Matthews’s name may have a greater resonance but Finney’s supporters feel the evidence is on their side.
Tom Finney was born in 1922, seven years after Stanley Matthews, and had a much shorter Football League career with his only club, Preston North End, than Matthews did in his two stints with Stoke City either side of playig for Blackpool.
While Matthews played from 1932 to 1965, by which time he was 50, Finney’s first Football League appearance was not until 1946, a late start imposed on him by the outbreak of the Second World War, and he retired in 1960. But his ability and personality were such that comparing him to Matthews became – and remains – something of a national pastime.
One thing that endeared Finney to his supporters was that despite the adulation he attracted he was always stubbornly grounded, discreetly pursuing his second profession as a plumber throughout his playing career. Matthews was far less accepting of his lot as a brother in downtrodden arms with those who watched him play.
The principals themselves could not always avoid being drawn into the Matthews/Finney debate. Finney would relate how he was often quizzed on it by clients while out on a plumbing job. ‘On one occasion,’ he said, ‘I remember defending Stanley Matthews’ corner while I changed the ballcock on a WC.’
The media and even academics found it an irresistible talking point. In 1946, the widely read Picture Post scrutinised the two, deciding that Finney was ‘less spectacular [than Matthews], less of an individual, less of a one-man circus. Perhaps his greatest asset is that highly developed feeling for collective play that some critics miss in Matthews.’
Much more recently the cultural historian Joyce Woolridge referred to Matthews’s quirkiness and extreme self-displine, which, she reckoned, gave him an ascetic gloss, while Finney’s image was more that of an ‘ordinary bloke’ with an exceptional talent.
In my book, When Footballers Were Skint, I talked to a number of players about the famous duo from the perspective of having played against them.
Bill Leivers, a redoubtable defender for Manchester City, came down firmly on Finney’s side. ‘He was something out of the ordinary,’ he said. ‘Everyone looked at Stan Matthews and said what a wonderful player he was, which is true, but from the players’ point of view the better player was Tom.
‘Tom was so much more versatile, equally effective playing in any of the forward positions [Matthews played on the right wing]. And he was a lovely bloke, too.’
Frank O’Farrell enjoyed the privilege, as he puts it, of appearing with Finney for Preston. ‘He never made headlines in any detrimental way to the game,’ O’Farrell said. ‘He trained and after training he’d go off with his workbag to do his plumbing. The odd cistern might be leaking or something.’
On the field, O’Farrell added, ‘there wasn’t anything you could find fault with. He had the perfect temperament. He got kicked by fullbacks at a time when wingers didn’t always get the protection they get now but he never used bad language or swore. He just showed what a good player he was.
‘He played on both wings and could score goals as well as make goals for other people. When I joined Preston he was playing at centre forward – and he was devastating.’
If he did do harm to opponents, it was of the psychological variety. O’Farrell recalled a match when Preston won handsomely at Tottenham with Finney scoring a hat trick: ‘Harry Clarke was the Spurs centre half that day and I met Harry some years later. “You remember the game when you beat us down here,” he said. “That finished my career.” Finney played against him and destroyed him. Playing at centre forward, Tom could go both ways and Harry just couldn’t cope.’
Finney was aware of the psychological damage he could cause as he demonstrated when he played against the hard-tackling Dave ‘Crunch’ Whelan, a meeting that might have been billed as the merciful against the merciless.
The occasion was a pre-season practice match when Whelan was coming back from an injury.
‘I’d played a couple of practice matches and I was getting by,’ Whelan said, ‘and then who should I be up against when Blackburn played Preston but the great Tom Finney.
‘He never took me on, though, he never brought the ball to me. He’d pass it, which wasn’t his normal game.
‘So when I was going off at halftime I said, “Tom, you’ve not taken me on at all.” And he said, “No, I’m not going to either. This is one of your first matches back. I want you to feel confident.”
‘A great gentleman. He did it the whole game. He stayed away from me, used the ball. Never went round me at all. Very professional. A great man.’
Of course, given Whelan’s reputation for clogging, Finney might have been staying out of harm’s way rather than being kind. Whelan might have reached this conclusion, too. But this was Finney and even an opponent perfectly capable of harsh thoughts was inclined to think Preston’s star man was treading the path of righteousness.
If Finney had possessed Matthews’s cussed streak – Matthews made a habit of falling out with managers – Finney would almost certainly have kept going for two or three more seasons.
Gordon Milne, who also played alongside Finney at Preston, said it was pretty obvious at the time that Finney stopped when he did because of the manager Cliff Britton. ‘Britton was a pretty dour sort of bloke,’ Milne said. ‘I think he knocked two years off Tom Finney’s career.’
Later Finney confirmed this, discarding his normal reticence in a ghosted autobiography. He described Britton as power mad and ridiculously overstrict and unsympathetic. He said it wasn’t long before he regretted his decision to retire and could have been talked into playing again. But his wife, the strong-minded Elsie, decreed otherwise.
It is hard to imagine she would have delivered such a ruling 50 years later.
Picture a twenty-first-century Elsie. She would have been on the phone to Tom’s agent demanding he get her man a lucrative transfer because his manager was being nasty to him. He could return to plumbing later on, if he really wanted.
Not everyone has taken the Matthews/Finney debate as seriously as they should. Recently this appeared on a football website: ‘Personally I always rated Albert Finney and Bernard Matthews.’
This is an edited extract from When Footballers Were Skint by Jon Henderson / @hendojon published by Biteback Publishing.