Bill Taylor remembered

[bill taylors apprentice]

Monday just gone was the anniversary of the passing of Bill Taylor, first team coach to the 1975 Cup final team at the ridiculously young age of 42 in 1981

Born in Edinburgh, Bill played over 120 times for Leyton Orient, Forest and Lincoln City.

I think he was brought in as reserve team coach by Bill Dodgin in 1971 before becoming First team coach when Alec Stock arrived in 1972.

His quality as a coach was recognised when he became coach to the England team of Don Revie and then moved to Man City as first team coach in 1976.

Bill was due to move into a club house previously used by Vic Halom, who had left the house in need of renovation. The club seeked temporary lodging for him until the house was sorted before his wife and family could move down to London.

This is how I got to know him, my Dad got chatting to someone from the club in his local (not sure which one) and we offered to put him up in the family home in Kingwood road for about 4 or 5 weeks.

I was still at school and during our games period at Richardson Evans (where FFC trained) he would often spot me and have a brief kick about.

I once saved 1 out of 3 penalties from him in front of the First team squad and later he gave me a shirt worn by Bobby Moore.
He was a lovely man, very dry sense of humour and he kept in touch until he moved from Fulham.

He was an unassuming man, highly thought of by those who knew him but seems to have disappeared from peoples conciousness over the years.

Until the MAF era dawned Bill was an important part of our biggest success to date and I wanted to remind you of him.

[HatterDon]

thank you for this, and I applaud your constant tribute to him in your nom-de-FofF

[Twig]

Fascinating insight.

[bill taylors apprentice]

Another thing I remember was some time after he left us he popped in to say hello one afternoon and while having a cuppa in the kitchen the door bell rang.

I went to answer it only to find Alan Mullery standing there, "is Bill here" Mullers asked only for me to say "yes, I will get him" and instead of inviting him in I closed the door on him before going to tell Bill the Captain was waiting for him.

I was gob smacked on seeing him on my door step but no excuses for not inviting him in. Stupid boy !