GOODBYE TO A FOOTBALL MAN – Roy Sambrook (1932-2021)

[email protected] February 5, 2021

Those familiar with the football articles that appear on this blog will be aware how often reference is made to my Dad – this no doubt a consequence of us attending football matches together for the better part of 45 years and virtually a lifetime, mine, spent talking about the game.

Sadly my Dad, Roy Sambrook, our family tribal elder, left the pitch for the final time last week. He died safe in the knowledge of how much he was loved, passing away quietly somehow fitting for a man of great empathy and kindness.

Born in April 1932 into a keen football family, father George was an inside forward, playing for Oswestry Town in 1926 when he turned down an approach from Arsenal. His team-mate and great friend, Herbert Roberts, accepted the offer – and during an illustrious Highbury career made over 300 first team appearances, collected a shelf full of medals and an England cap.

George meanwhile continued to play closer to home, turning out for Worcester City, West Bromwich Albion (where injury cut short his professional career) and home town club Shrewsbury Town, for whom younger Sambrook brothers goalkeeper Tom and centre-half Arthur, my Dad’s uncles, also played – Tom between the posts when Shrewsbury contested their first post-war fixture in 1946.

While readily admitting he was no great shakes as a footballer, Dad was still smitten with the game, going to matches at every opportunity – soon beginning a remarkable run that saw him present for at least one Shrewsbury Town home game in every post-war season right up to 2013-2014.

When league football returned after World War Two Dad also became enamoured with Wolverhampton Wanderers, for whom he would also carry long-standing affection. Through my formative football watching years of the late-60s, it was commonplace for us to watch Shrewsbury at home one week and take in a game at Molineux the next.

From before my time he would regale me with stories of watching wonderful players from the 1950s, his concise way of describing their skills and method conjuring for the young listener images that were incredibly vivid. In a time prior to the more one-dimensional partisan loyalties evident today, good teams were exactly that and admired as such, great players considered outstanding no matter who they played for.

In that regard he always spoke in glowing terms of the ‘Busby Babes‘, Spurs’ double-winning side and the Everton title winning team of 1969-70 – an early memory of mine going to Molineux in 1968 for a fixture with Chelsea, Dad keen to see ‘this lad Osgood who all the papers are talking about.’

As the years went by, into the 70s we saw some great games at Wolves, these matches giving me opportunity to see Law, Best, Charlton, Moore, Banks, Greaves, Ball, Peters, Hunt, Bell, Bremner, Giles, Osgood, George and numerous other brilliant footballers of the day.

Which is not to forget Wolves of this era were none too shabby themselves, Derek Dougan, John Richards, Kenny Hibbitt and Dave Wagstaffe members of a team who more often than not were hugely attractive to watch – our support of them taking us to Wembley in March 1974 for the League Cup Final victory over Manchester City.

Once when discussing football with a friend I happened to mention my Dad and I had seen matches together at every level from the foot of the pyramid to the heights of a European final. From his inquisitive look there appeared an assumption Dad and I had stepped out in an exotic capital city of Europe – truth being the match in question was the 1972 first-leg UEFA Cup Final between Wolves and Tottenham.

This was received as something of an anti-climax and not the Madrid or Milan my friend had perceived – still, a European final it was, an unassailable fact being we had seen one together (being a much more entertaining game than the Champions League Final of 2003 my youngest son and I attended together).

In fact the only significant domestic fixture (the odd international match included) we never saw was the FA Cup Final – Billy Bremner and co putting paid to those dreams with their 1973 FA Cup semi-final defeat of Wolves at Maine Road, another game we happened to see.

It was from the 1950s where his reminiscences seemed at their fondest – my interest never wavering when he talked of Wolves’ three title wins of that decade and of the 1960 FA Cup triumph. There is a long-established, running joke in our clan based on any mention of a year between 1949 and 1960, my Dad renowned for saying ‘good year that, Wolves won the league‘ or ‘good year that, Wolves won the cup.’

Not taking him at his word, one of his beloved grandchildren looked this up and found it not quite the exaggeration they imagined.

The notion became so ingrained in our family fabric that once when collecting a rental car at Alicante airport, my wife brought my attention to the vehicle number plate – along with a connotation which at first I failed to spot.

‘One-nine-five-four,’ she remarked, adding; ‘Good year that, Wolves won the league.’

From the 50s there was also the famous Wolves v Honved match of 1954, a succession of England v Scotland fixtures and National Service posting to RAF Weeton – equidistant between Preston and Blackpool, it brought opportunity to see Tom Finney one week and Stanley Matthews the next.

There was also the occasion when he convinced my grandmother that Scunthorpe was en route from Shrewsbury to RAF Coltishall in Norfolk, Dad going a day early in order to see Shrewsbury Town play their first Football League match in August 1950 – 24 hours before he was due to report at the camp.

But my favourite was always Dad (17 at the time) attending the 1949 Wolves v Leicester City FA Cup Final. His first visit to Wembley, first to London even, the impressions made upon him deep and lasting.

After Wolves had won the cup he, along with the uncle attending with him, went into the West End for something to eat and to take in a show before returning to Shrewsbury on the midnight train – Dad particularly struck on the journey into London from Wembley by the flattened expanses of bomb-sites, this just four years after the war.

His recollections of that day were so clear and familiar to me, it has long since felt I was there with him.

The day after his death (fortunately I was able to be with him at the end, a comfort denied to many in these terrible times), I went for a walk around Shrewsbury, my grief almost unbearable. Wandering about in the town where he lived all of his life, it occurred to me that if I could be with him in spirit at the 1949 FA Cup Final, then he could be with me in spirit from now on.

So we went home and watched ‘Match of the Day‘ from the previous evening.

Thanks for instilling in me a love of the game Dad – but you were the reason I loved it so much.

THE KID WAS ALRIGHT – the 1974 League Cup Final from the perspective of a 12 year-old