Sir Alf

The English League XI, which won 5-1, was captained by none other than Stanley Matthews, the ascetic, dazzling Blackpool winger, who, since 1932, had been captivating spectators with his formidable powers of dribbling, swerving and acceleration. A cold, emotionally taut man, whose rigorous training regime included a weekly fast on Mondays, he was not universally loved by his professionals; many of them felt that his trickery on the wing did more to please the crowds than win games for his side. In an amazingly harsh passage about his team-mate, England captain Billy Wright wrote in 1953 that Matthews ‘made most of us foam at the mouth because he held up the line and allowed opposing defenders to cover up’. He went on to attack Matthews’ brand of ‘slow-motion football’, adding that Matthews, ‘although giving joy to thousands of fans, was sometimes nothing but a pain in the neck to colleagues who waited in vain for the pass that never came.’ Coming from someone who failed dismally as a soccer manager because he was ‘too nice’, those words of Wright’s could hardly be more brutal.

Alf, however, developed a good understanding with Matthews during the English League game. And he soon had the chance to play alongside Matthews again, when in December 1948 he was called up to the full England side, after the long-serving Arsenal right-back Laurie Scott suffered a knee injury. The match took place at Highbury on 2 December and resulted in an easy 6-0 win for England over Switzerland. Alf refused to be overawed on his debut. During the match Alf made a pass to Matthews and then, to the astonishment and amusement of the rest of the English League team, shouted ‘Hold it, Stanley!’ at the great man, who had never been used to taking orders from anyone, least of all a young defender with only one full season behind him. The words from Alf were instinctive, lacking in any self-consciousness and were born of years of practice with the Saints’ right-winger Eric Day. Yet they smacked of youthful arrogance, something compounded when Alf wrote in Talking Football: ‘To my surprise, Stanley Matthews played football as I believed it should be played between winger and full-back. Stanley took up position perfectly to take my clearances.’ To his detractors, that remark was a symbol of Ramsey’s arrogance. ‘It was rather like a new racing driver out for a spin with Jackie Stewart telling him to change gear at the next bend,’ claimed Max Marquis, always on the lookout for anything to drag down Alf. But to Ramsey himself, he was just being realistic; he had found another player who preferred thoughtful, constructive defence rather than the meaty hump into the crowd. ‘I was in a better position than Stanley to see the situation so naturally I advised him,’ Alf explained to England’s captain Billy Wright. Indeed, Matthews soon became an admirer of Ramsey. In an article in 1950, he praised the way Alf relied ‘on positional play, interception and brainwork to beat his winger. I know which type I would rather face. The man who rushes the tackles is easier to slip than the calculating opponent who forces you to make mistakes.’

What was so impressive about Alf on his debut was his calmness, even under severe pressure. ‘Ramsey looked as suave and cool as a city businessman – particularly when he headed from under the bar in the second minute,’ thought the Daily Mail. It was a view shared by Alf’s captain Billy Wright:

I must admit I found it a little disconcerting at first to have a full-back behind me who was always as cool as an ice-soda. Ramsey’s expressed aim was to play constructive football: I soon learned that nothing could disturb this footballer with the perfect balance and poise, no situation, however desperate, could force him into abandoning his immaculate style.

But then, just as Ramsey’s fortunes appeared to be taking off, disaster struck. On 15 January 1949, Southampton visited Home Park to play a friendly against Plymouth, both teams having been knocked out of the FA Cup. ‘One minute before half-time, I slipped on the damp turf when going into a tackle with Paddy Blatchford, the Plymouth Argyle outside left. A terrible searing pain went through my left-knee…the most agonizing I have ever experienced,’ wrote Alf. In fact, as he was carried from the field, Ramsey feared that his professional career was over. Fortunately, an X-ray showed that he only had badly strained ligaments and should be able to play again before the end of the season.

