January 18 – Red Jim’s Victory
HELLO there comrades and welcome to a tale about the workers throwing off the chains and shackles of the oppressive factory bosses to secure their futures. Huzzah!
Except revolutionary Russia this is not, and for workers read ‘footballers’ and for oppressive factory bosses read ‘club chairmen’, for it was on this day in 1961 that the maximum wage for players was abolished, thanks largely to the efforts of Jimmy Hill.
Hill was a player for Fulham at the time and was also the chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association – only one of the many and diverse roles in football that Hill has occupied including player, chairman, TV presenter and emergency linesman.
The days of training ground car parks having to have their parking spaces widened to accommodate all the Bentleys and Range Rovers were a long way off in 1961 when the maximum any player could earn was £20 a week during the season, dropping to £17 a week in the summer.
Many players spent their summers learning a trade that would provide their living once they hung up their boots but their had long been dissatisfaction at the wage cap which had eventually forced Hill to rally his troops and threaten a strike.
“The players are revolting!” the Football League president Joe Richards might have exclaimed before tearing his eyes away from a picture of Luke Chadwick and realising this was a battle he was going to lose.
Hill and Richards were pictured shaking hands on the steps of the Ministry of Labour after the agreement had been reached and football had changed forever.
The effects of the abolition of the wage cap were felt immediately. Only months previously Fulham chairman comedian Tommy Trinder said of his star player Johnny Haynes: “Haynes is an entertainer like I am, and if the maximum wage is ever abolished, I will pay him what he is worth, which is £100 a week.”
Trinder’s very public declaration meant he had to stand by his word and Haynes became the very first £100 a week player (see the story here http://www.onthisfootballday.com/2007_10_18/october-18-%e2%80%93-haynes-passes-away.php).
Hill himself never benefited from the historic agreement he helped engineer as an injury forced him to retire not long after his revolutionary moment.
Since then there have been calls to reintroduce a wage cap as salaries spiral out of control with players like Lucas Neill no longer happy with pocketing £55,000 a week for being an average right back in an average team.
Despite the madness of player wages these days, Hill said in 2001 he did not regret having the cap cropped.
He said: “Not that I’ve ever changed my beliefs. The battle we fought was for a player to be free to negotiate for what he was worth with no restrictions. That holds good in 2001, and is nothing to do with the David Beckhams of this world being overpaid – he justifies, earns and deserves his money because a super-wealthy club like Manchester United can happily afford him.
“The stupidity which is rife is that outside the top eight or 10 ultra-rich clubs, there are others demanding, and getting, ludicrous salaries when the clubs simply cannot afford them. Even some Third Division players are on £1,000 a week. For their clubs and directors that just means guaranteeing bank loans and consequent debt, debt, debt. Crazy.”
Here’s Jimmy at his finest on Match of the Day and come back tomorrow when we’ll be right back with more historical football jigary-pokery.
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January 18 - Wales off the Mark | On This Football Day on January 18th, 2009
[...] Here at OTFD we think Man City have about as much chance of signing Kaka as Rafa Benitez does of beating Fergie in the mind game stakes, but the fact City are reportedly ready to pay the Brazilian £500,000 a week would not even have been allowed had it not been for Jimmy Hill and events that happened on this day in 1961. [...]