Flight to Bogota

John Leonard

Description

Flight to Bogota tells the incredible story of one of the most infamous episodes in English sporting history, when a group of British footballers turned their backs on club and country before the 1950 World Cup for a sporting El Dorado in Colombia. It was a rebellion led by first-choice England centre-half Neil Franklin. The book charts how the players were secretly lured away from Britain, amid Franklin's strident complaints of 'serfdom' in English football, their brief struggles to adapt to Colombian life and the fallout once they humiliatingly returned home to face the wrath of club and country. This escapade was a personal failure for Franklin and left his career in tatters. But the players' vociferous defence of their behaviour enlightened a shocked nation about how clubs mistreated footballers. Ultimately, it led to reforms that would financially benefit future footballing generations, but hopes of vast riches proved nothing more than an illusion for Franklin and his fellow 'football bandits' as they embarked on their 'Flight to Bogota'.

Sujets

• Bogota
• Inglaterra
• Colombia
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 07 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317491
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
John Leonard, 2020
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Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316548
eBook ISBN 9781785317491
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Contents
Introduction
1. Birth of a Rebel Leader
2. Stoking Up Trouble
3. Potters Crack
4. A One-Man Strike
5. El Dorado
6. A Mystery Correspondent
7. The Bombshell
8. Santa Fe Debuts
9. Bogot Bad Boys
10. The Great Escape
11. Franklin s Punishment
12. Quashing a Football Mutiny
13. Fallen Idol
14. El Dorado s Aftermath: The Campaign for Reform
15. Footballing Pioneer or Mercenary Rebel?
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
O N a grey May morning, a couple of families sat quietly and anxiously waiting for their train. They attracted mild curiosity from those others gathered on the platform, both men in the party recognisable to their fellow passengers. The porter was more than delighted to help these celebrities with their luggage. As far as he was concerned, their destination was London.
One of the men boarding the train was Stoke City footballer, George Mountford. The other was an even more feted player, Stoke City and England star, Neil Franklin. As he helped the footballers families load their bags on to the train, the porter would have naturally assumed they were off for a brief city break in the capital. So did everyone else gathering on the platform. It turned out they were wrong.
The station porters blew their whistles. The steam train burst back into life, next and final stop, London Euston. But, for Neil Franklin, George Mountford and their families there were to be quite a few more stops on their journey. London was by no means their final destination. It was the beginning of a more exotic journey. They were off, in their mind s eye, to El Dorado, destined to board a flight to Bogot .
It was 1950. No English football lover back then questioned the patriotic statement of the nation being without question the greatest football power on the planet. Logic dictated to every English supporter that the country which gave birth to the beautiful game of association football was without equal.
Yes, there had been the odd glitch, defeats here and there to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Much to their horror there was a loss at home to ire, the first foreign team to achieve such a feat. For English fans, it was a mere aberration to be ignored. The English FA now grasped the opportunity to confirm England s formal status as the rulers of the biggest team sport on the planet. Its players were off to Brazil for their first World Cup. But they were in for a shock, several shocks.
Much to the horror of the FA s rulers the first came even before they sent out their players to Brazil. Recognised as the greatest player in the land, destined for legendary status, the very first name to be put on the England team sheet, there was a talisman to help lead his country to World Cup glory. Yet to the dismay, indeed disbelief, of fans he chose to turn his back on his country, informing the Football Association he was unavailable for selection.
In the modern era of football, this seems to be an unthinkable scenario. Yet for England s first ill-fated World Cup finals campaign in 1950, this is exactly what happened. Indeed, he went further than turning his back on his country. As the season closed, he chose to turn his back on his club too, the one he supported from boyhood. Neil Franklin was destined to become the ultimate football rebel.
His decision to desert club and country ahead of the 1950 World Cup naturally shocked the nation. In an era when sports news rarely made the front pages, the antics of England s centre-half did so. A degree of mystery had surrounded his decision to make himself unavailable to the England team for ostensibly personal and family reasons . It turned to bafflement once word got out. He was on his way to Colombia.