Whether he would return to the Southampton side was another matter. For Alf’s position was immediately filled to great effect by Bill Ellerington, who had waited patiently in the reserves after recovering from his bout of pneumonia, playing just 12 League games in the previous two years. Just as Alf had done in January 1947, so Bill now seized his chance, producing such solid performances at the back that he was to win two England caps before the end of the season. But Ellerington’s success spelt problems for Ramsey, particularly because Southampton were pressing hard for promotion. In March 1949, while Alf was still limping badly, manager Bill Dodgin came up to him at the Dell and warned him that he was ‘going to find it very hard’ to regain his place in the first team. Alf was appalled at this comment, regarding it as a calculated insult. The sensitive side of his nature led him to brood obsessively about it, as he sunk into a period of mental anguish. ‘The world did indeed appear a dark and unfriendly place. For one fleeting moment I seriously contemplated quitting football,’ said Ramsey later.

He certainly wanted to quit Southampton, now that Bill Ellerington appeared to be the favoured son. More ambitious than ever, Alf – unlike Bill – was not content to wait months in the reserves. Despairing of his future at the Dell, Alf wrote to the club’s chairman J.R. Jukes requesting a transfer. Initially Jukes tried to dissuade Alf, but to no avail. As Jukes reported to a special board meeting on 8 March, ‘Ramsey was adamant in his desire to be transferred to some other club, his stated reason being that he felt he was lowering his chances of becoming an international player by being played in the reserve side’. The entire board then called Ramsey into the meeting and told him that ‘it would be far more to his advantage and future reputation if he remained at the club and went up with them, as we all hoped would be the case, into the First Division’. But Ramsey would not budge and told the directors that he was ‘willing to go anywhere’.

Ramsey’s opinion of Bill Dodgin had plummeted during the row. He felt that the Southampton boss should have shown ‘more understanding of my personal feelings’. Even if Ramsey appeared excessively touchy, his criticism of Dodgin was mirrored by a few of his colleagues at the Dell. Known to some as ‘Daddy’, Dodgin was a former lumbering centre-half who spent four years at the Dell as coach and manager, but, despite a strong team, failed to win promotion. He was generally liked by the players, especially for his decency and sense of humour, but some felt he lacked sufficient authority, especially on the tactical side. ‘Technically, he was not a good manager,’ says Eric Day. ‘We did not have much in the way of team talks. I never found him good on motivating. I doubt if Alf ever learnt much from Bill. If anything, it would have been the other way round.’ Ted Ballard largely agrees:

Bill Dodgin was a decent bloke, but he wasn’t perfect. His weak point was his knowledge of the game. He could not really put his views across in those vital moments, like the ten minutes before half-time. I think he suffered a bit from lack of confidence. Players like Bill Rochford were stronger than he was.

But Alf’s view that Dodgin had done him a cruel injustice was not shared in the Southampton dressing-room, where there was strong admiration for Bill Ellerington. Another of the Saints’ full-backs Albie Roles, who appeared briefly in the 1948-49 season, was inclined to think that Bill was the better player in comparison to Alf: ‘He tackled harder. He was more direct, more decisive with his tackling. And he could hit the ball right up along the ground. He didn’t have to lob it. Alf Ramsey may have been the better positional player, but Bill was a good footballer.’ Joe Mallet had this analysis:

Bill Ellerington had things that Alf didn’t have and vice-versa. Bill used to clear his lines whereas Alf used to try and play the ball out of danger – which sometimes wasn’t the right thing to do. Bill’s all-round defensive game was better than Alf’s. Alf Ramsey was always beaten by speed and by players who took the ball up to him – tricky players, quick players. But he was a brilliant user of the ball. That’s how he got his name, on the usage of the ball: good passing, very good passing; but sometimes he used to take chances with short ones, in the danger area around the goal.

In fact, Mallet believed that Alf’s incautious approach, allied to his lack of pace, which was a central reason why Dodgin did not fight to keep him. Just a week before Ramsey had incurred his knee injury at Plymouth, Southampton had travelled to Hillsborough for an FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday. As the Saints came under fire in the first half, they reverted to using the offside trap. But according to Mallet, Ramsey wrecked this tactic through his over-reliance on captain Bill Rochford. Over the years, said Mallett, Ramsey had grown so used to the effectiveness of Rochford’s sense of timing, moving forward on the left flank at just the right moment to catch any attack offside, that Alf was inclined to ‘take liberties’. Even when Alf was beaten on his own right flank, he had got into the habit of shouting ‘offside’, because he presumed Rochford would have moved into an advanced position to thwart the opposition. In this particular match at Hillsborough, according to Mallet:

Sheffield Wednesday had an outside left who was a quick small player. Alf went up, ‘Offside!’ They broke away. They scored. And at half-time in the dressing-room there was a row – between Alf and Bill Rochford, who said, ‘You’ve to keep playing the man. You’ve got to run. Even if you think it’s offside, you’ve still got to go with him.’ So this was the reason that Alf Ramsey took umbrage and left the club.

