LUFCTALK

NottinghamWhite wrote:We all agree Sprake is better than Yashin

Another Northern Soul wrote:

NottinghamWhite wrote:We all agree Sprake is better than Yashin

I was corrected when posting that, Phil, it was something like 'Aye aye aye aye aye, Sprake is better than Yashin' then another line ending in something like 'are gonna get a bashin''

It was just before half-time in a game at Anfield in 1967 that Gary Sprake cemented himself in football folklore. The Leeds goalkeeper had just picked up the ball. Always keen to build momentum with a quick dispatch forward to the feet of his colleagues, he shaped to throw it out to his full-back Terry Cooper. But, just as he was about to release his throw, he spotted Liverpool’s Ian Callaghan was closing the defender down. So, Sprake checked his release. But, to his eternal embarrassment, as he did so, the ball slipped out of his hands and spun comically into the back of the net.
In the days long before ubiquitous television coverage and Danny Baker’s Christmas football blooper compilations, it might have been a moment soon forgotten. Unfortunately for Sprake, the wit in charge of the Anfield PA system serenaded the half-time crowd with the latest hit by Des O’Connor: Careless Hands. It was a refrain picked up by the Kop every time Sprake touched the ball thereafter. It was hard to know what was more humiliating for Sprake: throwing the ball in his own net, or forever being associated with a Des O’Connor song.
Yet, as defining moments go, it could hardly have been less appropriate. The Welshman, who died yesterday at the age of 71, was an obdurate custodian of the Leeds net for over a decade. A brilliant shot stopper, he was also an early example of the sweeper keeper, quick to use his feet and hands to set up counter-attacking movements.
Tall, athletic, with a shock of curly blond hair, he had first caught the eye of Leeds scouts while playing for a works team in his native Swansea. He became an early fixture in Don Revie’s great side.
While at Elland Road, he won the first and second division titles, the League Cup and the Fairs Cup twice. It was in the latter competition that Sprake demonstrated quite what an asset he was. His performance in the second leg of the 1968 competition in particular, when he single-handedly preserved Leeds’s slender 1-0 lead against the Hungarian side Ferencvaros, was astonishing. Some of his saves that night, his colleague Billy Bremner remembered, defied all known laws of physics.
Revie, though, appeared never entirely to trust him. After he allowed a bobble off the Wembley turf to divert an innocuous shot from Chelsea’s Peter Houseman past him in the drawn 1970 FA Cup final, Revie replaced him in the replay with David Harvey. Harvey had no more luck keeping out the Londoners and Leeds, who had pursued the treble, ended up with nothing.
Sprake regained his place in the side over the next two seasons, but when Leeds made it back to Wembley in 1972, Revie again dropped him in favour of Harvey.
For Sprake, this was an injustice too far: he had played more than 500 times for the club and kept 200 clean sheets, a record that suggested he deserved greater respect. After publicly criticising his manager, he was sold to Birmingham City in 1973 for £100,000, a then world-record fee for a keeper.
However, a blood clot on his spine meant he barely played for Birmingham, and he retired aged 30, taking up a position in local government. He produced an autobiography in 2006. It was titled, with suitable modesty, Careless Hands.