Toast is back with all the latest news and items to last you through the coming week. This is the original Toast just in case you have seen others trying to mimic YOUR column. This week has seen a well known local paper ‘borrow’ one of the items and you also may have noticed that Sky Sports ‘Goals on Sunday’ now uses a toaster as its symbol! So is this flattery we ask but we will not change and try our best to give you, the Vital Pompey members, what you want.
JD’s record
Watching England play Kazakhstan as type final draft and I can confirm that Jermain Defoe is the first Pompey player to score a competitive goal for England. The first of many we hope and hopefully Peter Crouch will not be far behind. The game for calling out for their cohesion until Rooney got himself going.
In 1954 in Basle, Jimmy Dickinson became the only other Pompey player to score in an England competitive game – unfortunately it was an own goal during extra time in a 4-4 draw with Belgium.
Birthdays
This week we celebrate the birthdays of a record signing, plenty of Money and a player who found singing a better occupation.
12th October Allan Brown is 82 Allan was one of George Smith’s first signings after taking the manager’s chair vacated by Freddie Cox. Veteran Allan was a key member of the Third Division championship team of 1961/62. Scottish International inside forward Allan scored eight goals in 69 appearances before leaving in 1963 to become player/manager at Wigan Athletic.
Paul Went is 59. The biggest of John Deacon’s signings, Paul came from Fulham for £154,000 in 1973 and became Pompey’s record signing. The muscular centre back became an instant hit with the fans with partner Malcolm Manley who came from Leicester City. It was the ideal combination of the big man and the defensive footballer. They only played fifteen times together and Pompey immediately looked a better side.
Manley picked up what proved to be a career ending injury at Notts County and it was over. What looked to be the base upon which Pompey could build a promotion team had gone. Paul stayed for a couple of seasons but had no regular partner and after 92 games and 5 goals moved on to Cardiff City. Pompey had to wait until Alan Ball put Noel Blake and Billy Gilbert in 1984 before they had that base to build on and eventually they made Division One.
Jim McCaffrey is 57. Winger who came from Huddersfield in the bad days of 1977. Jim played 11 games of which Pompey managed to win only one! Relegation followed and Jim drifted off to Northampton.
Kevin Bartlett is 46. Trainee Kevin made the Pompey first team in 1981 playing 3 times – two of them a substitute – before signing for Fareham Town. But Bartlett`s career was far from over as he developed late and played over two hundred league games for Cardiff, West Brom and Notts County and amassed nearly seventy goals.
13th October Richard Money will be 53. Richard in his short stay at Fratton attended a sportsman’s dinner organised by me. He impressed the audience with his knowledge of the game when he fielded questions mostly on his spell at Liverpool. We spoke afterwards about a career in the game after retirement and he certainly has been successful whether as a manager at Scunthorpe or Walsall or in his preferred role as a youth team coach/academy director his current job at Newcastle United. Coincidentally he had previously managed Newcastle United Jets in Australia.
Richard’s short Pompey career spanned 3 seasons but beset by injuries he managed only seventeen starts before returning to Scunthorpe to finish his playing career where it had started.
Carl Robinson 32 Perpetual loanee Carl played just sixteen times for Pompey but in that spell went on loan to five different clubs. He eventually settled at Sunderland where he helped them win promotion to the Premier League.
Markus Hekkinen 30 Much travelled centre back was born in Sweden but has played 37 times for Finland. Markus after spells in Finland was a popular played at both Aberdeen and Luton Town and is now trying the Austrian air at Rapid Vienna. On that tour he popped in to Fratton Park and made two loan appearances.
Matt Stone 42. Played for Pompey schoolboys u16s 1981-82. A top goal scorer at school & Sunday league level in the Portsmouth area. His 6ft 1″ leggy build allowed Matt to out sprint the defenders. Famously played against John Beresford when Portsmouth schools played Sheffield. Was a contemporary of Kevin ‘Rooster’ Russell & Paul Moody. Matt never appeared for Pompey and probably has no place here at all but insisted in his inclusion as he is currently top of the members league.
