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RALPH COATES

"Soccer has its moments" by Ralph Coates
First published in The Football Association Yearbook - 1970/71

Eleven words spoken by Alf Ramsey, the England manager, gave me my greatest ever football thrill. It was on the eve of last year's full international match against Northern Ireland at Wembley Stadium that Sir Alf quietly took me on one side in the lounge of the hotel at Hendon where his squad was staying and said: "You are playing tomorrow. Go out and play your natural game."

We won 3-1 and I can recall almost every kick. That was quite a night for me, the boy from Hetton in County Durham who a few years earlier had arrived at Burnley's Turf Moor ground as an unknown centre-forward. Although there were 100,000 people inside Wembley on my England debut night, I can say honestly that as soon as the first whistle went to signal the kick-off, I forgot completely about the crowd. I could have been running around a quiet strip of parkland or on the beach at Blackpool for all I knew about the onlookers.

My second biggest soccer moment came a few weeks later after Sandra, my wife, took a phone call at our house from Turf Moor requesting that I report without delay to see Mr Jimmy Adamson, the Burnley manager. When I got there he said I had been selected by Sir Alf to go to Mexico with the England World Cup party. You can imagine how elated I felt at that news. I was flying high. It is history now, of course, that I did not get into the final pool of 22, but just the same it was a wonderful experience and something I shall remember with pleasure for the rest of my life. For more than three weeks I shared a room with Allan Clarke, of Leeds United, with whom I first became friendly some years earlier when Sir Alf picked us both for Under-23 duty. That included visits to Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.

In the sunshine of Mexico, Allan and I spent many hours talking about football, about things at home, and life in general, and naturally we got to know each other pretty well. Now when we play Leeds he usually comes across to me on the field and says with a smile: "Hey, Ralph, how's the altitude affecting you this afternoon?"

Being with a World Cup party in a faraway place is not unlike being in a class at school; you get to know everyone, but some better than others. When I first went into an England squad I felt rather overawed and didn't say very much. These days I still don't say much, but it does not worry me to go on the field alongside famous names such as Bobby Charlton and Alan Ball, the two players in English football whom I most admire. My favourite player of all, though, is Eusebio.

Among defenders, I have to pick out Paul Reaney, and I don't say that because he is another Leeds man with whom I have shared a room on a representative match trip. Then there is Tony Dunne of Manchester United, such a quick and talented full-back. The first time I played against Tony was at Old Trafford and I thought I was in form at that time. But he had a few shocks for me that day. He marked me so well that in the end I had to admit that I hadn't got an answer to him.

Another good defender with whom I have had some great tussles is Chelsea's Ron Harris. Ron was kind enough recently to call me "The forward I least like playing against". All I can say is thank you very much for the compliment, Ron, and you're not exactly an easy opponent to face, yourself! It is strange how in football players sometimes start off in one position, and then after joining a professional club, find themselves being brought along in a different role altogether. When I arrived at Burnley, as I have said, I was a centre-forward they had spotted playing for Hetton Juniours. I wore the number nine shirt in Burnley's team in the Football Association Youth Cup. Then later on I made a debut in the First Division at inside-right against Sheffield United. Around that period Burnley were plagued by injuries to wingers and so they put me in the team at outside-left for a spell.

The first time I played in midfield was by sheer accident because we were playing Grimsby in a League Cup replay in September, 1968, and Arthur Bellamy got injured. I was switched to the middle line and found that it was quite good being a schemer for a change! The best description I can think of for my most useful position is a 'midfield-based right winger'. In midfield I am definitely more involved in the game and can dictate the course of play to some extent, whereas if I am stuck on the wing all the time, I have to rely on other players to get the ball. I use the word 'dictate' because, although Martin Dobson is captain at Burnley, I am given more or less a free hand to switch myself around according to how the game is progressing.

Up to that Grimsby match, which we won 6-0 incidentally, I had always thought of myself as a striker but I had often kidded the other Burnley players that I was 'the best schemer on the staff'. One thing I cannot guarantee is playing my best in every game, but I can, and I do, promise 90 minutes of 100 per cent effort by keeping myself as near to the peak of fitness as is humanly possible. I think that most people would say that my biggest asset is my burst of speed. I certainly like to use this as much as I can to break from a deepish position down the right flank and then lay the ball across the goal for someone like Paul Fletcher or Martin Dobson, both of whom are very good at heading the ball.

Paul came to Burnley from Bolton and after playing alongside him for only a couple of games I realised what a good prospect he is. I reckon that over the next few seasons he will score a lot of goals in the First Division and will become a famous player. Even in midfield I have to rely on those around me to give a pass, for football, you must always remember, is a team game. In our side there is none better at passing the ball than Eric Probert, who is very young to be playing regularly in Division One, but is remarkably mature in temperament and build. Eric is a player who can time a pass to perfection and there have been matches when it has been a joy to play next to him. Another player who uses the ball well is John Angus, the 'veteran' of our team and a man who has lined up behind me on the right-hand side of our eleven so many times over the seasons.

