Bedford Jezzard Anniversary

[White Noise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/jun/09/guardianobituaries.football

Bedford Jezzard High-scoring player and manager for Fulham FC

The Guardian, Thursday 9 June 2005 00.06


Bedford "Beddy" Jezzard, who has died aged 77, first played for Fulham as an amateur and, in the best sense, remained one, throughout his association with the club, as player and then manager.

Exuberant, fast and strong, 5ft 10in, and weighing 12st 6lb, he first played for Fulham as an amateur inside-left in the team promoted from the Second Division in the 1948-49 season. At the time, he was working as a local club secretary.

Jezzard was born in Clerkenwell, London. His first club was Watford, and after army service in India, he joined Fulham in 1948, becoming a part-time professional until the 1950-51 season, when he turned full pro. Johnny Haynes, who was to make the bullets for Jezzard to fire, had still to arrive. Fulham were relegated in 1952, but Jezzard flourished in the Second Division. In 1953-54 he scored 38 goals as centre-forward, and his reward was to be one of the lambs led to the slaughter in Budapest.

There, in May 1954, he was chosen for an England team reeling from the 6-3 humiliation by the Hungarians at Wembley in November 1953. It was a ludicrous moment at which to pitch a neophyte into his first international, and the follies of the selection committee were compounded by the ingenuousness of manager, Walter Winterbottom; England were annihilated, 7-1.

Jezzard was clearly not demoralised; he scored another 23 goals for Fulham, level with his inside-right Bobby Robson, the following season, but England chose him only once more, in 1955, against Northern Ireland, although his trauma in Budapest was preceded by a lively appearance for England B against West Germany in March 1954, when he scored three times. He was picked for the squad that contested the World Cup finals in 1954, but did not get a game.

By the time an ankle injury ended his playing career at 30, he had scored 123 league goals in 160 games. He became the club's youth coach, and nine months later, manager, immediately taking them back to the First Division. With such characters as Haynes and Jimmy Hill in the team, a manager as modest as Jezzard was needed. He nurtured the career of George Cohen, who was right-back at 19, and took Fulham to the semis of the 1962 FA Cup.

But in 1964 Fulham sold another outstanding young, home grown player, the right-half Alan Mullery, to Tottenham Hotspur. Jezzard had had enough. He retired to run the Thatched House, in Hammersmith.

· Bedford Alfred George Jezzard, footballer and manager, born October 19 1927; died May 21 2005

[White Noise]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1491335/Bedford-Jezzard.html


Bedford Jezzard


12:01AM BST 04 Jun 2005



Bedford Jezzard, who died on May 21 aged 77, was one of the most prolific goalscorers of the 1950s; such was his strike-rate that he was capped by England even though his club, Fulham, were then languishing in the Second Division.

Jezzard's anni mirabiles were between 1952 and 1956 when, fed by Johnny Haynes and Bobby Robson, he scored 123 times in 160 matches. In the 1953-54 season he claimed 38 league goals, a tally that remains Fulham's post-war record.

Strong, quick off the mark and determined, Jezzard's abilities came to the attention of the England manager Walter Winterbottom, and having scored a hatrick for England B against West Germany in March 1954, he made his debut against Hungary in Budapest in May that year.

That the side was mauled 7-1 by the Magyars was no fault of Jezzard's, and he travelled with the squad to that year's World Cup in Switzerland. He could not, however, displace a front line assembled from the talents of Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews, Nat Lofthouse and Tommy Taylor, and in the event played only once more for England, in late 1955 against Northern Ireland.

Bedford Alfred George Jezzard was born at Clerkenwell, London, on October 19 1927. He played amateur football for Watford, and, following Army service in India at the end of the war, joined Fulham in 1948. After just three matches, he was promoted from the reserves to the first team, which he helped to that season's Second Division Championship.

As now, Fulham was a homely club, lacking the resources of their London rivals. The side managed to cling on to their new status until 1952, when they returned to the Second Division. But it was the making of Jezzard. In total, he would score 154 goals (all in the league) for Fulham in 306 matches, a haul surpassed since only by Haynes and Gordon Davies. At the age of 30, Jezzard was forced to retire by an ankle injury. Soon he became youth coach at Fulham, and nine months later took over as manager. He radiated a quiet authority, and won promotion back to the First Division in his first season in charge.

As well as Haynes, the side now boasted Jimmy Hill, Tosh Chamberlain and the young George Cohen, and the team kept their heads well above water for the next four years. Although they were never title contenders, in 1962 a gallant run took them to the semi-finals of the FA Cup.

