Remembering Sam Bartram

Sam Bartram is the subject of the latest Charlton Retro post.  Why did he never get international honours?  Did his style of play predate the modern sweeper keeper, or could he been seen as undisciplined?  https://retrocharlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/remembering-sam-bartram.html

From Bartram to Amos

Ben Amos has been Charlton's most consistent performer in my view this year and he could be in line for his first promotion with the Addicks: https://londonnewsonline.co.uk/ben-amos-happy-at-change-of-fortunes-at-charlton-athletic-and-reveals-how-trying-to-play-through-finger-injury-ended-up-backfiring/

Sam Bartram was my number one childhood hero and ever since I have been interested in goalkeepers.   Bartram's play was a bit eccentric by the standards of his day which is perhaps one reason why he never broke through into international football, although a Portsmouth fan of my acquaintance dismissed him as a 'showman'.

Ever since I have taken a special interest in Charlton's keepers.  My favourite of modern times was Dean Kiely.  His parents lived just down the road from me.   I bumped into him once at Leamington FC and introduced myself as a Charlton fan and he couldn't have been more courteous.

Actually, former Leamington keeper and barmy binman Tony Breeden was also someone I saw as being in the Bartram mould.   Not only a penalty taker (I saw him score against Wolves at Molineux), he also managed to score with free kicks and goal kicks.   Unfortunately, he blotted his copybook by breaking the nose of the captain in training.   Now playing for Nuneaton, he was sent off the other week.

The hallmark of Ben Amos's play is that of the thorough competent professional, but one who also makes some superb saves.   He is a free agent in June but he hasn't made any decisions about his future.   I think if we got promoted he would stay with the right offer which we are now capable of providing.

He also has confidence in the team in front of him.  He told Richard Cawley: 'With the squad we’ve got and strength in depth, we all know we’ve got the ability in the team to do it,” I wouldn’t say there is a feeling of pressure, it’s just what we expect of ourselves and the standards we set. We’ve blown a bit hot and cold at times after that consistent streak where we won six on the bounce. Hopefully we’ll go on another run now.' 

In times gone by

Our recent articles on David Lodge's autobiography and his recollections of supporting Charlton led a now 84 year-old supporter to write in with some reminiscences.

He recalls, 'My first visit to the Valley was on Good Friday 1939 when my father who was originally a Chelsea supporter. I was born in Brockley (Maclean Road) but we moved to Woolacombe Road, Kidbrooke in 1938 and it was within a 25 minute walk of the Valley. Not surprisingly my father chose to take me to see Chelsea on that day.'

'My memories of the game are vague but I recall Sam Bartram in goal, continually dancing up and down on his line and flicking the top of his shorts. Charlton won the game 3 –l . For this I am grateful to Colin Cameron’s tremendous Home and Away book. After the war was over I was allowed to visit Charlton on my own and I was extremely fortunate that my father was able to get a couple of tickets for both Cup Finals in 1946 and 47.'

'So my long association with Charlton commenced and was only brought to a close a couple of years ago, when, although the heart was willing the body is not and I had to call a halt from where I now live in Herne Bay despite the splendid Valley Express.'

'My memories of the post-war team are still very fresh in my memory. Apart from Sam, Charlton had some great players in 1946, twinkle toes Chris Duffy,the goal scoring machine Arthur Turner, only amateur to win a FA Cup medal of course. Don Welsh. an inspiring captain and brilliant “Sailor” Brown, Bert Turner, Welsh international who was to score for both sides against Derby County.'

'When I moved to Kent I often used to wander down to Manston and visit Bert who had taken over the Jolly Farmer public house, he was always prepared to discuss football with me!'

The team of the late 1940s and early 1950s

Here is a second extract from the autobiography of novelist and one time Charlton fan David Lodge, A Good Time To Be Born.

In 1946, Charlton got to the FA Cup Final at Wembley, only to lose ... I listened to the BBC radio commentary and was inconsolable at the end. Jimmy Seed, Charlton's brilliant manager, who had steered them from the Third to First Division in two seasons before the war, vowed they would be back at Wembley next year - and by golly they were, just like a story in one of the boys' magazines, Hotspur,Wizard and Champion.

