The Player: Jimmy Fay's remarkable playing career stretched across 20 years taking in Southport Blue Star, Southport Working Lads, Chorley, Oswaldtwistle Rovers, Oldham Athletic, Bolton Wanderers and, finally, Southport. He made his professional debut in 1903 for Chorley at the age of nineteen, earning just 10s a week before being snapped up in 1905 by Oldham Athletic. He would go on to play one hundred consecutive games for the Latics during which time Oldham rose from Lancashire Combination level to the First Division of the League. Upon asking for a rise to 30s a week, however, he was promptly sold for £750 to Bolton Wanderers, where he stayed for ten years, finally moving to Southport General in 1921.
Primarily a half-back, Jimmy was a cultured, intelligent player, never a hard man: in fact he earned for himself the nickname 'Gentleman Jim'. He had an eye for a goal, however, and as emergency inside right during season 1909-10, his 26 goals from 21 matches were a major factor in helping Athletic clinch promotion from Division Two as runners-up to Manchester City.
He was, in fact, a remarkably consistent player, missing only one first-team game in six seasons for Oldham from 1905 to 1911. He then went on to make one hundred and twenty-eight appearances for Bolton Wanderers between 1911 and 1921. In 1919, at the age of 35, he gained his third Football League representative cap against the Scottish League. When he hung up his boots, he opened a sports outfitters in Southport, although the Players' Union would come to dominate the rest of his life.
The Union Man: Jimmy Fay could claim to be one of the Union 'originals', having joined in 1907 and been elected to the Management Committee in 1912. In December 1922, Charlie Roberts's departure as Chairman was a severe blow to the newly-formed Players' Union. Charlie's qualities of tough leadership would be sorely missed in the six months following his resignation. What made things worse was the retirement of certain other senior members of the Union, in particular Joe Shaw, Jimmy Lawrence and Jesse Pennington. Their replacements: Harry Matthews of Oldham, Moses Russell of Plymouth Argyle, George Utley of Sheffield United and Charles Buchan of Sunderland were by no means raw youngsters. Yet none could claim Union experience. The only man who could - Jimmy Fay - thus took over the chairmanship at a crucial moment and provided some much needed continuity and experience.
Union events during Jimmy's Chairmanship:
* Wage Cuts: In the year Jimmy took over, the game was plunged into crisis by the decision of most League clubs to unilaterally cut players' wages. A nationwide trade recession saw many clubs which had planned, indeed committed themselves to, expensive post-war extensions and improvements, running up large debts as gate money declined. Clubs situated in areas particularly hard hit by the slump suffered most: Durham City registered a loss in 1922 of almost £2000, Grimsby of £3000, Bristol City approaching £4000. In late 1921 the Football League refused the Union permission to organize a benefit match, '... in view of the bad times generally caused by the trade recession....' However, the decision to cut wages, taken in April 1922 at an emergency meeting of the League Management Committee, came as a bolt out of the blue. There had been no meaningful consultation. The Union had been given no time to prepare proposals, and remained unconvinced that such a drastic move was justified. After all, Spurs had just made a profit of some £17000 and Liverpool of £6000. Gates were still well above what they had been in 1914, and it looked to many in the Union as though players were once again being made the scapegoats by clubs that had got themselves into trouble by sheer mismanagement.
*
Union Fightback: At the first meeting called by the Union to discuss the cuts, representatives from some sixty-nine clubs attended and reported a groundswell of indignation that could have led to strike action. But a strike was out of the question. It risked destroying the Union. Instead, the Union Management Committee decided it would obtain legal opinion concerning men who had signed contracts before the cut was announced; surely, it was argued, there was a chance here for victory in the courts? It decided to back a test case in law to question the legality of the League's decision, as the Union solicitor felt that the Football League, in altering Rule 7 to introduce a new maximum wage, had forced clubs into breaching a number of contracts.
* Henry Leddy: Henry Leddy, a Dubliner, centre-half and captain of Chesterfield who had previously played for Tranmere Rovers and Everton in the First Division, had signed his contract in March 1922 guaranteeing him £9 a week all year round until May 1923. The League resolution to cut wages had come a month later, and so Leddy had refused to sign the new contract. Instead, he decided to 'contest the right of the club or the Football League to break my contract under the common law of the land' in a court of law. The Union chose to back him, even though the FA was reluctant to allow the Union become the legal 'agent' for players. Thus, the Union had to formally ask the FA for permission to help Leddy take the case to court. The case would decide whether the League had the power to retrospectively alter contracts already agreed and signed between a player and a club. A section of League Rule 12 stated that the League had power 'to cancel agreements with players which are contrary to the rules of the League'. The nub of the argument was, which rules? Those in force when the contract was signed or the new rules as amended in April by the League to cut the maximum wage?
*
The Verdict: Things went badly wrong at first. The judge at Chesterfield Crown Court appeared unwilling to accept that the contract between Leddy and Chesterfield could not be subsequently altered because, he felt, both parties had agreed to abide by 'the current rules, or the rules from time to time existing of the Football League'. As things stood, therefore, the League could change contract terms at any point. Judgement was for Chesterfield, with costs. It seemed the Players' Union had suffered another legal body-blow. However, unlike the pre-War Kingaby Case, when the Union had no money to proceed with an appeal, they now had several thousand pounds in stocks to draw upon. Thus, on 8th May, 1923, at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, Mr Justice Lush and Mr Justice Salter allowed the Union's appeal against the Chesterfield verdict and awarded Leddy his back pay and costs for both hearings. He and the Players' Union, had won.