Jezzard, still in his mid-thirties, was marked out for great things; but the culture of football had begun to change, spurred principally by Hill's successful campaign against the maximum wage.

With small clubs now no longer able to prevent their talent from moving to better-paying teams, it made sense to cash in their assets, and in 1964 the directors of Fulham sold the team's rising star Alan Mullery to Tottenham.

Jezzard was not consulted, and with the club's long-serving general manager and trainer having recently departed as well, he decided to turn his back on the game. For many years afterwards he happily ran the Thatched House pub in Hammersmith

[White Noise]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bedford-jezzard-492051.html


Bedford Jezzard


Fulham centre-forward and manager


Thursday, 26 May 2005

First as a free-scoring, fearsomely pacy centre-forward, and later as a strong-willed, quietly inspirational team boss, Bedford Jezzard was one of the most influential figures in the history of Fulham Football Club. During his playing pomp as a high-velocity spearhead in the 1950s, he was a scourge of Second Division defenders and was rewarded with two England caps. Then, having been invalided out of the game by a grievous ankle injury in his late twenties, he moved into the manager's seat at Craven Cottage, guiding the homely west London club into the top flight of English football by the decade's end.


Bedford Alfred George Jezzard, footballer, manager and publican: born London 19 October 1927; played for Fulham 1948-56; capped twice by England 1954-55; managed Fulham 1958-64; died 21 May 2005.

First as a free-scoring, fearsomely pacy centre-forward, and later as a strong-willed, quietly inspirational team boss, Bedford Jezzard was one of the most influential figures in the history of Fulham Football Club. During his playing pomp as a high-velocity spearhead in the 1950s, he was a scourge of Second Division defenders and was rewarded with two England caps. Then, having been invalided out of the game by a grievous ankle injury in his late twenties, he moved into the manager's seat at Craven Cottage, guiding the homely west London club into the top flight of English football by the decade's end.

In both roles, the engagingly unassuming "Beddy" was immensely popular, and there was no shortage of shrewd observers who believed he had the potential for vast achievement in management.

However, that will always remain an untested theory, because he left the game in jarring circumstances as a 37-year-old in 1964, feeling betrayed by the Fulham board's agreement to sell the star wing-half Alan Mullery without consultation with the man who picked the team. Jezzard didn't relish the seemingly futile task of toiling to improve a club at which financial resources were likely to remain slender.

Born in Clerkenwell, London, Jezzard grew up in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, and after excelling as a footballer with the local boys' club he joined Watford as an amateur during the early 1940s. Towards the end of the Second World War he served some 18 months in India with the Essex Regiment, then returned to Croxley Green after demobilisation to become assistant secretary of the Old Merchant Taylors' Sports Club.

Having continued to thrive in local football, he was taken to Craven Cottage by the Fulham stalwart Joe Bacuzzi and signed on as an amateur. He was an instant success, being elevated to the senior side and turning professional after only three outings for the reserves. In his first term, playing at inside-left with gleeful exuberance, he helped his new employers win the old Second Division championship. There followed three seasons of struggle among the élite, operating in a variety of forward positions as Fulham strove desperately to survive against wealthier and more powerful opponents. Jezzard acquitted himself manfully but could not prevent the Cottagers' relegation as bottom club in 1951/52.

Unwelcome though demotion was, it proved a watershed in the muscular marksman's development. Back in the second grade, he could barely stop scoring, plundering 123 goals over the course of four campaigns and setting a new club aggregate record which would stand until surpassed by Johnny Haynes in the late 1960s.

Jezzard was not a subtle operator and, although he was one of the fastest central attackers of his era, he was prone to put on weight during any enforced absences from training: so much so that he was nicknamed "Pud". But he was sturdy, direct and courageous, charging through glutinous quagmires like a runaway plough. He carried a fulminating shot in either foot, he was fierce and agile in aerial combat, and his capacity for hard graft was endless.

Crucially, too, in his most bountiful years Jezzard was at the centre of a beautifully balanced inside trio, completed by the artistic schemer Haynes and the slightly more prosaic but still gifted Bobby Robson. The three meshed splendidly and Fulham duly prospered.

