Peter Steward

My Site

Review Section

Books

Concerts

Norwich City Blog Entry No 5

It was good to reach safety in style on Saturday with a comprehensive victory over a rather poor QPR side.

Once again there was a yellow and green carnival atmosphere inside Carrow Road with the sun shining and footballing worries and cares being banished at last.

When Glenn Roeder took over at Carrow Road he faced a massive job in just leading us to safety. That he has achieved and we should be truly grateful. Now the real work begins as the manager tries to put together a side capable of pushing for promotion rather than lurching from week to week in the bargain basement of the Championship.

Saturday’s game was a fascinating one. I can’t recall ever seeing a team make two tactical substitutions in the first six minutes. They probably shouldn’t have bothered as their lack lustre attempts to come to terms with City proved. Many thanks to QPR ‘keeper Lee Camp for one of the most eccentric displays of goalkeeping for many a season. Down to 10 men he seemed to see his role as providing that 11^th outfield player. Four out of 10 for goalkeeping but 10 out of 10 for entertainment and allowing us to see that we did exactly the right thing in not signing him following his loan spell at Carrow Road.

I can’t pass over this column of course without mentioning Dion Dublin – a colossus in football. He received a genuinely warm ovation throughout the match – along with the Barry Butler Memorial Trophy for player of the season. It must have pretty much been a one horse race. Norwich fans love strong characters and players with charisma. Dion has both in abundance. I agree that his decision to hang up his boots is the correct one. It’s always better to go out at the top rather than slide down the ladder into obscurity. Dion has been a great crowd pleaser, has played a major part in keeping us up and cemented forever a place in the fans’ hearts. He is also the most popular player to don the green and yellow since the halcyon days of Iwan and Malky.

It was interesting to note that the players coming first and second in this year’s vote both started the match on the subs’ bench.

Norwich City’s greatest X1 will shortly be unveiled.

Like all such “competitions” the choice is subjective and down to each individual.

There are more problems with picking a greatest football team than in other fields such as greatest rock music or greatest novels. The fact is that most of the people voting will never have seen half the nominations play.

Okay somebody picking their top 20 pop albums of all time will also have a limited knowledge of the entire field of pop/rock music, but at least they can do something about it. There’s nothing stopping them visiting the works of say Pink Floyd or Bob Dylan. Usually in these polls the majority of votes goes to players or artists of the last few years which is presumably why RadioHead feature so prominently in greatest ever polls when they are strictly an average rock band (and I bet that’s upset some people).

When it comes to sport it’s another matter, however. We cannot return to the past, apart from in the occasional video or DVD footage, to see just how good Barry Butler or Roy Hannah were. How can we compare them with today’s players anyway?

Football, like all other sports, moves forward. One of the greatest achievements by a sportsman was the first sub four minute mile by Roger Bannister on May 6^th, 1954. Today hundreds of club runners could achieve that mark. Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to climb Everest on 29^th May, 1953. Today hundreds have followed in his footsteps. Time moves on and performances improve otherwise we would never have new world record continually pushing boundaries forward.

Now in May 2008 the Canaries will unveil their greatest ever team as voted by the fans. It’s a difficult task as today’s strictly average team are arguably fitter and faster than players of the 1940s and 1950s due to natural athletic progression and improvement in conditions and diets. So in theory it could be argued that the present team is Norwich’s greatest (I jest of course).

So, taking an equal playing field for all and pretending all the players nominated are in their prime, here, for what it’s worth, are my top 11, some of whom I have not seen play and have voted for purely on their reputations. I have to say the club has done a very good job with its nominations which do seem to cover the best players.

Goalkeepers: This was a tough decision between Kevin Keelan and Ken Nethercott. I was rather surprised at the omission in the list of Sandy Kennon who I would place just behind the other two and certainly ahead of Gunny, Robert Green and Chris Woods. After long deliberation I plumped for Kevin Keelan mainly because of his tremendous number of appearances (673) whilst acknowledging that he had a few, how should we say, foibles that prevented him from being a truly great ‘keeper.