Alf always took offence easily, as his later tetchy relationship with the press testifies, and there can be little doubt that the row at Hillsborough contributed to his desire to go. Several clubs, amongst them Burnley, Luton and Liverpool, expressed an initial interest in buying him but there was now the additional pressure of the looming transfer deadline for the season, which fell on 16 March, just eight days after the board had accepted Ramsey’s demand for a move. By the morning of the 16th, however, only Sheffield Wednesday had come up with a definite offer. Ramsey, as a southerner, did not want to move north, fearing that he ‘might never settle down in the provinces’. Moreover, Wednesday, despite a richer pedigree, were less successful in the 1948-49 season than Southampton, finishing five places lower in the second division table. What Alf did not know was that, by the late afternoon, Tottenham Hotspur had suddenly also come forward with an offer. At half past four, he was sitting in his digs, contemplating his failure to get away from the Dell, when the trainer Sam Warhurst turned up in his car and immediately rushed Alf back to the ground, where he was brought into Bill Dodgin’s office and asked if he wanted to become a Spurs player. Alf instantly wanted to accept.

Sadly for him, it was now too late to beat the transfer deadline. The potential deal fell through. Alf was stuck at the Dell for the remainder of the season, a disastrous period in which the Saints gained only four out of a possible fourteen points and missed out on promotion behind Fulham and West Brom. But once the season was over, the Spurs offer was revived, partly as a result of personnel changes at White Hart Lane. At the beginning of May, Joe Hume, the Spurs manager who had presided over the abortive deal, was sacked by the board on the rather unconvincing grounds of ill-health. His replacement was not some big managerial star from another top-rank club. Instead, the Spurs board chose Arthur Rowe, a former Tottenham player who was then manager of lowly, non-League Chelmsford City. But the Spurs directors had shown more perspicacity than most of their breed. For Arthur Rowe possessed one of the most innovative football minds of his generation. He was about to embark on a footballing revolution at Tottenham, one that would send shockwaves through the First Division. What Rowe immediately needed were thinking players who would be able to help implement his vision. And it was soon obvious to him, after talking to Spurs officials who had tried to sign Ramsey in March, that Alf fitted his ideal type.

So on 15 May 1949, Spurs made another bid for Ramsey. This time there were no difficulties. Alf was only too happy to move to Tottenham, not just because it was an ambitious and famous institution, twice winners of the FA Cup, but, more prosaically, because the club agreed that he could live at home with his parents in nearby Dagenham. For a hard-pressed family and a frugal son, this was a real financial benefit.

At the very moment Alf left Southampton, so too did the manager he had come to so dislike, Bill Dodgin, who, much to the surprise of the Saints players, had agreed to take up the manager’s job at newly promoted Fulham. It has often been claimed that Dodgin’s departure was prompted by his annoyance at Alf’s transfer. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Rowe was about to sign Alf, Dodgin was on another tour of Brazil, this time as the guest of Arsenal. As David Bull recorded in his excellent book Dell Diamond, the biography of Ted Bates, Bill Dodgin was in the reception of his hotel in Rio when he was handed a telegram from the Southampton directors informing him of Arthur Rowe’s offer for Ramsey. He immediately cabled back, ‘go ahead – dodgin.’ In truth, Dodgin had fallen out badly with Ramsey and had no wish to keep him at the Dell. It was other issues that led to Dodgin’s decision, such as his urge to return to his native London and manage a First Division side.

Two other myths were circulated about Ramsey at the time of his move. The first was that the transfer cost Spurs £21,000, making Alf by far the most expensive full-back in soccer history; the Southern Daily Echo was moved to describe it as a ‘spectacular deal’. The reality was less exciting. The actual cash sum Spurs paid was only £4,500, the £16,500 balance made up by swapping Ernie Jones, their Welsh international winger, for Ramsey. The second was that Ramsey, as widely reported in the press, was only 27 at the time of the move. In fact he was 29, an age when many footballers are starting to contemplate retirement. For Alf, the best was still to come.