As a result of his club exploits, Jezzard was called up for his first full cap in May 1954, although it was a chastening experience for England, who plunged to the worst defeat in their history, 7-1 to Hungary in Budapest. Jezzard, who also made three appearances each for England "B" and the Football League, fared rather better in his second and last full outing in his country's colours, when he was involved in setting up all three goals - two for Dennis Wilshaw and one for Tom Finney - in the 3-0 home victory over Northern Ireland in November 1955.

Come the summer of 1956 he remained in the selectors' thoughts, being taken on a Football Association tour of South Africa, but that ended in footballing calamity when he suffered a severe ankle injury, after which he was never to play again.

Jezzard accepted the post of youth coach at Craven Cottage in August 1957. He proved a natural in the role and, nine months later, his promotion to replace Dugald Livingstone as Fulham boss, with the long-serving Craven Cottage administrator Frank Osborne as general manager, was a popular choice.

Jezzard inherited a talented side, but one full of colourful and disparate characters, many of whom were his friends and former team-mates. Some pundits wondered whether his old chums would take liberties, but, although they called him Beddy rather than Boss, he handled them brilliantly, continuing to foster the warm cameraderie that was a hallmark of the club.

Thus, in Jezzard's first term at the helm, he guided Fulham to promotion to the First Division. They finished only two points behind the champions Sheffield Wednesday with an enterprising team featuring the majestic Haynes, the full-back Jim Langley, the former England centre-forward turned defender Roy Bentley, the bearded inside-forward Jimmy Hill (the future players' union shop steward, successful manager and broadcaster), the winger Trevor "Tosh" Chamberlain and the new Scottish international flankman Graham Leggat.

There was a mammoth contribution, too, from the teenage full-back George Cohen, who would help Alf Ramsey's England to lift the World Cup in 1966, and the rookie wing-half Alan Mullery, destined for greater things with Tottenham Hotspur and England. Jezzard's part in the development of this pair deserves huge praise. Though he was no fire-and-brimstone motivator, he did not lack passion, and he analysed the game logically and calmly, always making the most of the limited funds at his disposal.

Now, though, came the even harder task of consolidating in the First Division, and in 1959/60 he confounded numerous prophets of doom by leading Fulham to a vastly creditable 10th place in the table. The four subsequent seasons proved more difficult, with a series of (successful) relegation battles mitigated by a run to the semi-finals of the FA Cup in 1962, a brave and exhilarating campaign ended in a replay by high-riding Burnley.

With the early-1960s abolition of the players' maximum wage having made life more difficult for medium-sized clubs like Fulham, Jezzard's job became increasingly demanding. Eventually, when the cash-strapped board sanctioned the £72,500 sale of Mullery to Spurs in March 1964 without securing the manager's agreement, Jezzard decided that his long-term future lay outside the game.

He took to running his family pub in Hammersmith, west London, for many years.

Ivan Ponting

Chance encounters can shape our lives, writes Michael Jackson. I happened to be passing the Thatched House and had half an hour to kill. Thirty years later, I am still in the neighbourhood.

A northerner, fairly new to London, I did not know that the tall, shirt-sleeved man behind the bar was Bedford Jezzard, a local hero. His quietly friendly welcome softened an air of authority. He maintained professional boundaries with the instinct of a family doctor. That was the key to his popularity and success in running a true neighbourhood pub. The quality of the pint he dispensed clinched the commitment. My next purchase was a house three minutes' walk from the pub.

People who are not pub-goers don't always understand the social importance of the institution. "I hear you wanted to borrow a ladder for your decorating," Beddy's wife Joyce said. "See that fellow at the end of the bar? He'll lend you his." At about six every evening, a blind lady had a beer while her husband read her stories from the evening paper. An elderly lady recently widowed was provided with Christmas dinner on the house.

One regular customer always looked drunk, but had actually been the victim of a stroke, and could scarcely walk. He was a Protestant from Glasgow. His voluble comments in support of Glasgow Rangers were dangerously inflammatory in our Irish Catholic neighbourhood. One day, I saw him being helped to the lavatory by a regular who sported a Celtic scarf. The duo gave me a resigned look, and pleaded in unison: "Don't tell anyone." The Thatched House in the Beddy epoch brought out the best in people.

Our local team are also Rangers: QPR. One year, they won a Wembley final. "Here we go" echoed drunkenly through the streets. A chanting crowd opened the door of the pub. Behind the bar, Beddy was pulling a pint. He looked up and quietly told them: "Not tonight, lads." They left like lambs.

