Sir Alf. Leo McKinstry

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