In addition to moving to Tottenham, Alf’s private life was about to undergo an enormous change. The request to live with parents may have implied that he was planning to live a life of strict celibacy, in keeping with his reserved character, but that was far from the case. During his time at Southampton, he had met and fallen in love with a slim elegant brunette, Rita Norris, who worked as a hairdresser in the city. With a degree of embarrassment, Alf later described how their romance began:

We were introduced by a friend at a club, nothing whatever to do with football. Immediately we had what one must call a special relationship. I don’t know why I had this particular feeling only for her. I don’t think anyone can describe such a thing. It is impossible to put into words.

Alf emerges as touchingly human in his awkward confession as to how love was awakened within his reticent soul.

It was Alf’s first serious affair, as his fellow Southampton lodger Alf Freeman recalls. ‘Alf was very shy, and I don’t think he had any girlfriends before her.’ During the late forties Alf and Rita started courting regularly, going to the cinema, the theatre, even the speedway and dog tracks. These venues in Southampton were owned by Charlie Knott, a big local fishmonger and a friend of Rita’s. ‘I lived in Portsmouth then,’ says Stan Clements, ‘and I used to get them tickets for the Theatre Royal. He would take her there once a week, usually on a Thursday. They did not have a car, so they came down by train. They were a very nice couple. She was like him, quiet and polite’. Here Clements highlights one of the reasons why Alf was so immediately drawn to Rita Norris. As well as being darkly attractive, she had the same serious temperament as Alf. Like him, she was determined to better herself, having been born in humble circumstances: her father, William Welch, was a ship’s steward who later became a lift attendant. Rita had higher ambitions. She was keen on the ballet, had good taste in clothes and was well-spoken. ‘She was a very good ballet dancer. Just as Alf was a gentleman, she was a lady, with nice manners, though some of the Southampton players thought she was a bit strait-laced,’ says Pat Millward.

Given the depth of their romance, it was inevitable that the subject of marriage arose. ‘We were engaged for some time before we were married. I don’t recall how long. It is not important,’ said Alf in 1966. Alf, as occasionally before, was being somewhat economical with the truth, for the tenure of his engagement turned out to be extremely important. The fact is that Alf was unable to marry Rita Norris when he wanted in the late forties – because she was already married to another man. Alf, the most loyal and upright of football figures, was – in the eyes of the law at least – helping his girlfriend to commit adultery for years. On Christmas Day 1941, Rita Phyllis Welch, aged 21, had married Arthur Norris in a Church of England ceremony at the Nelson chapel in Southampton, the more impressive nearby St Mary’s Church, the usual venue for such occasions, having been bombed by the Luftwaffe. By trade, Arthur Norris was a fitter, like his father, and he was soon employed working as an aircraft engineer in the Fleet Air Arm. Within less than two years of their marriage, in February 1943, Arthur and Rita had produced a daughter, to which they gave the rather unusual artistic name of Tanaya, though she was generally called Tanya.

But as with a huge number of wartime marriages, the union between Arthur and Rita broke down and in 1947 they separated. Under the more strict law of the period, Rita could not officially gain a divorce until a period of at least three years had elapsed. And even after her divorce, she would not be able to re-marry for another year. So she and Alf, even though they were deeply in love, were trapped. Pat Millward recalls:

Alf told me privately he was waiting, waiting all the time for her to get her divorce. He was a little nervous that people in Southampton might throw it at him that he was involved with a married woman. But I never heard anyone say anything about it. Mind you, Alf was always very secretive about her. He never talked much about the relationship. The first moment I think I was aware of it was that time when my department store was giving out the wallets and handbags to the Southampton players. Alf was very uptight about getting the right handbag for her, so I chose it for him.

