Derby County: Men who wielded the "magic sponge"

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Players may be the stars of football but the men who keep them fit are surely the unsung heroes. Peter Seddon reveals a local link to the pioneering days of injury treatment and recalls some of the men who wielded the “magic sponge” for the Rams.

Derby County trainer Ralph Hann (right) helps carry Jack Parry from the pitch after he was injured during a game

Derbyshire-born John Allison was a pioneer in the treatment of football injuries

A player being treated at Allison’s football hospital which was set up by Derbyshire-born John Allison who pioneered the treatment of football injuries

Derby County when they were Second Division champions in 1968-69 with trainer Jack Burkitt in the tracksuit

DECEMBER is when the football season reaches its half-way point. That means tired legs, niggling injuries or worse, as players battle to keep fit when the games come thick and fast.

Today’s treatment of injuries can be highly sophisticated, but football ailments are nothing new.

Since the Football League began in 1888, clubs have realised that their most valuable assets need looking after. So they have always appointed a trainer – “the pitch-runner”, “the man with the magic sponge” or “the medic in the white coat” – whatever his guise, he has always been a key man in the club.

Back in the 1890s, Derby’s trainer was Arthur Staley. There was little hi-tech equipment at the Baseball Ground then. The tools of his trade were a bucket and sponge and a Gladstone bag stuffed with bandages and preparations.

Muscle strains were treated with Elliman’s Embrocation or a fiery application named Chilla-paste, the Deep Heat of its day.

A vigorous rub-down with a coarse towel was thought to be efficacious, as were visits to Derby’s Turkish baths.

But, for anything more serious, especially ligament damage, players were often sent away to a hydropathic establishment which specialised in scientific cures.

And that’s where Derbyshire man John Allison comes in, for he was a pioneer in the treatment of football injuries, setting the trend for the modern age.

John Allison was born in Holloway, near Matlock, in 1853. As a young man, he determined to pursue a career in health care. It was said that he decided upon this after being inspired by the work of Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, whose family home, at Lea Hurst, was also in Holloway.

After studying massage in Philadelphia, in the USA, and Sweden, Allison returned to England and, in 1876, married a Belper girl, Elizabeth Robinson.

A year later, he set up in business in a modest way in Ardwick, Manchester, then had a lucky break, albeit one tinged with irony.

He was asked to treat a well-known Bolton MP and millionaire and, when his patient subsequently died, Allison was left a large legacy which he used to establish a hydropathic baths for the treatment of muscular and limb injuries.

He moved to bigger premises in Hyde Road, Manchester, and quickly became first choice of all the leading football clubs.

They dubbed the establishment “Allison’s football hospital”, but Allison himself preserved a Derbyshire link by naming the premises Matlock House. He dominated the football injury scene for more than 20 years and became a director and briefly chairman of Manchester City.

He died in Manchester on April 14, 1919, and his premises were sold in 1925.

The Derbyshire man was a pioneer figure in the treatment of sports injuries and football clubs learnt much from his methods, putting them into practice in-house wherever possible.

Ex-players began to take an interest in treatment and it became common for former professionals to join the staff as trainers, employed not only to put players through their paces but also to attend to injuries.

Thus were born the “men of the magic sponge”.

One of the first at Derby County was Arthur Latham, who played right-back for the Rams in their early Football League days.

By the mid-1890s, he had become the trainer and continued in the role until 1919. That was typical, for while players and managers come and go at an alarming rate, a trainer often stays with one club for many years.

Most of Derby County’s trainers are little-recognised now. Laurie Edwards dominated the 1920s and early 1930s; then it was Dave Willis, a real tough nut who had played for Newcastle United and Sunderland before the First World War.

He was around when Derby won the FA Cup in 1946 but reminiscences suggest that few of the players liked him.

Both men were assisted by Bill Bromage, one of a celebrated football family from Derby, who appears on countless team photographs between the wars in his trademark roll-neck sweater.

Bromage was with Derby County for something like 20 years. After the war came Jack Poole, who was assisted by the former Derby striker Jack Bowers, a prolific scorer who, in 1930-31, bagged 37 League goals in the season, still a joint club record.

Both men were popular with the players, as was the next first-team trainer, the first who may be widely remembered by current Rams fans – although only the older ones.

He was Ralph Hann, another North-Easterner, who had played wing-half for Newcastle United before joining Derby as a player in 1932.

He played 120 games for the Rams up to the war and rejoined them as trainer in 1953.

Again it was a long association. Hann stayed until 1967, when one of Brian Clough’s infamous clear-outs saw him lose his job in unhappy circumstances.

Clough replaced him with Jack Burkittt, who had captained Derby’s rivals Nottingham Forest to FA Cup success in 1959.

He is the forgotten man of the Clough-Taylor era. When Derby County famously won the Second Division championship in 1968-69, Burkitt was trainer but suffered ill health and stood down under some duress.

Jack Burkitt died in September 2003, aged 77.

Brian Clough knew exactly who he wanted as replacement – the man who had coached both himself and Taylor at Middlesbrough.

He was by then trainer at Blackburn Rovers but, in the summer of 1969, Cloughie got his man – the legendary Jimmy Gordon.

Jimmy was born in the North-East in 1915 (there is a geographical pattern here) and, as a tough little wing-half, he played 132 League games for Newcastle from 1934-38.

He followed that with 231 for Middlesbrough from 1946-53, becoming one of the legends of the Teeside club. Who could forget his dapper track-suited figure running on to attend to stricken players?

Gordon was the sponge-man for Derby’s League Championship winning side of 1971-72 but, when Brian Clough left Derby, he loyally followed the boss, ending up at Nottingham Forest in 1975, where he enjoyed success all over again.

Jimmy Gordon died at his home in Derby in 1996.

His departure to Nottingham cleared the way for another legend-in-the-making to assume the role of first-team trainer and, under new manager Dave Mackay, he calmly coaxed his charges to the 1974-75 League Championship.

He too was a Gordon who had arrived at the club in 1968.

A former Rams reserve team player, Gordon Guthrie had learnt all about physiotherapy after his own playing career had been cruelly cut short by a knee injury.

At Clough’s request he had rejoined the club, serving as second-team trainer before his opportunity came. In 1988, he was given a testimonial match against Aston Villa for clocking up 20 years’ service and he is still on the bench now as kit manager! In 2005, he was the recipient of the first ever Brian Clough award for “services to the club”. Who would dare ask “Gordy” to step down? Just think what he knows for a start!

All the Rams’ trainers have made players wince with pain, but each has had his own successes, keeping up players’ spirits when things looked bleak.

Treatments have changed. The hot and cold plunge techniques favoured by John Allison and used well into the 1960s now seem quaint. But the special place of the physio remains crucial to success.

Derby County’s current head physiotherapist is Andrew Balderston, who followed manager Billy Davies from Preston North End.

With old hand Gordon Guthrie at his side on the bench, who is to say that the current squad might not be nursed into the Premiership?

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