This time they won! The FA Cup, now overshadowed by European competitions, was then the Holy Grail of English professional football, and I felt privileged to be a supporter of so successful a club.

After that peak a slow decline in Charlton's fortunes began, but I remained loyal. I no longer needed to be escorted to matches by Dad, but travelled to The Valley with a couple of friends in Millmark Grove [Brockley]. My heroes in the team were the goalkeeper Sam Bartram and the centre forward Charlie Vaughan. Bartram was a genial and virile figure, with a grin like Burt Lancaster's and dense auburn hair set off by the green woollen jerseys goalkeepers invariably wore in those days.

Jimmy Seed defined a good goalkeeper concisely as 'a gymnast with ball skills', and Sam Bartram was certainly that, but he also showed, in the instinct of his flying saves, an instinct for what transforms a game into a spectacle.

Charlie Vaughan had been a star of the amateur club Sutton United before he joined Charlton, and something of the gentlemanly amateur lingered in his deportment at The Valley. I don't remember him ever committing a violent foul or protesting against a referee's decision, and when caught offside in possession of the ball, he would place it for the opposition's free kick before retreating. His posture was straight-backed, his arms usually held close to his sides as if to emphasise that football was played with the feet, and he would have been appalled by the holding and shirt grabbing that is now tolerated in professional football. He was a good role model for a football mad boy.

After he moved to Birmingham, Lodge let his Addicktion slide. 'At some point in the 1970s, I went with a friend to watch a professional football match for the first time in at least twenty years, at the Birmingham City ground, and revived the experience of entering the unappealing back parts of a football stadium, squeezing through its stiff turnstiles, mounting a dark, dank concrete staircase, and the thrill of emerging at last into an arena packed with humming, expectant humanity, looking down on a vividly green rectangle of grass on which a contest would shortly be enacted by twenty-two brightly club athletes.'

Fortunately, he did not become a Blew and he sets out a very cogent case against egg chasing.

New book on Charlton

I invariably buy new books on Charlton, but when I learnt that a new picture book had come out, I thought that it would simply recycle some familiar shots. This proved not to be the case. Charlton Athletic: a Nostalgic Look at a Century of the Club draws on the archives of the Daily Mirror and the vast majority of the photographs were new to me. The Mirror was clearly a frequent visitor to the club in its glory dates and a lot of its photography was innovative and captured some unusual angles.

The book has a good mixture of colour and black and white photographs and just the right amount of accompanying text. Difficult to pick out favourite photographs, but the one of 'Killer' duck shooting in Kent was certainly unusual. What is more it showed him with his 'kill'. Sam Bartram fits a rather apprehensive boy with boots in his shop, no surprise given that as the text notes that what was available then was 'heel-skinning, toe-curling clodhoppers'. I also liked the shot of Sam and his family leaving The Valley for the last time.

The cover price is £25, but cheaper copies are available on Amazon: £12.99 plus postage when I looked today.

Building from the back

Part of our success in the last two seasons was due to the strength of our defence. We were a difficult team to break down. But two of our key players in defence, Morrison and Wiggins, seemed to have suffered a real loss of form. In the case of Wiggins, his injury last year was a major set back and it is not easy to get back to the former standard. Morro is more of a puzzle, but he looked as sick as a parrot against Donny, as well he might.

However, I want to focus on the keeper question. I first started watching Charlton 60 years ago and my real hero then was Sam Bartram. He had his critics at the time for being too flamboyant and too much of a showman, not qualities that were well regarded in the 1950s.

Ever since I have always been interested in our keepers. It was a great privilege to meet Bob Bolder on more than one occasion and shake his big and blistered hand. But my real hero of recent years was Dean Kiely, a great acquisition who contributed a great deal to our promotion and subsequent success in the Premier League. His exit from Charlton was not entirely a happy one. However, he is a really nice guy. His son Chris was keeper at Leamington for a while and when I saw Deano at the New Windmill Ground, he was always very pleasant to me.