Full Backs: Difficult one this as the nominations include players from every decade from the 20s to the 50s as well as more modern day players and I know there will be plenty of votes for Mark Bowen and Ian Culverhouse. On reputation, however, I have gone for Ron Ashman and Joe Hannah. I certainly never saw Hannah play and I might have seen Ashman a couple of times, but the reputation of both has endured to the present day.

Centre-Backs: For me this was one of the easier decisions although I seriously considered Barry Butler whose memory is still alive thanks to the annual player of the year trophy. I would love to have gone for Duncan Forbes, one of the greatest characters ever to kick a ball in “anger” at Carrow Road but, putting personal bias aside, it was a relatively easy task to pick Steve Bruce and Dave Watson. Bruce is turning out to be as good a manager as he was player and is still very popular at Carrow Road. Dave Watson was as solid as a rock. I came across both players during my time as a sports reporter. They were both friendly, open and intelligent men and that certainly showed on the pitch.

Midfielders: Another one I found reasonably easy to pick. Martin Peters is quite simply the best pure footballer ever to play at Norwich. It seems hard to believe that he made 232 appearances. He was head and shoulders above any other midfielder that has appeared for the club – a true football legend and not one who just came to Norwich as a wind down after a glittering career. Alongside him I would put Graham Paddon for the memories of that golden left foot, those golden locks and the precision passing.

Wingers: There is one player in the history of Norwich City that stands out in my heart and that’s Ken Foggo. Remember when you were young and trying to be your favourite sportsmen or women? While others were pretending to be Bobby Moore or Bobby Charlton I was Kenny Foggo. I based my entire game on him. When I played for the school or local youth team I played on the right wing, I ghosted into the penalty box and crashed golden shots into the top corner of the net (well I did in my dreams). At school I was even called Kenny for a while. I loved the way this little Scotsman played. He really did cut in from the wing and unleash unstoppable shots. And he was a huge crowd favourite. There are few players who return to Carrow Road and get a standing ovation (even if most people in Kenny’s day were already standing). Malky Mackay was one, Ken Foggo was another when he came back with Portsmouth. I remember willing him in that visit to score and I think he hit the bar. On top of that he won the player of the year trophy twice. I suspect in the greatest vote he will lose out to more high profile wingers, but to me he will always be the greatest. For the second winger I thought long and hard about Darren Eadie but a proneness to injury prevented him from being a truly great Canary. So my second vote went to Johnny Gavin who played just before I started supporting Norwich. Again the choice is on the reputation of 132 goals in 338 appearances which is some going in anybody’s book.

Forwards: Such a crucial position. How could I leave out Iwan Roberts – one of my all-time favourite players and Mick Channon needed careful consideration. Channon is without a doubt one of the best strikers the English game has produced but Norwich got the end of his career and for this reason I didn’t seriously consider him. The same reasoning presumably saw Joe Royle omitted from the nomination list. My first choice has to be The Count of Carrow Road Terry Allcock who went from burying defences to burying people with his funeral business. My second choice was Ron Davies who scored at more than a goal every two games and is the best header of a football I have seen. It was a shame his Norwich City career didn’t last longer..

Manager: Managers come and go and most leave their mark in some way or other – some for all the wrong reasons. I would always pick Ron Saunders. I was a student at journalist college when I first interviewed Saunders for a college project. Probably interview was the wrong word. He gave pretty much one sentence answers to all my questions and at times fixed me with that incredible stare and square jaw. Here was a man not to be trifled with as he proved in taking what was a relatively ordinary side of hard-working players into the top flight for the first time in the club’s history. Stories of players running up Mousehold with weights attached to their legs and being physically sick after training are legendary. There is no doubting, however, that Saunders was responsible for bringing the passion back to Carrow Road and that’s enough for me.

So my greatest X1 would be: Kevin Keelan, Ron Ashman, Joe Hannah, Steve Bruce, Dave Watson, Graham Paddon, Martin Peters, Ken Foggo, Johnny Gavin, Terry Allcock, Ron Davies. Manager- Ron Saunders.