As a big fan of the late and very famous Stanley Matthews, I was disappointed to read that Tommy Banks, a fearsome left back, had died on June 13th. OK! It is an opening to grab your interest and the link is the 1953 FA Cup Final between Banks' club, Bolton Wanderers and my favourite footballer, Sir Stan of Blackpool. Banks was a fearsome defender and the story goes that some wingers in the league, knowing that they were due to meet Bolton and Banks the coming weekend, would develop injuries to avoid the confrontation! Some unlucky wingers would suffer from "gravel rash" when they were tackled furiously by Banks and ended up on the pitch side track. Matthews survived this and helped Blackpool beat Wanderers 4-3 in an exciting cup final.
Banks, aged 94 when he died, was the oldest surviving international footballer, so he lived to good age and his career after football was full of interest. He was a prominent supporter of the "Maximum Wage" for footballers. He was reckoned to be the first footballer to appear in an advert on TV, when he appeared "selling" Gillette Razors, towards the end of his playing career. He tried a transfer request to spend his late career playing at Oldham Athletic, but under the "mercy" of his club known as "retain and transfer", the club wouldn't let him go for less than £10,000, quite a sum in those days. So Tommy, Played out the rest of his career in non-League football at Altrincham and then Bangor City, eventually hanging up his boots in 1965. He returned home, ran a newsagent's shop and working in the building industry. His biography in 2012 "Ah'm Telling Thee" by Ian Seddon (another Bolton player) was staged by pupils from his old school, Harper Green, and was a musical based on Banks' life.
Banks' England team mate, goalie, Colin MacDonald of Burnley, who played behind him in Sweden in 1958, now is the oldest surviving international footballer.
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