I am often asked by people what is it like with a small town First Division club. My answer is that Burnley are the club that brought me into football and a good life, and without their help in so many different ways I would not be where I am now. Although I was born in the North-East corner of England, I have great affection for Burnley and by that I mean the town, its people and the football club. Footballers usually have particular grounds on which they like playing and others they dislike. Apart from Turf Moor, where the supporters always shout me on, I like Filbert Street, Leicester the best. I always seem to have a fair match there and Burnley can point to some good results in front of a crowd that I have always found very fair-minded.

One ground I am not nearly so keen to play on again is the huge, bowl-like San Paulo Stadium in Naples, Southern Italy, where Burnley were concerned in a nightmarish riot after a Fairs Cup match. I don't mind admitting to you that I was scared stiff with some of the things that were happning. I have never moved quicker than when the final whistle brought it all to an end, and it was a relief to get on the plane at Naples Airport after the team bus had been escorted away from the ground through angry Naples fans by seven military vehicles. I think our 3-0 aggregate win had something to do with the fury of the Naples team and the Italian fans!

Reproduced by Jez Wilson, September 1998

Ralph Coates: Interviews with Hunter Davies

Ralph Coates went straight home from the first day's training to the flat which the club had provided for him till he found a house of his own. He and his wife Sandra, along with their two-year old daughter Lisa, had arrived in London only four days previously, on the Monday. So far, they'd disliked everything about London.

It was an anonymous upstairs flat in Green Lanes, Palmers Green, one of the busiest thoroughfares in North London. The traffic noise, night and day, was inescapable. Each evening, so far, they'd sat alone, feeling lost and abandoned, with nothing to do and nobody to speak to. They couldn't go out and leave the baby alone and they didn't know how to get a babysitter. There was no phone, no radio and no television. Spurs were refusing to give his address to any friends from Burnley who were ringing up, trying to find where they were. Spurs never gives home addresses. He was beginning to feel he didn't exist.

In Burnley, he'd been the idol of the town. They mobbed him in the streets and when it was announced he was going, they were crying on his doorstep. At Burnley, they put his name on the programme even when he'd been injured all week. They'd push him on, strapped up and full of cortisone. They feared half the crowd wouldn't turn up if Ralph Coates wasn't playing.

In Burnley, he'd had a secluded luxury bungalow, with fields all around. On their first night in London they'd had to sleep under raincoats. They'd been told the flat would have everything they needed, but none of the beds had blankets. It was the lack of telephone which was the worst of all. They couldn't even ring estate agents to start looking for houses, not that they had any idea which area of London they wanted to live in. They'd been told the terrible prices they would have to pay for a house and were valiantly prepared to go up to £15,000, though they knew that would be three times the price of a comparable house in Burnley. They'd had trouble selling their Burnley house, with that part of Lancashire being a depressed area, and had to bring the price down, just to get shot of it.

"Monday was terrible," said Ralph. "We'd driven all the way down from Burnley and we couldn't even get in because there was no key. We had to wait outside until somebody came. Then when we saw the bare flat with no blankets or phone or nothing, Sandra said I don't like it, I want to go home. I thought hell, what a start. I said come on lass, we'll give it a try for a few days. But I said if she still didn't like it, I'd go and see Bill and tell him we were going back home. If he wouldn't let me out of my contract, then I'd leave football, that's all there would be to it. If ever Sandra was unhappy with me being a footballer, I'd pack it in at once. I don't know what I'd do. I'd be a dustman, anything."

In repose, Coates normally looks worried. He's a bit like Bobby Charlton, with the same fair hair, receding on top, and the same rather intense furrowed brows. Sandra is small, with long dark hair, pretty and lively. "She's the brains," he says. "I wouldn't have done nearly as much without her."

Unlike most footballers' wives, she has far greater educational qualifications than her husband - she did 'O' and 'A' levels and then went to college in Liverpool for three years to become a state registered occupational therapist. Unlike many footballers' wives, she encourages him to go on overseas tours, if she thinks it will help his career. Three times she pushed him abroad with the England party as substitute when each time he wanted to cry off and get his club to pretend he was injured, as he was so fed up of travelling with the team and never playing, convinced he was never going to make it. In the end, she was proved right. He'd recently become a full member of the squad.

Sandra is a football fan, which again is rare for a footballer's wife. She followed Burnley from the age of twelve. She even came down to London with her father when they played in the Cup Final in 1962, being beaten by Spurs, 3-1. "Spurs have never been my favourite team, until now."