Happy Birthday Matt!
15th October Steve Wigley 47. Another who perhaps has excelled more off the pitch than on it. Signed by Alan Ball, Wigley a right winger, was a mixture of good and bad in his four seasons at Fratton playing 120 games and scoring 12 goals. However after retiring he started managing at Aldershot and his career has seen him move around the country and with him finally being appointed by the FA to look after the development of 17-21 year olds. He is now on the staff at Gary Megson’s Bolton.
Andrew Cole 37. The legendary goal scorer spent a short spell at Pompey moaning about life and scored three goals in eighteen games before leaving. He is now playing with his hometown club Nottingham Forest.
16th October Jimmy Allen. This will be the 99th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Jimmy. Chix wrote a great article on Allen and you can read it here.
David Unsworth 35. England International full back David made eighteen appearances for the Blues in 2004/05 scoring two penalties including one in the victory over Manchester United. He was then off on his whistle stop tour of English clubs.
17th October Cliff Portwood 71. Salford born Inside Forward signed from Grimsby Town in 1964. Played 99 times for Pompey and scored 28 goals. Cliff, who scored on his debut at Leyton Orient, was a regular for two seasons but became more peripheral and tended to wander in and out of George Smith’s side. He was eventually replaced by Ray Pointer and moved to South Africa to play for Durban United
New Vital Pompey member Dedmans tells us right on cue ‘Cliff was married to my sister for 23 years and they had 3 children. He left Pompey to join Durban and there won a singing competition with a prize of a trip to Australia. There he had a successful singing career in Melbourne on T.V. channel 9 making a couple of albums. He has long since returned and until recently used to go to Florida for half of the year and sing in complexs. In the summer here, working at the bar in a golf club near Alice Holt. I have not seen him for a couple of years. I must say that he was a pretty skilful footballer when I watched him. I will never forget an evening game in the hard frost against Charlton when he twisted and turned and had defenders falling over. But maybe then I was biased! Is he back in England?’ Well Dedmans we believe he may be living in the Alton area as a Cliff Portwood has a handicap as a veteran at a local golf club.
John who we are just about to hear from tells me he was in Adelaide in 1974 and was shocked to see Cliff was appearing in a local club. He even had a recording contract; so who owns his version of ‘Up there oh England’ recorded in 1982 with members of 1966 world cup winner squad?
My first game
As promised last week we go way, way back for this week’s first game feature. Season ticket holder John tells the Toast team about how he celebrated Christmas 1947!! That was the year Harry Redknapp was born and Pompey wore red socks for the first time.
John lived in Stamshaw at the time and walked with his father to Fratton Park. They stood in the old wooden Fratton End stand in a crowd of 28,000 and watched Pompey lose 3-1 to Manchester United Duggie Reid scoring the Pompey goal. John remembers little of the game but can recite the United team straight off the cuff – Jack Rowley, Stan Pearson, Johnny Carey?.
What John did not know was that Pompey would not lose another home game for nearly two years and only two in the next fifty eight. Pompey were struggling at the time and lying 18th in the table but the run took them to eight at the season end. The next season they went unbeaten at home and won their first championship and John you were there at the start of that run.
John also confirmed that the Boilermaker’s Hump is indeed the area under the north-east floodlight tower and is named after the group of dockyard workers who frequented that area.
Finally Competition Time
The answer to last week’s question as to how did Linvoy Primus mark his debut is that he scored an own goal. It happened at Sheffield United in August 2000 when he turned in a right wing cross in the last ten minutes. We all wondered – where did we find this ?.? Then what did we know?
The winner was UKTony who PM’ed the answer and our old friend PFCGino who sent his answer from Zagreb.
This week we ask what team did Pompey beat on their way to winning the FA Cup in both 1939 and 2008?
Next week we get ready for the return to Europe and find out why the Stokies sing Why Delilah?
PUP
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