This brings me to a slight digression. Goalkeepers are alleged to be a bit flakey. This certainly applied to a rather good Italian we had at Leamington who had been discovered sleeping rough on the railway station. However, it applies as much to the current keeper, Tony Breeden, for whom the chant is 'Tony Breeden, on the wing, on the wing.

The bearded Breeden ventures way out of his goal. I am not suggesting one could do this at league level, but it often spooks non-league opposition. What is more he has a powerful and accurate shot and I have seen him score from his own half. On Monday, he noticed that the opposition keeper was out of his goal. The City keeper started to back pedal when he saw Breeden advance and unfortunately Breeden's shot came off the crossbar. Nothing daunted, he tried again later from the halfway line and just missed the target.

All this is great fun, but we face a more serious challenge in the Championship What is one to make of Ben Hamer? He is a great shot stopper, but his decision-making can also be poor as we saw in the case of the 'Boro goal. Communication with the defenders does not always seem to work and he does not really dominate his area.

Some Addicks argue that Button kept him on his toes last year by providing some competition for the jersey. Nick Pope was not really tested against Bristol City, but if Hamer was injured (and some say he is carrying an injury) we would have to bring in an emergency loan. If I was the manager and I was short of money, it would make sense to economise on the reserve goalkeeper which is surely the worst job for a player in football. You must need a lot of patience and determination to keep going.

I know this is a controversial suggestion, but I would replace Wiggins by Evina on Saturday.

Centenary of changed rules for keepers

Charlton legend Sam Bartram had the reputation of being a flamboyant keeper. It may have cost him a place in the England team. In The Goalkeeper's History of Britain Peter Chapman writes, 'He was condemned as being too sensational and for playing to the gallery. His bravery in the way he threw himself at forwards' feet earned him the criticism of being "a danger to the game"'.

As well as taking the occasional penalty, part of Bartram's game was sometimes to dribble the ball up field. He would have had even more scope to play out of the goal if it had not been for a rule change affecting goalkeepers. The centenary of that rule change occurs this year.

Up to 1912 the keeper had been permitted to handle the ball in his own half of the field. One journalist proclaimed that ending this practice ‘would put an end to the gallery methods in taking a canter up the field, bouncing the ball on the ground. In future the goalkeeper would have to “stay at home”’.

Another journalist argued, ‘Many people have long held the view that goalkeepers are too pampered by the laws, and some of the sarcastic critics have suggested that the goalkeepers should be packed in cotton wool and put in a glass case. Personally, I fully agree with the protective laws that give the last defender a reasonable chance of escaping injury when making a daring save in defence of his goal.’ Remember that at this time keepers could be shoulder charged, providing their assailant kept both feet on the ground.

Some goalkeepers were, however, prone to play to the gallery and ‘have strained the patience of football followers by indulging in methods of play that are to say the least undignified and unnecessary. The goalkeeper who hugs the ball instead of promptly clearing it is asking for trouble, and generally gets it in the shape of hard knocks.’

Some keepers had ‘made a farce’ of the existing rule. ‘The sound, common sense goalkeepers need not be reminded that their duties lie inside the penalty area, and monkeying about a distance twenty yards from the goal line is not conducive to good goalkeeping.’

But how would the rule change be handled? Would referees be consistent? The view was taken that ‘common sense will impel the referee to grant full power to the kicker when a goalkeeper handles the ball outside the area Possibly our legislators might be inclined to treat the goalkeeper’s lapses from law in the mildest fashion, but until a pronouncement is made on the point, we shall probably have different awards for the same offences, and this is not desirable, nor is it satisfactory to either players, referees or spectators.’

However, the writer had considerable faith in the good sense of referees (who in those days wore blazers to show they were good chaps): ‘Referees who are worth their salt and who desire to get as near perfection in their work as possible will want to give the correct decision when they are called on to deal with a case.’

