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North Country Blues - The Jimmy Husband Story

In conversation with Everton's "wide attacker" of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Kevin Mirallas, our quicksilver striker, has been described as a “wide-attacker”. Over 40 years ago a softy-spoken Geordie with a penchant for Bob Dylan, performed the same role with great aplomb over 199 appearances, scoring 55 goals.

Jimmy Husband was a FA Youth Cup and League Championship winner with the Blues. “Skippy” was the scorer, in January 1971, of one of the greatest Goodison goals in living memory – a volley past Peter Bonetti after swift interplay between Hurst, Harvey and Ball. On a less savoury note he is also remembered as the recipient of on-pitch knee-surgery (without anaesthetic) courtesy of Derby’s Dave Mackay in October 1968; despite popular opinion that he was “never the same player again”, Jimmy was playing again within 5 weeks.

After a dip in fortunes at Everton, and adventures at Luton and in the United States, Jimmy is now happily retired in Bedfordshire. He spent a couple of hours with me looking back on homesickness, silverware, knee-high challenges, the “joys” of indoor soccer and playing for a village team called…Everton.

I was born in Newcastle; as a kid my dad used to take me to every home game at St James’ Park. I was an inside forward and played for England Schoolboys at 15 so that attracted a lot of the big clubs’ scouts. I had something like 17 or 18 top flight clubs wanting to sign me, including Villa, Leeds, Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Everton and Burnley. Burnley were then a top team that had won the league a few years previously and were one of the first, along with Everton, to have their own training facilities. Their chief scout, Jack Hixon, virtually lived at our house so I went to Burnley in the school holidays with a guy called Louie Henry – I wouldn’t go on my own. We spent a week there in nice digs and trained each day with the youth team.

My Dad had passed away that year so it was hard for me and my Mum – she was still grieving and knew nothing about football so it was left to me to choose a club. In the end Everton were the most persistent and the whole package was just right. Harry Cooke, the chief scout would occasionally bring an, immaculately dressed, mysterious man with him. This guy was the one who Harry Cooke would look to for “the nod” if I asked a question. I never did know who he was - something to do with the Littlewoods empire perhaps?

The school board reluctantly agreed for me to leave before I took my O levels – part of the deal at Everton was that I was excused from trained every Monday to continue my studies near Woolton. I made rapid progress and played a few reserve games within a year so, needless to say, my education went out of the window as I concentrated on football. The apprentice wages were £8 per week – more than my mum was getting full time.

I had digs in Tuebrook with a landlady for 3 years – one of my colleagues was the England Schoolboy Captain and centre-half called Eric Curwen, a Blackpool lad. I did suffer from homesickness and Everton paid for my rail ticket home every month. The club could sign you pro at 17 but they would often wait until you were nearer 18, but I actually signed within days of my 17th birthday. Unfortunately they did not sign Eric as a pro and he went to play for Southport.

Within weeks of me joining at 15, Harry Catterick called us up to the office and said what he hoped to do with us and that thought that I had great prospects He knew I was very homesick as well – he was from the North East so he had a bit of sympathy with me.

The year I joined, Everton were the reigning champions. We had Alex Young as centre-forward, Roy Vernon at inside- left and Dennis Stevens at inside-right. Alex wasn’t necessarily pacey but had great ball control and vision whilst Roy was electric and a great finisher. Dennis was the one to drop-off and help Jimmy Gabriel and Tony Kay in midfield – he was the workhorse. Tony Kay was a great player - hard as nails but a great tackler and inspirational – and on the verge of becoming an England regular, he may have played in the World Cup.

Every day we used to start at Goodison Park, where the 1st team through to the B team got changed and got coaches up to Bellefield where we trained. Then it was all back on the bus to Goodison where we got showered and had treatments. It was in my second or third year at Everton when Bellefield was opened up as a complete training complex with dressing rooms, showers, baths, physio facilities, offices upstairs for the coaches and manager plus a dining room where we had lunch after training.

At this time Colin Harvey and Tommy Wright had already broken through whilst John Hurst and I were in the same age group – we were two years ahead of Joe Royle. We won the FA Youth Cup in 1965, beating Arsenal in a two-legged affair, we drew down at Highbury and won with a penalty at Goodison

My debut came in Easter Monday 1965 at Fulham: I had played for the reserves in the Central League but when we got back to Goodison the 1st team coach was still there which was strange. Straight away Harry Cooke said “Come on we’re taking you back to your digs – grab a suitcase as you’re going off with the 1st team”. So I grabbed a pair of trousers, shirt, tie and blazer. The coach was still waiting at Goodison and off we went – a bit of a whirlwind! Harry decided not to tell me early on that I was playing, then a couple of hours before the match he said “You’re playing son” and that was it. I think I did okay - some of the opposition were legends like Johnny Haynes, Bobby Robson and George Cohen. I played Inside-right forward with Derek Temple on the left, Alex Scott on the right and Fred Pickering at centre-forward.

