Sporting Bygones: When pulling power took on a whole new meaning for life outside the game

BACK in the Eighties, before a massive explosion in wage levels, the majority of professional footballers still needed to find paid employment after hanging up their boots.

For many, the easy option was the pub trade which, unlike today, was still a booming business.

When Leeds City Council linked up with brewers Tetley to offer lessons in life as a pub landlord there were no shortage of takers.

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Barnsley duo Stuart Gray and Joe Joyce, pictured, were just two of the local players who took advantage of the unique 26-week course.

Bradford City’s Bobby Campbell also took part along with many others from clubs including Sheffield United, Huddersfield Town, Rotherham United and York City.

During the summer of 1985, Gray and Joyce learned how to pull the perfect pint, look after a cellar and become familiar with the laws of the licenced trade.

As evident from our photograph, it was a time when drinkers were invited to sip cocktails such as the ‘Margarita’, the ‘Blue Lagoon’, or the ‘Sea Serpent’ for no more than £1.20 a glass.

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Skol was one of the most popular lagers on draught and bar-staff needed strong arms and tough fingers to work non-powered cash registers. Oh and, yes, moustaches were still deemed to be in vogue.

The training course, 26 years ago, was designed to provide footballers with a useful stepping-stone into a new industry. It was set up by Leeds City Council and David Hardy, director of the Leeds New Business Course Support Unit, revealed that those taking part were charged over £300. Today, that amount would barely leave a hole in a Championship footballer’s pocket. In 1985, it might have been a week’s wages.

John Young, manager of Tetley’s training centre in Otley, told the Yorkshire Post how customers in the county were ‘very particular’ about the pulling of their pints.

“It has to be clear and bright with a creamy top and no bubbles,” he said. “The skill of pulling a pint is trial and error but basically you need a steady pull.”

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The final part of the course had to be postponed after players from York City were involved in a minor plane crash at Leeds Bradford airport. The team had been returning from a post-season trip to Majorca when a TriStar jet in which they were travelling overran the runway on landing. Fortunately, no-one was seriously hurt.

Neither Gray nor Joyce have needed the course since as both have enjoyed successful careers in coaching. For Bradford striker Campbell, however, it was the start of a new life and the former Northern Ireland international, now 54, has for many years been mine host at Lindley Working Men’s Club in Huddersfield.

Gray, now 51, spent four years with Barnsley after moving from Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. Originally from Withernsea on the Yorkshire coast, he moved on to Aston Villa and Southampton but was forced to retire, aged 33, due to an Achilles injury.

Resisting the temptation to move into the pub trade, Gray took up coaching at Southampton. He spent a brief period with Wolves but returned to the Saints and, in 2001, briefly became the club’s manager.

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Defeats in 11 of his first 19 games, however, led to the axe. He has coached at Villa, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Burnley since and landed his second job in management with Northampton Town but was sacked after relegation to League Two.

When Brian Laws was sacked as Burnley manager last season, Gray stepped into the breach for four games. He was recently released, however, as part of a Turf Moor shake-up.

Joyce, now 50, also managed to stay in football and has been Academy manager at Newcastle United since 2006.

Although a native of the north-east, he is fondly remembered at Barnsley after devoting the majority of his playing career to the South Yorkshire club.

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A gritty and committed full-back, Joyce made over 400 appearances for the Tykes and worked under four different managers – Allan Clarke, Norman Hunter, Bobby Collins and Mel Machin. He was released aged 30 but extended his career for another seven seasons at Scunthorpe United and Carlisle.

In 1999, Joyce was appointed north-east regional coach for the Professional Footballers’ Association. He replaced Jimmy Armfield as national head of coaching three years later.

For today’s highly-paid footballers, of course, there is no longer need for inductions to the licenced trade.

Armed with the money they should have banked over the years, few in the top two tiers of the game will ever need to work again.

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Rather than pulling pints in a country pub, they can simply try and pull whatever they want. Just ask Ryan Giggs.

As yet another sign of the times, the past month has witnessed the closure of the Tetley’s brewery – after nearly 200 years in Leeds – bringing the loss of 170 jobs.

During the Eighties, Tetley’s was at the forefront of a revolution in the pub trade with sales of cask ale shooting through the roof. Sales have dropped in recent years but Tetley’s continues to be produced at other sites around the country by Carlsberg, who acquired the Leeds brewery in the 1990s.

Modern-day footballers, meanwhile, risk ridicule or recrimination if they drink anywhere near as much as their contemporaries in decades gone by. Which is why photos like this, showing players stood behind a bar, are virtually a thing of the past.

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