I said that a few of the players had been saying that day that they thought Ralph looked a bit tired. Sandra replied that he'd been ill. He'd caught a mysterious allergy complaint and had rung Mr.Nicholson at one point to say he would miss the pre-season training completely. Ten days before, apparently, at home in Burnley, he'd wakened in the middle of the night covered in giant lumps. The doctor couldn't diagnose it. Most friends thought that it could be psychological, with worrying about coming to Spurs. Whatever the cause, it had led to its own worries and he'd been on sleeping pills all the previous week. But it had now gone, just as suddenly, without the cause being discovered.

Coates is twenty-five, though like all footballers, he looks older. He was born in Hetton-le-Hole, a mining village in County Durham. His father, who died when Ralph was eleven, was a coal miner. It was expected that Ralph would go down the pit, though his ambition was always to be a footballer. At fifteen, he joined Burnley straight from school. According to all the football writers, he'd been expected to leave Burnley for the last three years. It seemed obvious that an England player wouldn't stay in a small town with a small club, struggling every year to stay in the First Division. Burnley's average gate last season was 16,000, the smallest in the First Division - less than half of that of Spurs.

"When it was obvious that we were going to finish bottom, I knew I would have to leave. I decided that if the club refused to transfer me, at the end of the season I would have to ask. I always expected I'd go to Manchester or Liverpool or Leeds. Those are the places I fancied. I wanted to stay in the North. Both of us preferred the North.

"On the last Wednesday of the season, Jimmy Adamson, the manager, rang me at home and asked where I was training. Burnley's season was over, but I was training for England's home international in the local park. He said why didn't I come up to the Turf, Burnley's ground, to train. He said we'll put you a bath on. I said I was OK. But he was insistent that I came to the ground, so I said OK then, I'd come.

"After lunch, I didn't feel like going into town. I never thought for one minute they'd had a transfer offer. The local papers were full of denials that Burnley were thinking of selling me. There had been so many letters that the club had had to say it officially.

"I went shopping and then came home and was just about to get going on the lawns when I heard this voice in a sort of hoarse whisper over the garden wall. It was Dave, our chief scout. He said, "Quick, into the house, I can't talk outside." He said the papers had spies everywhere. Even in the house, he said he couldn't say much, just that Tottenham had made a bid. There was to be a secret meeting somewhere on the M6. I hadn't to tell anyone. I picked up the phone to ring Sandra and he grabbed it from me saying you never knew who was listening. So I left a message for Sandra to come home, with no explanations. Then Dave made a phone call to his wife, telling her to pass on a message: "I've made contact. I'll be three quarters of an hour late for the rendezvous." I thought the whole thing was ridiculous and said so, but he said it had to be dead secret. I needn't laugh."

"I was sure Ralph had had an accident," said Sandra. "Or perhaps it was Lisa. I rushed home and got changed out of my uniform and Dave put both of us in his car. At least it wasn't his car. To cover his tracks, because he was convinced the Press were after him, he'd driven his own car into one entrance of a garage and driven a new one, on a test drive, out the other end. It was like a James Bond film." The M6 rendezvous was at the Post Horn, a public house near Keele, a place where the Burnley Football Club, and many others, often stop for lunch on the way to and from away matches.

"I knew the manager very well and he recognised me as soon as I stepped in, which rather spoiled all their secrecy. It was very crowded. We couldn't see the Spurs chairman or Bill Nicholson. When they did arrive, they said it would all have to be done outside, as there were too many people around.

"Jimmy took me aside first of all and put his arm round me and said he didn't want me to leave but he had no option. Then I went into the back seat of Bill Nicholson's car and he explained to me the terms he was offering. I didn't know what transfer fee they were paying for me, but he said my 5 per cent signing-on fee would be £9,500. He hoped I wouldn't waste it. I worked it out later that the transfer fee was £190,000. We chatted for about half an hour, then I signed the forms, there and then."

If Spurs hadn't come when they did, he would have asked for a transfer, and therefore lost his £9,500, according to the rules of football. "When I first played for the England Under-23 team, Bill Nicholson was the team manager. I told Sandra at the time what a great bloke he was. Not too strict, but everyone toed the line. I like that. It was a major factor in agreeing to come here, because of Bill."

It's hard to see in some ways why Burnley were quite so fanatical about keeping it secret. It was to Spurs advantage, of course, to keep it quiet, so that no other club could hear what was happening and make a higher offer. There's no doubt there could have been an auction, with the price escalating up to perhaps a quarter of a million. But apparently Burnley had made a promise years ago that Spurs would have first offer. That was why they wanted it done quickly and quietly. Arsenal would certainly have made a high offer, but its thought that the Burnley directors hadn't got on with Arsenal, and were determined not to let their prized possession go there. Relations between Spurs and Burnley have always been good.