The next season I was mostly in the reserves and if any forward got injured there was a good chance I’d be the first call. There were no substitutes in those days and when they introduced one it was usually Sandy Brown – the sub was for injuries, never used tactically, and you shuffled the team round.

The whole Everton staff, from youngest to eldest, went down to Wembley for the 1966 FA Cup Final – I just remember the game with Mike Trebilcock’s double and Derek Temple’s thunderbolt.

After the 1966 World Cup Harry had reached a stage where he was rebuilding the team that had won the 1963 championship and the FA Cup. He had some great youngsters coming through and he knew that was the future; so he gave a chance to the likes of me, John Hurst and Joe Royle. The team were in the process of changing to 4-3-3 and neither Ernie Hunt and Alex Scott were suited to that system - wingers were virtually becoming a thing of the past. So right away you have lost your inside forward position and I moved to right side of the pitch. So Joe, Johnny Morrissey and myself formed the attack. You would have to class Johnny as a winger but I could wander anywhere I wanted. My position was to help Joe out more than help Tommy Wright but defensively I used to retreat to the right hand side – perhaps I was a bit like an attacking Trevor Steven.

Howard Kendall tended to play to the right side, Bally in centre-mid and Colin Harvey in left-mid but it was interchangeable. Colin was great short ball player with wonderful first-time touch whilst Howard was a great long player of the ball with good vision - he didn’t have that much pace but didn’t need it. Like all great teams it’s not the 11 best players, it’s the balance of the 11 – as England proved in the World Cup.

Myself, I had pace and okay ball control – my left foot was adequate but I was mostly right footed. I was never any good in the air but I had really good acceleration which frightened defenders because if I ran at them they knew that nine times out of ten I would get past them. Full backs disliked marking me as I was one of the few forwards to drift across the pitch - I’d wander off past Joe towards the left wing and the defender never knew whether to follow me or pass me on to a colleague. Howard knew this and if the full-back went with me he would drift into space on the right flank ready to receive a ball from Tommy and put in a good cross for Joe to get on the end of - this was just something the two of us worked out together in training.

My miss against West Brom in the 1968 Cup Final still haunts me to this day but I don’t blame myself 100 percent now. The whole team were off-colour that day: Joe, Alan and I each missed a couple of half chances and we just couldn’t finish it. If it had gone to a replay you could have put your house on it that we would have won. I wasn’t allowed to forget the miss either…if I was ever in conversation with Everton fans they would remind me about it…I always knew that it would be brought up in any conversation.

We played some really excellent football from 1967 to 1971…it’s arguable that we were the best footballing team in Britain and that’s why many Everton fans think of us as one of their best teams ever. It was very neat and tidy, apart from Joe up front we were mostly 5’7” or 5’8” so it was pointless knocking balls in the air; we played to feet and were comfortable on the ball.

The foul by Dave Mackay in 1968 is a bit of a myth. It was the most diabolical foul that you could wish to see, Dave was 13 stone of muscle; the tackle came in on my knee and damaged my ligaments. The fans just remember the foul being awful but I came back and scored 20 goals in the season.

In the 1969-70 season I lost my place through a minor injury which necessitated me missing 2 or 3 games so Alan Whittle came in and scored something like 4 or 5 goals in important games. So Harry had every manager’s dream and heartache of making a choice once I was back fit; he chose to leave Alan in and made the right choice as Alan scored lots of goals. It was hard on me as we were on the run-in to the championship and I was in the stand in my suit and tie, these days I would have got a run in some of the games.

I asked for transfer, Harry never called me in for a chat but Wilf Dixon was trying to persuade me to stay. He said “There’s about 3 or 4 teams that could afford you and all those teams have players fighting for their positions”. I left my transfer request hanging there and then suddenly Alan was dropped and I was back in the team for the rest of the 1970-71 season. Against Panathinaikos their skipper took me out in the Goodison leg with a similar challenge to Dave Mackay’s so I missed the return leg and within the space of a week we were out of the European Cup and the FA Cup.

