. Scott would come in and then say exactly what Ted had said because he said the same thing every time! Scott Duncan was never on the training pitch, he left it to Jimmy Forsyth and the reserve trainer Charlie Cowie. When Alf came in he'd put his tracksuit on and train us. We never used to train on the pitch until Alf came, we always used to train on the practice pitch. Alf came along, went straight on the main pitch and said, “this is where you play Saturday, this is where you train”. So we did. He practised throw-ins and corners. We'd never done that before and we'd never score from corners with Scott Duncan. That season we scored ten goals off corners! Another thing Alf did was get forwards out of the box when we were defending corners. They are the worst defenders you can hope for, so he got them out! What were Alf's team-talks like? I played with him for eight seasons and I still think about it now. I used to sit there in the dressing room with Baxter and Nelson and he never said a word to me before I ran out on a pitch ever. Never said a word, he just left me to get on and I think the same went for most of the rest of the players, except Phillips and Crawford who were the two that he spoke to most often before the game. The Villa game was the one where the championship was won. What did Sir Alf say to the team before that game? Anything out of the ordinary? He didn't say anything really, he just said that we knew what we had to do. We didn't play very well that day, we were so frightened of making mistakes. We had to win, there was no question about it. I had one of the worst moments of my life in that game. We had a freekick at the Churchman's end with about 15 minutes to go. Roy Stephenson was a beautiful crosser of the ball and he placed the ball to take it. I didn't go up for things like that, I usually stayed back, but for this one I decided to go up. I raced into the box as he kicked it and it was perfect. By the time I got to the six-yard box it was there and I thought I couldn't miss. I've headed this ball and it's hit the underside of the crossbar and it's come down and out. I was thinking ‘oh no!' but Crawford was there following it in and it was in the net. He scored again five minutes later [Crawford's second shown in the video above is a disallowed effort rather than that goal] and it was all over. In the end it was one of the best moments of my life. There was a bit of a wait for the score from Burnley to come in wasn't there? It was about a half an hour before we got off the pitch! The crowd came storming on and by the time we got to the dressing room a reporter was interviewing Sir Alf. He said to him ‘You've won the First Division, what do you think?' and Alf just thanked the players: “It was nothing to do with me, it's down to the players and trainer Jimmy Forsyth.” What was the atmosphere like that day? It was fabulous. It was the occasion more than anything and we were overwhelmed. As I say we didn't play well and it got to us, for the only time that season really. I remember Andy Nelson was marking Derek Dougan who was a very good centre-forward, a very difficult customer and he was worried about facing him. We all had our own worries and were afraid of making a mistake. But when Crawford scored that goal the transformation was amazing. We took them to pieces after that. And what about the celebrations? At Christmas Kenneth Wolstenholme said that he would give Ipswich 12 bottles of champagne if they won the First Division. So when the game had finished and we went into the dressing room we expected to find Kenneth Wolstenholme. But he wasn't there, but Cliff Michelmore was. He was standing there with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other. He said “I'm going to enjoy this! I've come instead of Kenneth Wolstenholme”. He poured us all a glass of champagne and we drank a toast to Ipswich Town Football Club in general and Alf Ramsey in particular. At the time Charlie Calver was the manager of the Station Hotel, the players used to go in there after matches sometimes. He'd put a pound on us to win the title at 500-1. And then there was Sir Alf's lap of honour in front of John Cobbold. None of us knew about that until years later. Alf had said that if we won the First Division that he'd do a lap of honour and John Cobbold joined him for it. I don't know how much drink they'd had by then! If it's not too rude a question, how much did you get for winning the league? When we won the First Division I was earning about £2,000 a year. For winning the league we got £1,500 to share between the whole team. Alf decided to pay us so much per match to make it as fair as possible. There were 42 matches and I played 41 of them and I got £120. The taxman took his share and I ended up with £89. Less than £100 for winning the league! The next season it was off to Europe for the first time. First up was a trip to Malta to play Floriana Valetta. When we played in Malta it was 90 degrees. It was a sand and cement pitch, there was no grass. We walked on to it and turned around and we could see our footprints! That was before we started so you can imagine what it would have been like by the end. Fortunately they were part-timers and we didn't have too much trouble. Then Town's first trip to the San Siro, this time to play AC Milan. I missed out in Milan because I had bronchitis. I travelled but I didn't play. It's the only time I've been to the game when people had umbrellas up! There were only 10,000 there and it was a farce. This was the first experience of Europe for us and we were as naïve as hell. All of the photographers sat behind the goal, about 20 of them only about ten yards away. They got a corner in the first five minutes and Roy Bailey was standing at the far post. The ball came across and they all flashed at the same time and he never saw a thing and it was 1-0! Crazy! They kicked and they bit and did everything, but only at home. Here we should have beaten them more comfortably, we won 2-1 after Carberry had put through his own goal for the first one, but lost on aggregate. We hit the woodwork, hit the goalkeeper and they cleared the ball off the line. They didn't travel too well Italian sides in those days. Why do you think the current side has failed to emulate last season's form this time around? If you look at last year, the players had been in the shadows for so long in the First Division, four hard gruelling seasons in the play-offs year after year. And then with largely the same players finally got there. This is what they have wanted, so they went at the next season with huge enthusiasm and confidence. But when you come to the end of a period like that and you've done remarkably well, all those seasons before have taken their toll and you start to switch off, even though you shouldn't. And that's the first mistake you make. We did the same the year after the championship. We finished in the bottom half, we were struggling but recovered in the last ten games. I think when you've achieved anything like that you should start to replenish the side and if Alf had stayed after that second season then he would have done. Unfortunately Jackie Milburn who came after him, didn't have a clue and we kept with the same players. Alf would have replaced at least six of us as a number of us were getting on. In that season there were a lot of us getting on in years. I was in my early 30s, Leadbetter was two years older than me, six of the players were 29. Many of us had been playing for about ten seasons and were established and in many ways that was why we won it really, because we kept that side together. But after then there should have been changes. As I say this season has been similar to our second season in the First Division. Jim Magilton is an outstanding player but I think he must have had an injury as he's lost a yard. And Marcus Stewart hasn't been the same. He was the one they relied on to get the goals and it is difficult to get a good goalscorer. We've missed him, but it is Magilton we've missed more. In addition last year Jamie Clapham was outstanding and Martijn Reuser was outstanding. They haven't been the players that they were and when four or five players aren't playing to their full potential then you are going to have difficulty.
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