They would certainly need to do so if they came across the leading keeper of the era, Billy ‘Fatty’ Foulke. Six feet tall, Foulke weighed over 20 stone. He intimidated opponents and officials alike. If a decision did not go his way, he would storm after referees and hammer on their dressing room doors.

Peter Chapman thinks that in 'Bartram the selectors may have noticed something like the ghosr of "Fatty" Foulke looming from the grave. [Bartram was tall but not obese]. [Frank] Swift they had gone along with as an exception to the desirable rule. To have sanctioned a second showman would have risked established tradition. Protective of the nation's sterner values. Bartram was where they drew the line.'

Greatest Charlton XI

The latest issue of Four Four Two includes a special supplement on the Perfect XI for each Football League club. The line up for Charlton is:

Goalkeeper: Sam Bartram
Defenders: John Humphrey, Richard Rufus, Chris Powell
Midfielders: Robert Lee, Mark Kinsella, Scott Parker, Allan Simonsen, Eddie Firmani
Forwards: Clive Mendonca, Derek Hales
Manager: Jimmy Seed

There are one or two names from the 1950s that might have been added and there is no one from the team that won the FA Cup. Simonsen was brilliant, but his stay was a relatively short one. And is Chris Powell's inclusion a nod to his present status as manager?

Who would you include?

Christmas Greetings

To Addicks everywhere. I started Christmas Day by watching this piece of Charlton nostgalgia: Sam Bartram

It's a good job they didn't have time added on at The Valley on 25 December 1954 otherwise everyone would have been late for their Christmas lunch. 154 stoppages accounted for 28 minutes but we still beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 with all goals being scored by Eddie Firmani, the first after two minutes.

There were no matches at Christmas 1962 because of the weather. The match on 19 January against tomorrow's opponents Southampton was started in sub-zero temperatures and was abandoned after 57 minutes because of a snowstorm. One match was played in February and the next in March. The Addicks just escaped relegation from the second tier.

The last Christmas Day match at The Valley was in 1957 when we beat Doncaster Rovers in front of a crowd of 17,417, some 5,000 below average for the season. Christmas Day games were becoming less popular and we played our last away one at Huddersfield the following year.

Trains still ran on Christmas Day in the 1950s and on one notorious occasion Charlton players returning from an away game drank the restaurant car staff under the table.

I can relax this morning as our Erith-born oldest daughter is cooking Christmas lunch at her home in a Warwickshire village. All I have to do is get the car to start and up the icy slope from the garage!

Sepia memories for flat times

The Drinking During the Game blog has made the point that everything seems a bit flat at the moment. A 1-1 away draw at Tranmere is not a platform for a 'Parky out' campaign, but nor is it anything to get excited about.

The automatic promotion places seem to be slipping away from us, but then it's a much more fluid division last year. If we can claim all six points in our next two home matches, then we could be in contention again.

Meanwhile, let's look back at sepia tinged memories of better times. I have recently been reading Football Nation an excellent history of the post-war game in England. Very sensibly, the authors structure their opening narrative in part around Charlton and in particular the first proper post-war cup final between Derby and the Addicks.

They start with the story of the Glikstens taking over Charlton. Much of the story is familiar enough, but there are a few anecdotes I hadn't heard before (or perhaps had heard or read and forgotten).

Four of the six houses owned by Charlton in Blackheath so when 'Sailor' Brown returned from the war there was nowhere for him to live. He put in a transfer request. Clearly matters were sorted out somehow or other.

Sam Bartram is described as a 'Burt Lancaster type figure'. Apparently, he was once asked to test protective headgear for a crash helmet manufacturer.

Charlton were allocated just 12,000 tickets for the final, although 98,215 attended. There were no supporters' clubs to aid the distribution of tickets and no voucher system. Successful applicants had to bring their identity cards with them.

I'm off to the States tomorrow, so I will miss the game against the Daggers and will be too jet lagged to attend the one against MK Dons. If we can get six points out if them, we should be in a much better position in the league in just over a week's time.