* The Leddy case had far-reaching consequences for the Players Union and its members The victory, proclaimed in the press throughout the land, was a fight for principle and proved that the courts would not allow the breaking of players' agreements either by clubs, Leagues or Associations. The Leddy case was a turning point in the Players' Union's thus far troubled history and while it did nothing to stem the outward flow of members and had no effect on players' immediate financial situations, it marked a halt in the relentless grinding down of the profession in the legal sense.
OTHER FOOTBALL TRIVIA
1921
A year after the establishment of the Third Division ( South ) the Third Division ( North ) was added to the league making four divisions in all. For the first two seasons, won by Stockport County and then Nelson, there were 20 clubs but in 1923 this was increased to 22 to put this section of the Football League on an equal numerical footing with the First, Second and Third ( South ) Divisions.
Twenty years after they had made history by becoming the first, and so far, only non-league club to win the FA Cup Spurs won the trophy again when in the second final to be played at neighbouring Stamford Bridge they defeated Wolverhampton Wanderers 1-0.
1922
Huddersfield Town, arguably THE team of the 1920s, won the last FA Cup Final, at Stamford Bridge before the Final found a permanent home at Wembley Stadium when they beat Preston North End with the only goal of the game from outside left Billy Smith. Smith, who was to star in subsequent domination of the First Division by Town scored from a second half penalty, after he had been brought down in the box, in an otherwise poor football match.
1923
Almost as famous a year as 1966, 1923 saw the opening of the Empire Stadium at Wembley that became synonymous with football the world over. The stadium was completed just four days before its first Football Association Cup Final, between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, at a cost of £750,000. The official attendance was recorded as126,047 but some estimates had the number who actually attended as around a quarter of a million. The stadium had taken just 300 working days to complete, duration and cost should be a lesson to the recent debacle surrounding the new Wembley Stadium.
The game itself very nearly didn't take place because the massive spill of supporters encroached on to the pitch but the famous white horse Billie, and his rider Constable G.A.Scorey managed to restore order and the match kicked off. Two minutes into the game Bolton's David Jack had the honour of scoring the first ever goal at Wembley. Curiously the ball bounced back into play from the back of the net due to the mass of spectators behind the West Ham net, but the referee rightly awarded the goal. A second goal, by Joe Smith confirmed Wanderers as the winners of Wembley's first FA Cup Final.
1924
This year saw the birth of one of football's legends, Jackie Milburn, in a mining village that was to become world famous, Ashington. James Edward Thompson gave 'Jackie' the appropriate initials as he went on to become a professional sprinter before he made a career in football and what a career it turned out to be. Amongst the 239 goals he netted for his beloved Newcastle United, in 494 appearances, were goals in the FA Cup Finals of 1951 and 1955. In 1951 his brace beat Blackpool and four years later, not forgetting he was in the trophy winning Newcastle side that retained the cup by beating Arsenal in 1952. In 1955 his first minute header is still one of the fastest in cup final history.
'Wor Jackie' was a living legend on Tyneside and packed a powerful shot in either foot as well as being a real force in the air and when Newcastle United gave him a belated testimonial, in 1967, ten years after he retired, 45,000 crammed into St James' Park to pay homage to the player who scored more goals for Newcastle than any other in the club's history.
1925
Football was changed forever when the off-side rule was changed. The International Board had taken on board the proposal from the Scottish Football Association and it was passed at a meeting held in Paris on June 13th 1925.
Basically, the new rule meant that instead of three opponents, at the moment of playing the ball, at least two opponents had to be nearer the goal line for a player to be onside.
1926
Huddersfield Town won the First Division championship and set a record by becoming the first team to win the title in THREE consecutive seasons. In 1924 they had edged out Cardiff City in the title race, by goal average. The following year they finished just two points ahead of West Bromwich Albion, who they had failed to beat during the season, a defeat and a draw was the result of the two league meetings between the two teams. When Huddersfield completed their historic hat-trick they finished five points ahead of Arsenal, the club they would eventually lose their manager Herbert Chapman to. Huddersfield came close to setting an unbelievable record when they finished runners-up in the First Division in 1927 and 1928. They were five points adrift of Newcastle in 1927 and just two points behind Everton a year later.
1927
The FA Cup left England for the first, and this far, only time when Cardiff City beat Arsenal at Wembley, 1-0. Previously Queens Park, Glasgow, came close but they lost to Blackburn Rovers in the finals of 1884 and 1885. In the 1927 final it was a mistake by Arsenal's Welsh international goalkeeper Dan Lewis, who allowed a shot to squirm out of his grasp. Lewis later said it was the brand new woollen shirt he wore on the day that was the cause. From then onwards Arsenal always washed new goalkeeper's jerseys.
1928
The four British Football Associations withdrew from F.I.F.A. after a disagreement over the definition of amateurism and 'broken time' (payment of wages lost by amateurs while away from work playing football. This year saw the first £10,000 transfer fee when David Jack left Bolton Wanderers for Arsenal. The actual fee was believed to total £10,890 and was the first five figure transfer fee. Willam Ralph Dean, 'Dixie' as he was better known set a new League scoring record when he scored 60 goals in the First Division, in just 39 matches. Adding together all the goals he scored in representative matches, cup games etc, 'Dixie's total for the season was actually 100.
1929
Bolton Wanderers overcame the loss of David Jack by winning the FA Cup, beating Portsmouth 2-0 in the final to achieve a quite remarkable hat-trick of cup wins. Bolton won the first Wembley Final in 1923, beating West Ham 2-0 and were victorious again in 1926, when they beat Manchester City 1-0, so, in three finals in seven years Wanderers never conceded a single goal, and on each occasion their keeper was Dick Pym, some record.
