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    Like coal-bagging before it, hod-carrying made my upper body strong and muscular, while constantly running up and down ladders strengthened my legs. I may only have been in my mid-teens, but I was no scrawny, gangly youth.
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    I didn’t recognize the man in the overcoat watching Millspaugh from the touchline. After the game he introduced himself as a scout from Chesterfield. He thought I might have some potential as a goalkeeper, and said he would like to give me a try-out in the Chesterfield youth team. There were six games left of the season and if I did well enough in those games, I might be offered terms.
    Before that day, the thought of making my living as a professional footballer could not have been further from my mind. But now, this could be my chance.

2. Aspiring Spireite
    Chesterfield were in the Third Division North, since at the time the two lower divisions of the Football League were regionalized. This system had been in operation since 1921, when the Football League was expanded to accommodate the growing number of full-time professional clubs. Because the country’s infrastructure in the twenties was a network of largely minor roads, travel was both time-consuming and difficult. The Football League, in expanding its remit, decided to form two regionalized Third Divisions with a view to keeping travel time and costs to a minimum. By and large this system worked well, though there were certain clubs, Chesterfield being one, whose geographical position meant they were ‘borderline’ and often the system did them no favours. It was a long and expensive trip for Chesterfield to Gateshead, Workington or Carlisle; whereas Walsall, Coventry and Northampton, although much nearer, operated in the Third Division South. Likewise, those three clubs had to travel to Plymouth, Torquay, Exeter and Gillingham in the extreme south-west and south-east corners of England.
    Chesterfield were considered a small club, but even so enjoyed an average attendance of around 9,000, twice that of today. While they played in the northern section of the then regionalized Third Division, the reserves played in the Central League and the youth team in the Northern Intermediate League. Both these competitions were very strong and invariably, Chesterfield found themselves scrubbing about near the foot of both. The Central League was the premier reserve league for the top teams in the north of England. In this era before substitutes, clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Everton, Blackpool and Newcastle fielded very strong teams week in week out; if a player hadnot made the first XI at his club, he played in the Central League side. So it was not uncommon to line up against players with a great deal of First Division and even international experience.
    In truth, Chesterfield should never have been members of the Central League, the standard of play being way beyond many of the club’s second-string players. Chesterfield were the perennial whipping boys, they usually finished bottom of the table and their continued membership of this league was puzzling, especially as the reserve teams of much bigger clubs such as Sunderland and Middlesbrough were forever having their applications to join this league turned down. However, I soon realized why the reserve team were immune from relegation to a lower standard of football: one of the Chesterfield directors was a key member of the Central League Management Committee! Similarly, the Chesterfield youth team played in the highly competitive Northern Intermediate League, alongside the under-nineteen teams from Newcastle United, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, both Sheffield clubs, Leeds and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
    My sights were set no higher than a place in the Chesterfield youth team when I first arrived at Saltergate one rainswept evening at the end of March 1953. I’d been told to report to the ground at 6.30 p.m. for training, and found myself getting changed alongside around eighteen