A new biography documenting the life of Blackpool icon Jimmy Armfield has been released this week.
The life story of Blackpool icon Jimmy Armfield has been retold in a new biography - which has been released this week.
Throughout the entirety of his playing career, the England fullback represented the Seasiders, with his spell at Bloomfield Road spanning from 1954 to 1971.
After hanging up his boots, Armfield turned to management, spending time with Bolton Wanderers and Leeds United, before enjoying a lengthy career working for the BBC among other roles prior to his death at the age of 82 in 2018.
The author of the new biography Roy Calley will be conducting a book signing at Blackpool’s Waterstones on Saturday morning at 11am.
As a former radio colleague of Armfield, the life-long Seasiders fan believes it was an important story to tell to the wider world.
“A few years ago I was in a shop in Paris looking at sports biographies, and there were quite a few English footballers,” he said.
“I remember thinking no one knows about Blackpool outside of England, nobody knows we exist, so I started thinking about some of the players. I thought, well Jimmy is a name from the recent past, and realised there wasn’t a biography written about him.
“I know he’d written his own autobiography about 20-years ago, but that seemed to have disappeared off the radar.
“I worked with Jimmy at the BBC, and I’m actually old enough to have seen him play. I’ve gone through the whole range of emotions.
“I just felt that he deserved a biography, not just for Blackpool supporters, but for Bolton, Leeds, England and the people that listened to him. I hope I’ve done him justice to be honest.
“He was one of these people who saw the best in everyone all of the time. He was just a really nice guy.
“I’ve got so many memories of sitting in press rooms before matches just talking about Blackpool, and some of the moments when we travelled to Belgium and Holland for Euro 2000.
“There are two men I worked with at the BBC who mirror each other, in how I got to know them and how fond of them I became. One was Jimmy and the other one was Murray Walker, and they’re almost interchangeable in my mind.”
Setting the scene
Jimmy Armfield (Photo by Don Morley/Allsport UK/Getty Images)placeholder image
Jimmy Armfield (Photo by Don Morley/Allsport UK/Getty Images) | Getty Images
The book sets the scene with Armfield playing at the Maracanã Stadium against Brazil, before quickly switching back to his beginnings in Denton, and his move to the Fylde Coast as a child during the Second World War.
As the story progresses, it is documented how the son of a grocer became a 43-cap player for England - and the influence his background had on his character throughout his life.
“The Brazil thing was kind of interesting, I don’t recall it, I’m not that old, but the whole story behind it,” Calley added.
“He wasn’t expecting to be going there. He was meant to be playing in Switzerland, and then Walter Winterbottom came up to him and told he was going to Rio.
“Can you imagine being that age, and suddenly playing for your country in front of that crowd - it must’ve been the most nerve-wracking thing in the world.
“I wanted to grab people from the very beginning rather than a chronological life story, so they could see something really special was taking place in this man’s life.”
A love football
Jimmy Armfield (Photo by A Jones/Getty Images)placeholder image
Jimmy Armfield (Photo by A Jones/Getty Images) | Getty Images
Throughout the book, Calley paints a clear picture of the love Armfield had for both football and Blackpool, from juggling his playing career with national service to turning down opportunities in other fields.
“He had the opportunity to play a few sports,” he stated.
“He was very good at rugby union, he was a very fast runner, and he was very good at football - I also think he played cricket to a reasonably good standard at school.
“His headmaster at one of his earlier schools wanted him to play rugby, but he turned that down to play football.
“Blackpool isn’t necessarily regarded as a hot bed of football, so that he came to Blackpool, and fell in love with the town and the game, says a lot. He was football through and through.
“He was just Mr Blackpool. He had opportunities down the years to go to bigger and more glamorous clubs, and if it’d been today he would’ve been playing for one of the top teams, but he just loved Blackpool so much and never wanted to leave.
“The sad thing about it is, he didn’t win anything. He went to the 1953 cup final, and made his debut a couple of years later - that was a time where the club was at its peak but was gradually starting to fade away.
“The only thing he won was a medal for winning promotion back to the first division. Even after he retired, a month later, Blackpool won the Anglo-Italian Cup in Bologna. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
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