[...]... The career path of professional footballers 15 perhaps exemplifies the way in which professional footballers of this era were, like most working men of their generation, at the beck and call of the labour market For many professional football players, even the very best, being a terrace hero turned out to mean very little when it came to the day they finally hung up their boots 16 Terrace heroes 3 Footballers... society Footballers, in the 1930s as today, have a particular career cycle that is intimately linked with the biosocial ageing cycle, in that they can anticipate a predictable The career path of professional footballers 7 deterioration of work performance as they get older The physical demands of the professional game and the accompanying mental demands make it clear to professional players, from the outset,... 1933 onwards The living standards of those in work rose sharply However, life for those in the depressed regions of the country remained relatively unchanged, and their plight was brought into even sharper focus by the very obvious affluence in the Southeast and the Midlands, which were rapidly becoming the new industrial hub of the country Footballers as employees 17 The lot of professional footballers... upon as the sole source of income by young men aspiring to become professional footballers Then as now, entry into the professional game was very much a lottery and relatively few winners achieved the pinnacle of establishing themselves as full-time professional footballers Progression along the career path Once he was established as a contracted professional, a footballer s career in the 1930s was... all or some of their careers at the top level These were the terrace heroes who were written about in the national newspapers and football magazines However, there were many other players who were the objects of ‘hero worship’ even if only from a few thousand supporters of a small club playing in the Third Division The exploits and achievements of these heroes were celebrated every week in the local... over the Irish in 1934, as part of a forward line comprising Raich Carter of The career path of professional footballers 11 Sunderland, Ray Westwood of Bolton Wanderers, and the Manchester City pair of Tilson and Brook The legendary goalkeeper Frank Swift first appeared for the Football League in 1935, in another match against the Irish, along with two other debutants, Jack Crayston of Arsenal and Sam... being famous examples of players who developed as journalists However, the ambition of many footballers nearing the end of their playing days was to stay in the game in one role or another Going into management could seem the ideal second career, and it became a reality for many of the leading players of the 1930s The decade saw the gradual emergence of the ‘manager’, rather than the ‘secretary–manager’,... and his lifestyle; and, finally, how the media increasingly played a role in creating and promulgating his status as a terrace hero’ 6 2 Terrace heroes The career path of professional footballers Professional footballers, like members of other occupational groups, may be seen as pursuing a ‘career path’ that involves a series of complex interactions between themselves and their employers, the football... into the twilight years of their playing careers In the 1930s professional players, in the main, went through the same career cycle as their counterparts do today However, it is clear that even the leading players then had significantly less personal control over their passage through this cycle In the employment relationship between the clubs and the players the power was very much in the hands of the. .. minutes of vicarious excitement on Saturday afternoons However, then as now, there were professional footballers and there were professional footballers While the star players were able to live life to the full, at least during their playing days, there were far more professional footballers for whom the game was a much less well-rewarded occupation and, probably more significantly, a more insecure and . predictable The career path of professional footballers 7 deterioration of work performance as they get older. The physical demands of the professional game and the. the clubs and the players the power was very much in the hands of the clubs in the 1930s. The view that a professional player was a ‘servant’ of the club,