[Peabody]

With this I can relate. To me, Beddy was the greatest centre forward we have ever had. I know, he was good in the old second division but did'nt play enough in the first but he was different to the likes of Tommy Lawton and Jackie Milburn, in my opinion, he read the game differently. I am surprised that the article says he was only 5' 10", he did appear taller then. All I know is that week after week, you could always rely on Beddy for a goal or two.

[richie17]

We managed to find a photo of his name over the pub door (you know, the landlord bit that all pubs used to have) for the "When Football Was Football: Fulham" book.   Well chuffed with that.

[finnster01]

The Thatched Hut in Hammersmith now. Anyone tried it recently? Nice photo gallery:

http://www.thatchedhouse.com/gallery.php?gallery=3318

[TheDaddy]

Last time i went there  must have been 25 years ago when there were two bars ! Did all the youngs beer at the time ,was my first taste of youngs special ! Cheers dave  :beer: must be dead now took me there after a very uneventful day a work.I think Bezza was still there but at that time i was unaware.

[Peabody]

Last time i went there  must have been 25 years ago when there were two bars ! Did all the youngs beer at the time ,was my first taste of youngs special ! Cheers dave  :beer: must be dead now took me there after a very uneventful day a work.I think Bezza was still there but at that time i was unaware.

After all them "Youngs" I am not surprised you were unaware.

[Peabody]

I have a question, just what made Beddy turn his back on football? I know he was upset at losing Alan Mullery to Spurs but he was quite successful in charge of the Fulham team and yet he just walked away from the whole football bit. I just wonder if anyone has any ideas?

[TheDaddy]

Last time i went there  must have been 25 years ago when there were two bars ! Did all the youngs beer at the time ,was my first taste of youngs special ! Cheers dave  :beer: must be dead now took me there after a very uneventful day a work.I think Bezza was still there but at that time i was unaware.

After all them "Youngs" I am not surprised you were unaware.

Peabody for a lad of around 18 who at the time wasnt a drinker that day was a blur the lovely creamy head on the special got me mate its not time thats got me forgetting its was beer that day!

[richie17]

I think that was the final straw.  From reading newspapers from the time Fulham in the sixties was a bit of a circus.  Tommy Trinder was a strange chairman, and Jezzard probably didn't get the respect or support he deserved.  When he went to talk about the Mullery thing he was told it was "just business" - Mullery had been sold for a fraction of his value so this wasn't exactly good "business".  

Earlier when the players confronted Trinder about using them in their comedy routine Jezzard was in "no comment" mode with the press, clearly annoyed but stuck between a rock and hard place.   Then you had various other tensions within the team, too.

In the end I think he just wanted to get out and work in his pub.

[Travers Barney]

Bedford Jezzard's Grandaughter worked behind the bar at the now overgrown and defunct BBC Sports Club in Motspur Park for a short period....lovely attractive girl who spoke fondly about her Grandfather as you could imagine.

We are the whites

[CorkedHat]

It is rare for me to disagree with my good mate, Mr Peabody, but as much as I idolised Beddy Jezzard I would have Allan Clarke before him (Jezzard, not Mr Peabody – I never saw Peabody play!)  in my all time best Fulham X1.
There was something special about Sniffer and along with Haynes and Greaves, he was the sort of player I would love to have been.
But Beddy was part of a legendary Fulham attack and he remains one of my favourite players of all time.

[epsomraver]

I have a question, just what made Beddy turn his back on football? I know he was upset at losing Alan Mullery to Spurs but he was quite successful in charge of the Fulham team and yet he just walked away from the whole football bit. I just wonder if anyone has any ideas?

i would have thought having Trinder as chairman was to do with it

[richie17]

Couple of pages I used in the book from around that time....

[LBNo11]

And the program cover for his England debut:-

[Peabody]

Thanks LB. The picture of Robson, Jezzard and Haynes. Wonder what they would be worth today?

[Peabody]

I am fully aware of the vaguaries of Trinder. In my opinion, I think he was genuinally fond of Fulham but did not have a scooby about either football or business. As for CH prefering Allan Clark, yes I can see what you are saying but if I remember correctly, was'nt Sniffer under his wife's thumb so was never going to stay with us, unlike Beddy who gave us everything.

[richie17]

surely neither anywhere near Leggat (not technically a CF I suppose)?  Jezzard couldn't score in the top division - all of Leggat's many goals were up there.

[richie17]

Thanks LB. The picture of Robson, Jezzard and Haynes. Wonder what they would be worth today?

didn't newcastle try to buy them all?