Former EADT and Ipswich Star sports editor Tony Garnett reported on Ipswich Town for more than 40 years, from the 1960s until he retired in 2007. In the second of a new series, he shares some of his memories from his time covering the Blues...
One of my early midweek matches was against Derby County at the Baseball Ground. It was an evening game. By the time I had phoned my report almost everyone had gone. The lights were out.
I found my way into the Derby County club office area, heard voices in the board room and knocked on the door.
Derby County manager Harry Storer was standing at the head of the table with a bottle of whisky in his hand. He was filling up John Cobbold’s glass and offered me one as well. Alf Ramsey was also there with his glass being topped up with gin. While Cobbold was drinking, Alf was pouring his gin into a flower vase. There was no way he wanted his players to see him any the worse for wear when he returned to the hotel. Cobbold, Alf and myself walked back there together.
Storer was one of those great all-round sportsmen who played football for England and county cricket for Derbyshire.
My means of transport at EADT progressed from a Vespa scooter to a BSA 250cc motor bike. It was on this machine that I had a trip to Lincoln that I will never forget.
I had been a gun at a shoot at Kelsale Hall enjoying a flask of sloe gin. My grandfather was one of the best shots in Suffolk, my father was no more than moderate, while the pheasants were safe with me. I became so embarrassed with my lack of talent that I sold my 12-bore to Ipswich footballer Geoff Hammond.
I left the shoot late on a Friday afternoon to catch up with the Ipswich Town party in their hotel. I recall driving through Thetford Forest and RAF Cranwell. My next memory is of me and the bike in a couple of feet of chilly water when I missed one of those sharp bends in the Lincolnshire roads.
The bike refused to start until it dried out. My case with overnight gear was saturated. Eventually I made my way to Lincoln wet and shivering.
The Town players took pity on me. They fitted me out with dry clothes and hoisted the bike into the back of the team coach through the emergency exit. Alf Ramsey must have been aware, he did not miss much, but never said a word.
Alf used to make the players loosen up by walking the final half mile or so to Sincil Bank. This was ideal for Ted Phillips because there was sure to be a pub on the way so he could have a pint, which probably did him a power of good. It was my job to stand near the door of the pub and signal to Ted if either Alf or trainer Jimmy Forsyth were around.
Next day I persuaded EADT to buy my BSA for their photographic department. I never wanted to ride a motor bike again.
It was not long before I bought a Ford Special, a fibre-glass body, no roof and a V8 engine. I took this to Manchester.
Alf liked to take the players to a cinema on the evening before an away match. Andy Nelson sat behind Ramsey and said to me: “You have a car here, let’s go out for a drive.” Ted Phillips came as well.
It was vital to get back to the hotel before Ramsey but Phillips was up to his tricks again. We were waiting at traffic lights on the way back to the hotel when the car stalled. Traffic was building up behind us.
The ignition was in front of the passenger seat and Phillips had switched it off. We were causing quite a hold-up on a main Manchester street and I was getting worried about not returning to the hotel before Ramsey and the rest of the squad.
We made it in good time. Ramsey said to Nelson: “Well skipper, you didn’t like the film?” No more was said.
Ted Phillips was always up to something. Once he put bricks in the club’s skip which Jimmy Forsyth had to take across London from Liverpool Street to Euston.
On the London Underground he shouted “all change” and cleared the carriage. In Blackpool he sat at the hotel window, heated up pennies and threw them onto the street. He then watched the reaction as people picked them up.
Phillips played cricket for Colchester and East Essex and Suffolk as a fast bowler. He upset the umpires and was reported to Lords for bowling a red apple on the first ball of a Minor Counties match against Nottinghamshire’s second team.
It was on the same Blackpool trip that I played my only game of bowls. Director Cecil Robinson persuaded me to give him a game on a green near the Norbreck Hydro Hotel.
John Cobbold borrowed a monkey from someone on the promenade, took it into the board room at Bloomfield Road and introduced it as the new Ipswich Town director. I never met the monkey.
I was fortunate that EADT did not require me to get quotes from Ramsey. That would have been testing. Taciturn might be a way to describe him unless he was talking to footballers. On the way home by train he would enter the various compartments and discuss the match. He had a photographic memory. Players tried to keep him off the subject of football, but the longest any group achieved was under a minute.
In my early days of following football English goalkeepers reigned supreme apart from the Russian Lev Yashin. Other Europeans and the South Americans did not compare with Bert Williams, Jack Kelsey, Gordon Banks or Gil Merrick.
I watched hapless Scottish keeper Frank Haffey concede nine against England at Wembley. I was sitting amongst Scottish fans who kept offering me a swig of their whisky which I accepted. Those were the days before segregation of fans. The Scots sitting round me took the drubbing in good spirits. How sad that the following 50 years led to football hooliganism.
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