Sir Alf. Leo McKinstry

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СКАЧАТЬ had a very, very good football brain. If he hadn’t, he would not have played where he did, because he was not the most nimble of players. Not particularly brilliant in the air, because he did not have the stature to jump up. But he was a decent tackler and a great passer. He could read the game so well, that was his big asset. That was why he became such a great manager.

      Ted Ballard has the same assessment:

      He was a great player, a super player. He was a quiet man, very strict on himself, very sober and trained hard. The only thing he lacked was pace; he could be a bit slow on the turn because he was built so heavily round the hip. But he made up for it with the way he read the game so well.

      Stan Clements, who played at centre-half and was himself a shrewd judge of the game, told me:

      He was two-footed. You would not have known the difference between one foot and the other. He was a tremendously accurate passer. When he kicked the ball, it went right to the other player’s foot. All the forwards in front of him always said that when Alf gave them the ball, it was easy to collect. They liked that because they could pick it up in their stride. His judgement of distance, his sense of timing was just right. The point about Alf was that he was so cool. One of the remarkable things about him was that at free-kicks and corners, when the goalmouth was crowded, he seemed to have the ability almost to be a second keeper on the goal-line. He seemed always to be able to read exactly what was going on. His anticipation was superb. He was always in the right position to chest the ball down and clear it. He must have saved us at least a goal every other game. He understood football better than most people. I always knew he would make a good manager, because of his ability to size up the game. Bill Dodgin and Syd Cann, the trainer, used to have this layout on the floor of our dressing-room, with counters for the players. And they would use this to analyse our tactics, especially in set-pieces. Alf was always very good at understanding all that; he would take it all on board quickly.

      Alf was so dedicated that, even at the end of the 1946-47 season, when he returned to Dagenham, he carried on practising in the meadows behind his parents’ cottage: ‘I used to take a football every morning during those months of 1947 and spend an hour or two trying hard to “place it” at a chosen spot.’ Alf knew that only by developing his accuracy would he be successful in adopting the Sam Barkas style of constructive defence. The hard work paid off, and Alf did not miss a single game during the 1947-48 season; indeed, he was the only Southampton player to appear in all 42 League fixtures. Such was the strength of Ramsey’s performances that Bill Ellerington, who had gradually recovered from his illness, could not force his way back into the side, though, as he told me, that did not lead to any personal resentment:

      I was working hard to get back. I am not being heroic but it was either that or packing the game in. But Alf was playing really well. He was a good reader of the game, a good player of the ball in front of him. A bit slow on the turn but he was made that way. On tackling, he knew when to go in and not to go in. And he made more good passes than most players. He was always cool. There was no personal rivalry between us. I never even dreamed about animosity or anything like that. We were just footballers. Mind you, looking back, Alf was ambitious. He was a hard lad to get to know. He was not stand-offish, but you could never get at him. He was not one of the boys. We travelled everywhere by train in those days, and I was part of a card school, but Alf did not join in. He never got in trouble, because he was not interested.

      As Bill Ellerington indicates, Alf’s personality did not change much once he became a successful professional. He remained undemonstrative, reserved, unwilling to mix easily. ‘He would not go out of his way to talk to anybody,’ recalled Ted Bates, ‘but if you wanted his advice, he’d give it. When we played, early on, I roomed with him, and he was always the same, very quiet, getting on with his job.’ Eric Day, the Southampton right-winger, used frequently to catch the train from Southampton to London because his parents lived in Ilford:

      I saw him a lot but there was never much conversation. I am not a great talker and Alf certainly wasn’t one. Whenever we chatted, it was only ever about football. He could be a bit short with people, though he was never rude. Alf didn’t suffer fools gladly, I’ll tell you that. He was a bit secretive; he just didn’t chat. Maybe that’s because he was a gypsy. Gypsies are extremely close-knit; they keep it in the family. You never heard him shouting, not on the field or in the dressing-room or on the train. If he had any strong feelings about anyone, he just kept them to himself. He was a very honest bloke. He did not like talking about people behind their backs. You never heard him tear anyone to shreds. He was very modest. There was nothing of the star about him.

      The Southampton goalkeeper of the time, Ian Black, highlights similar traits:

      Once he had finished training, you seldom saw him. That is fair enough. People are made in different ways. But it did not make him any the less likeable. I think he had quite a shy nature; he was friendly enough but he did not like much involvement with others. Though he would talk plenty about the game, he was not much of a conversationalist otherwise.

      Throughout his time at Southampton, Ramsey lived in digs owned by the club, which he shared with Alf Freeman, one of the Saints’ forwards. The two Alfs had served together in the Duke of Cornwall’s Regiment, though Freeman had seen action in France and Germany in 1944-45. Now in his mid-eighties and with his powers of communication in decline, Freeman still retains fond memories of living with Alf:

      We had good times together in the army. We were pretty close then. In our Southampton digs, we were looked after well by our landlady. Alf was a lovely man but he was very, very quiet. He was shy and never talked much. Unlike most of us players, he did not smoke or drink much. He always dressed smartly. He liked the cinema, and also did a lot of reading, mainly detective stories.

      The late Joe Mallet, who was one of Southampton’s forwards, told Alf’s previous biographer in a powerfully worded statement that Ramsey and Freeman had fallen out:

      They were close but they had a disagreement and though they lived together Alf would never speak to Freeman. If you got on the wrong side of Alf, that was it, you were out! You couldn’t talk him around; he would be very adamant. If he didn’t like somebody or something, he didn’t like them. There were no half measures! He was a man you could get so far with, so close to, and then there was a gap, he’d draw the curtain and you had to stop. I don’t think he liked any intrusion into his private life. Alf wouldn’t tolerate anything like that. He’d be abusive rather than put up with it.

      But today Freeman has no recollection of any such dispute: ‘There was never any trouble between us. I don’t know where Joe Mallet got that stuff about a disagreement. That just wasn’t true. I always got on well with Alf. He was a good man to me. I liked him very much.’

      Pat Millward came to know Ramsey better than most through Alf’s friendship with her husband Doug, who played for both the Saints and Ipswich. Though she recognizes that Alf’s diffidence could come across as offensive, she personally was a great admirer:

      People used to think that Alf was difficult because he did not have a lot to say. He would just answer a question and then walk away. A lot of people did not like him. They thought he was too quiet, too pleased with himself. ‘He fancies himself, doesn’t he? Who does he think he is?’ they would say, without really knowing him. But I loved him. He was just the opposite of what some people thought. He was down-to-earth, never bragged, never put on airs, never went for the cheers. And he was such a gentleman, always polite and well-mannered. I remember I was working in the restaurant of a department store in Southampton, and the store had laid on an event for the players, where they were all to receive wallets, and their wives handbags. The gifts were set out on two stands and the players could take their choice. Alf was among the first to arrive. But he held back until all the rest of them had taken what they wanted.

      ‘Shouldn’t you get your wallet?’ I asked.

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