Franklin s flight to Bogot , along, at first, with his Stoke City team-mate George Mountford and their families, both seeking their fortunes as footballing mercenaries, was tracked with stunned amazement. They were audacious footballing rebels, committing, for the English sport purists, an unthinkable act of treachery.
Franklin and Mountford turned up in South America, but not in Brazil to play in the World Cup, their sport s biggest team tournament, but in Colombia to take up contracts with a league outside the jurisdiction of football s world governing body, FIFA. Other top-class British footballers followed them - three other English and Scottish players - Bobby Flavell of Hearts, Billy Higgins of Everton, and Charlie Mitten from Manchester United. Swansea Town s Roy Paul, later to captain Manchester City to FA Cup Final victory, and Everton s Jack Hedley also travelled out to Colombia but, to be polite, demurred from taking up contracts.
Their act of rebellion, the flight of men quickly dubbed the Bogot Bad Boys by some, Bogot Bandits by others, arguably gave impetus to the inexorable push for changes to footballers stifling pay and conditions, the hated maximum wage and the retain and transfer system of contracts. As a result, far from the Football Association s bosses going out to Brazil with an England team to confirm the nation s self-appointed status as the greatest footballing power on the planet, they were worried men in turmoil.
Yet remarkably, as much as the actions of Franklin s Bogot Bad Boys brought opprobrium from the football establishment, there was a large degree of sympathy from a section of English fans. They acknowledged their heroes moans and groans about the maximum wage and the despised retain and transfer system of players. It was a time when, as Franklin controversially commented from his bolthole in Bogot , footballers believed they were being treated as slaves by corrupt managers and owners.
Ultimately, for Franklin in particular, this act of rebellion ended in personal humiliation and failure. Colombia turned out to be no El Dorado for them. There was no crock of gold. Promises of being lavished with riches were broken. One by one they meekly scurried home to Britain, swallowing their pride, pleading for the chance to rebuild their careers. All succeeded apart from one - the rebel Neil Franklin; a man never to be forgiven by the men in blazers at the FA.
Franklin came home to England, back to the Potteries humiliated, facing the wrath of his bosses with club and country. Still in his mid-twenties, his career ended up in tatters. A man who many fans hoped would scale even greater heights than his legendary former Stoke City team-mate Stanley Matthews was temporarily banned from playing the game he loved. Once he was allowed back, it was in Second Division football, with no prospect of a return to the England fold.
Franklin, though a villain to his shocked critics, was arguably a pioneer of the modern game. As a campaigner for justice, he was a man anxious in trying to justify the infamous flight of top-class British players to Bogot , to concentrate hearts and minds on the fight for footballers employment rights. On the pitch, as a wonderful footballer, he barely fitted the mould of the chiselled centre-half so common in his era. Franklin was a skilful player, full of artistry. Off the pitch, he was a visionary, an angry young man ready to take on the stern patricians running the English game.
How much the infamous rebel tour of Colombia by top British footballers hampered or helped the campaign for reform in the sport is open to question. The Players Union, the forerunner to the modern-day Professional Footballers Association, conducted a fierce battle, constantly threatening strike action throughout the late forties. As I will explain, those threats turned out to be hollow but the behaviour of the Bogot Bad Boys appeared to reinvigorate their campaign.
It began with Franklin and company, and led to a series of government inquiries held in secret into footballers pay and conditions, the first held just a year after they returned from Colombia. The inquiries came to nothing. Quite why, we can now deduce from the transcripts of the frosty exchanges I detail, between the unions lawyers and English football bosses.
Remarkably, Franklin and his fellow rebels never received a mention - early attempts made to wipe them from football history.
This tortured campaign ended at first in the sixties, with the England footballer George Eastham and the Professional Footballers Association chairman Jimmy Hill successfully going to the English High Court to make their case to scrap the retain and transfer system of contracts, then with a legal battle fought in the European courts by an obscure Belgian journeyman footballer by the name of Jean-Marc Bosman. Far from, as Franklin might term it, professional footballers being slaves or serfs , they were the masters.
The Bogot Bad Boys role in focusing national and international scrutiny on the treatment of professional footballers prior to the campaigns fought by the likes of Eastham and Hill is often ignored. In a sense this is understandable. Franklin and M