Roy Wood’s successful Football League career with Leeds United had its origins some years before when he was being demobbed fom the RAF.

 

Chance meetings are what make the world go round. Always have done.

They do not necessarily have desirable outcomes, but in Roy Wood’s case there was one in particular that did. It led – eventually – to a successful career as a Football League goalkeeper with Leeds United.

But first Wood had that other sort of chance meeting, one he could have done without, a bone-crunching collision on a football pitch that was nearly the death of him.

It was in the late 1940s on the Saturday before he was due to start his national service.

Wood, still a teenager, was making his way for Harrowby in the West Cheshire League, although the match on this occasion was a preliminary round of the FA Cup at Holywell Town. ‘We got beat 16-0,’ he says, ‘but, having said that, I was carried off at halftime with three cracked ribs and one nearly broken.’

On the way home Wood’s teammates stuck him in the back of the coach. They then forgot about him as they cut and shuffled their decks of cards. Behind them Wood winced and grimaced as the coach bounced along on its ancient springs.

‘When the doctor saw me, the x-rays and one thing and another, he said if that coach had gone over a decent bump I wouldn’t have been there to tell the tale. I thought, “Thank you very much”.’

The story continues. On the Monday, Wood, swathed in strapping, missed his appointment with His Majesty’s Armed Forces. Presumed to be skiving, he received visitors on the Tuesday. ‘There was a loud knock on the door and there were two Military Policemen standing there. “Where is ’e?” they asked my mother. “Well, ’e’s upstairs,” she said. “You can ’ave him.”

‘They took it all as a good joke. They had a couple of cups of tea before leaving and I went into the RAF six months later.’

It was straight after his stint in the RAF that Wood had his more desirable chance meeting.

He had just arrived back in England from the Far East when ‘I went to get my identity card changed and met an old schoolmate, Alfie Peers, who’d been in the army and was also having his card changed.

‘Alfie’s father was a director of New Brighton. Alfie said we could go and train down with the club and keep ourselves fit, which seemed a good idea.

‘And that’s how I came to play a couple of games for New Brighton in 1951 at the end of their last season in the Third Division North.’

Wood never actually signed for the club. As he tells it: ‘I only played because they didn’t want to bring their regular goalkeeper from a long way away, which would have meant them having to pay his expenses. They knew I was a keeper so they stuck me in because I cost them nothing.’

New Brighton, who had been members of the Football League since 1923, had been floundering for some time and were kicked out, never to return, when they finished bottom of the League.

Wood proved more buoyant, resurfacing two years later when he joined Leeds United where he played a significant, ever-present role in their gaining promotion to the old First Division in 1956. In fact in the three seasons from 1955-58, Wood played 125 out of 126 League games for Leeds. In all he made 196 League appearances for the Yorkshire club and played in seven FA Cup ties.

 

This is an edited extract from When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson / @hendojon published by Biteback Publishing.