Deep down the players felt that things were beginning to unravel and the nail in the coffin was when Harry had his heart attack. It was a crazy time – at one stage we were being coached by Tommy Casey and he was an old fashioned coach - some of the things we were being told to do were totally alien to the way we played. Then, before you knew it Bally was off to Arsenal. When Billy Bingham came in he wanted to rebuild so Howard was off to Birmingham and Colin was off to Sheffield Wednesday. By then I was ready for a change; Billy had played at Luton and had connections there so that’s possibly how I ended up there and had four great years – I never heard about any other clubs in for me.

Harry Haslam, their manager, was totally different to Harry – he was always telling jokes and wasn’t a disciplinarian - it was so much easier going. Bellefield was run like a military camp whereas Luton was more easy come – easy go.

At Everton I was constantly racing against time to get to Bellefield. If you were late more than twice in a week you had to come in for training in the afternoon, like detention, so I had a couple of them.

Luton were in the second division but were promoted in my first season there. In those four seasons we won a heck of a lot more than we lost. Andy King came into the team in my second year there; at the annual PFA awards in London I got talking to Billy Bingham and he said to me “We’ve been looking at Luton recently – what do you think of this Andy King?”. I told Billy that he was ready for the first division and that he was a really good attacking midfield player. Within a week or two Andy actually signed for Everton.

Harry eventually moved on to Sheffield United and David Pleat replaced him. As with Billy at Everton, David wanted his own people in. By then I was 32 and the USA was the in thing for players in their later years like Muller, Pele and Beckenbauer. So it was exciting to get the opportunity with Memphis Rogues, Eddie McCreadie was manager and knew me well as a player as he usually marked me when we played Chelsea. So it ended up with John Falconer and I sailing off into the western sunset with our families.

Most of the Americans going to watch football in those days were just out for a good day out – the weather was glorious and they’d go about four hours before kick-off with big pick-up trucks and have barbecues and cans of bear. It was new to us but the kids loved it and I was earning more than at Luton Town where I had been paying 60% tax of my earnings.

Every “off-season” we came back to our families in Liverpool and Newcastle or stayed with friends in Bedfordshire. I had permission to go into Bellefield to keep fit (my in-laws just live round the corner from there) and I trained with the youth team which Colin Harvey coached.

All the clubs over there are franchises and can be moved anywhere the owners want so after two years our franchise was sold to an oil millionaire in Calgary. After a bit of homework we decided we didn’t want to end up there -10 degrees every day - too cold!

By then Eddie had moved on to the Major Indoor Soccer League with Cleveland Force and offered me a one-year contract. I didn’t fancy indoor soccer but it was a job so we moved up there; it was glorious in the summer and autumn but the winter weather was similar to Calgary! I didn’t like it, it was too much rough and tumble - like ice-hockey but without the sticks.. We played on Astroturf, so you had to grease-up those “vulnerable areas”, and I was getting too many injuries.

After a year I jumped at the chance to get back to outdoor soccer at Oklahoma City Slickers in the ASL (for franchises that weren’t big enough for the NASL). The manager there was Colin Harvey’s brother Brian. I had two good years but they were struggling for money.

I’d had enough of football by then so we moved back into our house in Bedfordshire and I did what a lot of players did: by taking over the tenancy of a pub in a nearby village for two years. It was very hard and I hardly saw the kids for two years as I was either in bed or at the pub when they were at home. The pub was only three miles from another village called Everton so a guy approached me and the Liverpool Echo came down and ran a story with me turning out for Everton’s village football team.

Later I worked for 5 years as a sales consultant for Godfrey Davis which was a really good job but then they got taken over. I then worked in another sales job and I’ve been retired about 7 years now. Fortunately I always had one eye on stocks, shares and savings to build up a nest-egg but it doesn’t last that long – especially if you smoke like I did!

People do recognise me out and about – it only takes one person to say something and then everyone gets their smart-phones out to check YouTube and say “Hey, you were a bloody good player!” I met my wife, Val when I was in the Everton B team, she was still at school and we met in a youth club - we’re still together now. Our son Jamie is 42 now – he had trials at Everton and Luton and they both wanted to sign him as an apprentice but I recommended that he sign with Luton as he’d get more opportunities. In the end they didn’t sign him as a pro but that was no disgrace as they did have an excellent youth team then. Out of the blue Jamie then got a sports scholarship in the University of Miami and he has lived out there ever since. They won the All American University Soccer Tournament twice whilst he was there and he’s now a fireman-paramedic. Our daughter, Jilly, lives nearby to us and has recently had a baby daughter.

I used to go up to Merseyside three or four times a year for former players “dos”, which was nice, but with the recession they have gone on the back-burner. I tend to get up for one game each season - I took a friend up for the Reading game this season and the Former Players Foundation looked after us.

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