A new book uses previously untold stories about legendary Blues and England manager Sir Alf Ramsey’s time at Town, to argue that Ramsey was even more of a hero than had been previously recognised.
Lifelong Town supporter and historian Grant Bage (pictured above) has spent the last six years researching and writing The Unseen Sir Alf: A Different Kind of Hero Published a few days ago, the book offers new insights into the life of the only manager to see the Blues to the League Championship title in 1962, and England to the World Cup in 1966.
Among the new evidence uncovered is how Ramsey, early in his career as Town manager, saved the career of a young player who had pleaded guilty in court to an act of gross indecency with another man – a groundbreaking decision more than a decade before homosexuality was made legal in the UK.
Archived minutes of Town’s directors’ meetings from the mid-1950s revealed Ramsey lobbying to bring the player back into the fold in the face of scepticism from some on the board.
"The directors’ minutes show him arguing the case to bring the player back,” Bage told TWTD.
"We can’t say definitively why Alf put on that pressure. But what we do know is that he argued the case of somebody who had been persecuted and prosecuted, in a way that was incredibly brave. We also know that person became an absolutely outstanding player.
"I think such strength of character says so much about Alf Ramsey as a person, as a manager and as a leader. And it says a lot that’s very good about Ipswich as a club as well. It was equal opportunities in action.”
Ramsey himself had been the victim of prejudice of a different type from a young age. Growing up in Dagenham, Essex, he was given a nickname that today is a serious racial slur.
"Alf picked up the nickname ‘D*****’ in schoolboy football in Dagenham. It then lurks in the background for the rest of his life. England players and journalists knew about in the 1960s and 1970s, although there is no record of anyone using it to his face,” Bage continued.
"Alf did have a darker skin tone, particularly when he was younger, which several different sources testified to.
"But there were also rumours about Alf’s family being of GRT [Gypsy-Romany-Traveller] origin, rumours repeated by Bobby Moore in 1973, and Jimmy Greaves in 1993. The twin track of those rumours, and Alf’s racially labelling nickname, suggest to me that Alf constantly felt vulnerable, contributing to his almost obsessive secrecy when faced with journalists’ questions about his family.
"All of these aspects for me make Alf Ramsey even more of a hero: not just for the 20th century, in which he lived, but for modern England here in 2025.”
Nor is that the only storyline of diversity that Bage has uncovered in Alf Ramsey’s and Ipswich Town’s history. Founding board member Nat Shaw was a Jewish emigre, who during the 1920s changed his name by deed poll to Nathaniel Shaw from Naftaili Sznur.
Shaw had migrated as a child from what’s now Poland and grew up in London’s East End. In the 1920s he set up up clothes shops in East Anglia, and then in the 1930s built the greyhound stadium which used to stand in Yarmouth Road. In 1955 Shaw played a key role in bringing Ramsey to Town as manager, via links forged in greyhound racing.
"Nat Shaw’s parents were Jewish people from the pre-First World War Austro-Hungarian empire,” Bage added.
"Nat was also instrumental in the club turning professional in 1936. The Cobbolds took the credit, but the truth is messier. Without the greyhound stadium that Nat Shaw built, and plans floated for an ‘Ipswich United’ team to play professional football there, there’s no way that the then amateurs of Ipswich Town would have been under any more pressure to turn professional than they had been for the previous 20 years.”
As well as being a biography of Alf Ramsey, and an exploration of what Alf did for Ipswich Town and England, the book offers a fascinating social history of football.
The Daily Mirror’s chief reporter, Andy Lines, penned a two-page spread about The Unseen Sir Alf just before its launch, and recently filmed several reports with Grant around Alf’s Becontree birthplace, in Dagenham.
Lines has said of the book "This really is a masterpiece, explaining the complex nature of a complex, yet very simple, man. History will treat Ramsey differently now. England fans, the Football Association, Ramsey’s own family and all football supporters owe Bage a huge debt of gratitude.”
Bage added: "The storyline of the whole book, built up from new evidence exploring multiple threads within Alf Ramsey’s life, is that strength comes from diversity.”
The Unseen Sir Alf: A Different Kind of Hero is available to purchase online and has sold very briskly in its first week of publication, and will shortly reappear in retail outlets such as Waterstones and Planet Blue.
Grant will be speaking to TWTD further about researching and writing the book in a future story.