When Gordon Milne was summoned to do National Service in 1958 and then posted to Malaysia he thought his career as a professional footballer might be over. This extract from When Footballers Were Skint tells the story of an unexpected turn of events.
Gordon Milne was showing early signs of the player he would become when his call-up papers dropped on the doormat. As he picked up the envelope military service was the last thing on his mind. He had recently made his first-team debut for Preston North End, the club for which his father, Jimmy, had played and where he was now trainer. The family lived a goal-kick away from Preston’s Deepdale ground.
Milne’s debut match was a First Division fixture at Portsmouth, but all he really remembers about it was that he was playing in the same team as Tom Finney. Given that Milne found it awe-inspiring to be in the same room as Finney, to be on the same pitch was almost overwhelming.
‘And then I got called into the army,’ he says. For the first six weeks he and his fellow recruits did basic training, ‘a six-week void,’ as he calls it, ‘when I lost contact with Preston, dropping off the perch as far as the club was concerned’.
Even so, at this point Milne had reasons to be confident his football career would not be badly affected. His regiment was based at the Fulwood Barracks in Preston and the Colonel in Chief, a Colonel Knight, was keen on sport and knew the chairman of Preston North End. Between them the two men, the colonel and the chairman, would secure Milne a local posting.
After two weeks’ leave, the recruits returned to the barracks. ‘There were big boards up on the walls with our names on them in alphabetical order and where we were going to be posted,’ Milne says. ‘And my name was on the list to go to Malaysia.’
The moment Milne saw this was his heart sank. His world was about to be shattered. He raced home, got in touch with the club, but was told: ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything about it. If your name’s on the board there’s no way we can shift that now.’
Milne was desolate: ‘Two years away, I’d be 23 when I got back. God knows what would happen then.’
He spent the next ten days being kitted out for the Far East – uniforms, including jungle greens, weaponry, various medications. Then there was a week’s leave to say his farewells before setting sail.
It was during this week that providence rescued his football career.
‘I was still living at home with my mum and dad in their terrace house,’ he says, ‘and during that week I developed a throat infection that turned into quinsy. It might have been the shock of being posted to Malaysia, but for two weeks I was out of it, I was genuinely gone, and in that two weeks my army group left.’
When he returned to Fulwood, he presented the regiment with a problem: what do we do with this guy? There’s no one left here, what do we do with him?
The solution, Milne says, was so lucky it was hardly true. Colonel Knight’s batman was finishing at that time. So the Colonel had a word, the club had a word and eventually Milne got the job as the CO’s batman.
‘For the rest of my national service I was living at home, jumping on the bike at half-past six in the morning, up to the CO’s house, put the kettle on and made sure all his kit was ready for parade, boots clean, trousers pressed, hoovered his house, which was on the Fulwood campus, made up the fire. This was like paradise. No drills, no guard duty, no anything. Just the CO’s batman. I was fireproof.’
Milne resumed part-time training, which included joining up again with his Preston teammates. In time he played his way back into the first team.
And it was because of this outcome, wholly the result of Milne’s attack of quinsy, that he came to the attention of Bill Shankly and was one of the great Liverpool manager’s earliest recruits.
(Milne went on to make more than 200 appearances for Liverpool between 1960-67 and 14 appearances for England, narrowly missing out on selection for the 1966 World Cup finals squad)
@hendojon | Jon Henderson | 'When Footballers Were Skint'