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TONY HATELEY - FROM NORMANTON SCHOOL TO STAR FOOTBALLER

In one of a series of articles remembering Derbyshire-born footballers, Peter Seddon recalls the career of high-flying centre-forward Tony Hateley, who in the 1960s, as one of the game's household names, acquired the splendidly-corny sobriquet 'The Head Master'.

Tony Hateley in the famous red shirt of Liverpool in 1968

TONY HATELEY - Now there's a name which will ring a bell, at least for anyone with an interest in football history. If you fail to qualify on that count, you'll more than likely be asking 'Tony who?'

Yet in the 1960s, when he played for Aston Villa, Chelsea and Liverpool, he was one of the top stars in English football. Not bad for a Derby-born lad who first showed promise playing for Normanton Board School in Village Street.

Tony Hateley was born in Derby on Friday 13 June 1941. He began his junior school education at Normanton Junior School - when it was in its final days at Browning Street, off Village Street, near Stenson Road, Derby - and finished it when the school moved to its present site in Grange Avenue in 1951.

It was as a member of the Normanton Junior School side that he first began to make his mark on the football field. He was a tall boy for his age, and began as a centre-half.

He also shone at athletics, and was talented enough to win the Derbyshire Schools high-jump championship. Having acquired an ability to rise above the crowd, it was only natural that he should progress to the glamour position of centre-forward, and it helped too that he attained a height of 'six foot plus'.

Those natural gifts led to him being taken on as an apprentice with Notts County in June 1958, where the coaches worked relentlessly on further developing the seventeen-year-old's heading ability. The constant exercises and drills paid dividends, and Tony Hateley made his first-team debut for Notts County in 1958-59.

He left Notts after scoring 77 goals in 131 League games - considered a prolific return - and signed for Aston Villa in 1963. His rich scoring vein continued at Villa Park, and in October 1966 the Chelsea boss Tommy Docherty signed Hateley for what was then a club-record fee of £100,000.

He had rather a difficult time adapting at Stamford Bridge, for Chelsea liked to pass the ball swiftly and slickly along the ground, a style not suited to Hateley's aerial strength.

This gave the Pensioners' boss Tommy Docherty an opportunity to deliver two of his many celebrated quotes, acidly insinuating that Hateley's football ability 'on the floor' was not all it might have been.

Docherty suggested that his often-wayward passes should be labelled 'to whom it may concern', and of Hateley's clumsy ball control he cruelly said - 'This boy can trap a ball further than I can kick it'.

Not surprisingly, Hateley left Chelsea after only 26 League games, but the legendary Liverpool boss Bill Shankly had been sufficiently impressed to splash out a club-record £96,000 to take Hateley to Anfield in 1967.

In 1967-68 he scored 28 goals for Liverpool, including hat-tricks against Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest. Such feats made him a household name, but once again Hateley was unable to sustain his form over an extended period. It was that inconsistency which denied him the full England cap that his admirers felt he deserved.

After only a year at Liverpool, he moved to Coventry City, and thereafter became something of a football nomad. After Coventry he played for Birmingham City, then Notts County for a second time, before winding up an eventful career with a short spell at Oldham Athletic in 1973-74.

His full career statistcs with eight clubs from 1958-59 to 1973-74 comprised 434 League appearances and 211 goals. There are many strikers in football today who would gleefully accept that scoring-rate, very nearly a goal every other game.

Yet despite him having enjoyed a good career, the game's prevailing wage structure did not make Hateley a rich man. In common with many of his contemporaries he found life after football difficult to come to terms with.

After an unsuccessful effort to break into management, he settled on Merseyside and suffered a failed business venture. He then worked on Everton's lottery staff before becoming a sales rep for a Blackburn-based brewery, where he stayed for 14 years.

By 1995 when he featured in a 'Where are they now?' article he was listed as 'aged 54, divorced and unemployed'. He later remarried and by that time had also taken particular pleasure from following the the career of his son Mark Hateley, also a striker.

Between 1978 and 1999 Mark Hateley enjoyed a fine career in England, Scotland and Europe, best-remembered for his time at Rangers and for winning 32 full England caps. In all Mark Hateley played 589 games and scored 220 goals - a record which sits proudly beside his father's as part of a rare family double.

Let's finish with a couple of those mind-blowing pieces of trivia which football fans seem to relish.

The first may be quite widely-known - that is that Normanton Junior School also produced another star footballer, the late Chelsea striker Ian Hutchinson - of long throw-in fame - who was born in Derby in 1948 and died in 2002, much too young.

Anyone (like me!) knowing the second piece of trivia might arguably be advised to seek therapy. That is that in the 1980s an obscure Indie band called 'The Disco Zombies' released a mega-scarce single entitled 'Where have you been lately Tony Hateley?' This is believed to be the only pop song featuring lyrics which pay homage to a Derby-born professional footballer - unless anyone out there knows differently!

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County:  Derbyshire

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