Looking back at Burnley, there were a lot of things he obviously enjoyed. "When I ran out and the crowd shouted my name, I felt great. It didn't matter there were only twelve thousand. It was fabulous. I felt I couldn't do a thing wrong with them on my side. People would stop you in the street to shake your hand. "Can you do it for us, Ralph? Can you beat this London lot?" And I'd say of course. We'll hammer them. It was a great feeling, though you knew the London lot had twice as many points as we were ever likely to get."

But he suffered a lot. The worry and responsibility began to keep him awake at night till at length he was on sleeping pills. "The manager himself even asked me what I thought, which front runners I'd pick. But it was always the same sort of decision, an experienced player or a young lad. I never game him any answers. I honestly didn't know. It wasn't my job. Jimmy was the manager, but I didn't envy him the task.

"I played with Jimmy when I first went there as a youngster. I've never seen such a cool player on the pitch. When he became coach he was till very cool. But as manager, I've never seen anyone change so much. He seemed to be on tenterhooks all the time. He went grey in one year. Harry Potts, the previous manager, had been just the same. He used to wash his face before a match because the sweat was so bad. He'd shake all over, bury his head in his hands and be purple in the face by the end of the match. But when Harry became general manager, he was a changed man. It was good morning lads, how's the wife. None of this slamming the door and not talking when things are going bad. I'd hate to be a manager. If you're with a team like Burnley, the pressures are unbearable.

"Ralph is very loyal," said Sandra. "He felt the closeness and the loyalty of Burnley very much, but I always told him he'd have to move in the end. What's loyalty when you get to the end of your days? Ralph's not the sort of player they'll give an easy coaching job to, not when he can be sold for a fee. I'm ambitious for Ralph's sake. I know I'll never achieve anything myself, but I might achieve it through Ralph. It's nice for him to be somebody instead of anybody.

"Ralph does want to be a success, but unlike me, he can't bear to be an unsuccess. He'll give up very quickly if he can't do it right away, like mending something in the house. He hates it when he can't do it at once. He took up cine films, but was furious when he couldn't manage the splicing. He's always taking up things and dropping them. He wasn't brilliant first time at golf, so he dropped it at once, having bought all the gear.

"He's terrible on Saturdays. He hates it when people come to the house or anything happens to spoil his routine. He's like a prima donna. If there's any noise or disturbance he says, that's it, now you've spoiled everything, and I have to calm him down very gently.

"The psychology of being a footballer is very difficult. Ralph really is completely confident in his football ability. He has to be, otherwise he'd never go out there. Even at Burnley, when they were a goal down, he'd try even harder, convinced that they could still do it. But the drawback about being a footballer is that logically, you can do nothing else. Because you have to be convinced you are going to make it, you never have any interest in anything else. You end up being unable to do anything else. You know you're going to be a footballer, so everything else is pointless.

Ralph finds it hard to express what he feels. He appears trapped by himself in some ways, and by his own abilities. Its sad to consider that to the outside world last season he'd been apparently one of football's success stories, picked for England, a super-fit, highly-paid athlete of only twenty-five - and yet unable to sleep and reduced to sleeping pills because of worrying.

"There is never any relief when the team is doing badly. They don't know what its like at Spurs. But I don't regret having spent all those years at Burnley. If I was fifteen, I'd do the same again. But I know at fifteen I enjoyed my football much more than I have done these last seven years."

He was unwilling to predict his future at Spurs or what the coming season might bring. Just the thought of being with a team bred on success rather than failure was enough to look forward to.

"They seem a good set of lads. Very friendly, even the ones I was a bit worried about, the ones I might replace - Gilly, Jimmy Pearce and Jimmy Neighbour. They all came up and said hello and hoped I'd get on well, which was nice. I know the crowd will give me some stick if I don't do well, but I'll settle down. Chivers and Peters were both saying this morning that they had a hard time when they arrived. They said I might face the same. It doesn't worry me. It'll be my problem, no-one else's. It'll either be because I'm not training right or I'm not living right. I'll find out the cause and put it right on my own."

Last season, Spurs had finished third in the league. To Bill Nicholson, that was failure. At Burnley, it would have meant dancing in the streets. Spurs HAD to be top. Otherwise bodies would topple and the cheque book would come out. Ralph smiled and said it didn't worry him. He would keep his place as long as people didn't expect miracles.

"On the road walk this afternoon, they were all saying that everyone was convinced this was going to be Spurs' season, that we'd do great and win something really big. I've heard it myself from lots of people since I arrived in London. The Press are saying it. We're being tipped by everybody. As they were all talking about it, Alan Mullery turned to me and said "Yes, and it's all up to you, Ralph." I know it was a joke. I think it was. But it's a bit worrying, if it's me everyone is depending on for the season ahead."

From "The Glory Game" by Hunter Davies, Chapter 2