Rita’s divorce finally game through on 30 November 1950, the official grounds given that Arthur Norris had ‘deserted the Petitioner without cause for a period of at least three years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition’. Little more than a year later, on 10 December 1951, Alf Ramsey, aged 31 years – he always gave his true birth date where officialdom was concerned – was married at the Register Office in Southampton, before going on to a brief honeymoon in Bournemouth. The wedding was sandwiched between an away fixture at Blackpool and a home game against Middlesbrough. In line with the reclusive nature of the affair, Alf kept quiet about his marriage and it therefore came as a surprise at Spurs. ‘Secret wedding honeymoon ended today for Alf Ramsey, Spurs right back and first choice for England and his bride who was formerly Rita Welch of Southampton,’ announced the Daily Mirror on 12 December 1951. ‘He kept the wedding so secret that even Spurs’ manager Arthur Rowe did not know of the ceremony at the Southampton Register Office. On the train returning from Blackpool Ramsey asked for “two or three days off” to be married.’

It would be wrong to exaggerate the impropriety of the circumstances surrounding Alf’s marriage. Divorce, though still far less common than it is today, was becoming increasingly prevalent, partly because of the high rate of failure in wartime marriages. In 1920, when Alf and Rita were both born, there were just 3,090 divorces in England. By 1939, the figure had risen to 8,254. By 1950, however, the divorce rate had soared to 30,870 a year. So it is hardly as if Alf and Rita were causing a public scandal. Though the true nature of Alf’s marriage has never before been revealed, there have occasionally been wild rumours in the football world about his relationship with Rita. It was whispered breathlessly, for example, that she was ‘the daughter of an admiral’. Others said that Alf had ‘stolen his bride from his best mate’. Neither is remotely true. Rita was, like Alf, born in the working class and had merely contracted an unfortunate first marriage. ‘There was no sense of Alf stealing her,’ says Pat Millward. ‘When they met, she was already waiting for a divorce.’ Nevertheless, Rita Norris’ past undoubtedly heightened Alf’s sense of wariness about discussing his private life. It was another uncomfortable subject that he would prefer to avoid, like his father’s job or his alleged elocution lessons or his supposed gypsy background. After his marriage, the barriers were put up even higher, as Margaret Fuljames, his secretary at the FA for many years, recalls:

He hated any intrusion into his private life. Like the Daily Mail would ring almost every year on his birthday, looking for a diary piece, a light little comment from him or his wife, and Alf would never have anything to do with that. He felt it was nothing to do with who he was or his job as England manager.

For all its inauspicious beginnings, Ramsey’s marriage proved a successful one. Rita changed her name to Victoria, though Alf always knew her as Vic, and she was happy to concentrate on building their home and supporting Alf. In typically practical terms, Alf once set out the proper role of a player’s spouse:

A footballer’s wife needs to run the home completely so that he has no worries; give him the sort of food he likes and should have; and to work only for his good and the good of his career. She must know that she will rarely see him at weekends – and the better player he is, the less she will see of him. A footballer could be ruined by a wife who let him have all the household responsibilities, fed him the wrong diet and gave him no peace of mind. My wife has been splendid. I have been very lucky.

In her turn, Vickie returned the compliment. ‘I was privileged to have met and married Alfred and I enjoyed a very wonderfully happy life with a kind and generous man,’ she wrote to me.

Alf proved a loyal, honourable husband, giving her not the slightest moment’s suspicion that he might stray. Unlike a lot of successful sportsmen, who revel in the flash of a knowing smile or a whiff of perfume, Alf was too innocent to be at ease with sophisticated femininity. ‘I don’t know much about women and the only women I know are footballers’ wives,’ he said, at a time when the phrase ‘footballers’ wives’ had yet to become the embodiment of predatory lust. His love for Vickie was certainly genuine. ‘He’s the nicest man in the world. Never quarrels or loses his temper. He even listens to my views on football,’ Vickie told the Daily Mail in 1962. They never had any children of their own, but Alf proved a good step-father to Vickie’s daughter Tanaya, who went on to marry an American and settle in the USA.

Pat Millward says: ‘They were a very close couple. Alf was devoted to her.’ Despite his comments about a wife’s duties, Alf was not the stereotyped husband of his generation, treating all housework as the preserve of women. Ken Jones has this recollection of the domesticated Alf:

In 1974 I was doing some magazine pieces with him and Brian James, the Daily Mail’s football writer. So I picked him up at Liverpool Street and took him over to my house. We did some work in the morning, and then sat down to lunch cooked by my wife. All went well and we had a few drinks – Alf liked a drink. Then after lunch, I said, ‘Right, back to work.’