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An FA Cup finalist and Football League winner with Arsenal, Ray Daniel was one of the most revered centre halves of his generation.
He also enjoyed a successful international career with Wales — although that would end in bizarre circumstances — and his arrival on Wearside was big news in the world of football, not least because Sunderland needed to pay a record fee for a defender in order to prise him away from the Gunners.
Having been in the pipeline for a couple of weeks, the deal was confirmed on this day, with a figure just shy of £30,000 reported to have been shelled out.
The final details of the move needed to be signed off quickly due to a leak in the press alerting other clubs to Daniel’s availability, and manager Bill Murray, in the capital to personally handle the discussions, was required to remain in constant communication with chairman Bill Ditchburn back in the North East to make sure the arrangements were acceptable.
Talks were concluded on the morning of 17 June, but at the request of Arsenal boss Tom Whittaker MBE, the news was kept quiet until after lunch, although his reasoning for this wasn’t made public.
Daniel, however, had been happy to voice his opinions but because it was Arsenal policy at the time to keep such developments private, there was some surprise when in the previous November, he’d first made it known that he was keen to move on.
At Highbury since his teens, when he left his amateur deal with Swansea Town to turn professional, he’d concluded that his playing style no longer suited that of the team, but with the management conscious that the side was in the title hunt, he was asked to stay on until a replacement was found and it was only after the championship had been secured that they were willing to fully acquiesce.
Rather than bringing somebody else in, it had been decided that Bill Dodgin — who’d impressed in Arsenal’s Combination XI — would be able to step up.
This allowed Daniel to start considering his options and after a trip to Wearside where he was thought to have stayed with a Sunderland player, his mind was just about made up.
Upon heading back south, he was quoted as saying that he was ‘95% certain’ he would be joining, assuming of course his wife was happy with the decision and that terms could be agreed between the two clubs.
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Although not confirmed, it was presumed that his host had been Wales teammate and close friend Trevor Ford, and there was another connection that could’ve potentially made the area a sentimentally attractive option.
In 1950, during an earlier visit to the town, he’d made his international debut against England despite still only being a reserve with Arsenal at that point.
It was only after his first three caps that he established himself in domestic football, yet his ball skills and speed — he was said to be the fastest defender in the First Division — meant he was the ideal recruit for Murray’s flamboyant tactics.
As expected, Daniel quickly settled and became a key part of an expensively-assembled Sunderland setup, being named captain and enjoying a short stint as first choice penalty taker — although his most important goal came in open play, when he scored the winner in a 1956 FA Cup fifth round replay against Sheffield United.
He featured in two FA Cup semi-finals for the Lads, yet the money that had been paid out on transfers wasn’t enough to take the club further and turn all their promise into silverware. In 1957, things took another downward turn for the ‘nearly men’ when following allegations of financial impropriety, several board members and players were investigated by the authorities and duly punished.
Having supposedly accepted illegal payments, Daniel was one of the stars to be suspended, and whilst his ban was later lifted, there was to be no such luck on the Wales front as later in the same year, his international career was brought to a premature end.
His ‘crime’ was to be heard entertaining his teammates on a coach journey with a rendition of a popular show tune. This didn’t go down well with a religious member of the Welsh FA committee, who deemed it to be ‘music of the devil’ and therefore pushed for him to be banished from the international scene.
It was an astonishing end to a trip that had got off to a dreadful start anyway, as a World Cup qualification game against Czechoslovakia proved to be his last outing, even though he’d originally been left out of the squad due to the furore concerning the Sunderland payments scandal.
After a late call up and without adequate provisions being made for him, he arrived in Prague without any boots and was forced to borrow a pair that were yet to be broken in, causing his feet to become blistered and bloodied as the game wore on.
However, this wasn’t the first time he’d played through the pain barrier.
During the 1952 FA Cup final against Newcastle United, a broken arm meant that he’d been forced to appear sporting a prototype plaster cast, but the excruciatingly uncomfortable footwear now put the Welshman off his game and meant he was unable to perform at his best, scoring an own goal in a 2-0 loss.
Although subsequently ostracized by the men in blazers, he remained popular with supporters and went on to play at Cardiff City and back at his hometown club Swansea before moving to Hereford United, where he had a spell as player-manager.
> **William Raymond Daniel**
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> **Born:** Swansea, 2 November 1928
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> **Died:** 6 November 1997
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> **Total appearances and goals for Sunderland:** 153 + 7