This post is an interview with Lee Morris about the book he wrote about Huddersfield Town players lives after football, called Where Are They Now?. He’s put a tremendous amount of effort into his book and it sounds like a cracking read.
Tell us about your book?
I have written a book called Where Are They Now? about what happened to every professional player to play a game and also every manager from 1910 to 2018. The book hopes to provide an insight into the player/manager’s Town career and then what they got up to after they left the club.
How long did it take to write?
It took a year or so to write but contains over 10 years of research.
How did you go about finding out what happened to ex-Town players?
It’s something that I’ve been doing for a very long time. For about 10 years now, I’ve been writing to former players, managers, coaches, board members and other Town related people to try and get a first hand insight into what it’s like to play for Town, manage Town or be involved with Town. This has just grown and grown over the years, so much so that I’ve probably been in touch with over 300 people and I still continue to this day.
I use every method possible to gather the information. I write letters to the players, contact the players on Facebook, e-mail the players, ask on football forums of other teams they played for, contacted relatives, asked football clubs to pass on details and even looked at old census records, birth certificates, death certificates and wedding certificates to try and get every bit of information possible.
Who was your favourite interviewee for the book?
That has to be Albert Bateman, he is the oldest living Town player. He played for the club between 1943 and 1950, that is another world to me and it was great to hear what he had to say about his time at the club. He used to work on the railways in the morning and then play for Town in the afternoons. I went to see him and he still has all the programmes from the games he played in, telegrams which informed him where the coach was picking the team up to travel to away games, newspaper articles, 100s of photos and other bits and bats. And although he’s 95 years old, he’s still bob on and has a fantastic memory.
Honourable mentions have to go to Wayne Goldthorpe, Alan Sweeney, Bob Mountain, Chris Hay, Paul Walker, Jimmy Nicholson as I know a few of them personally but some of the others also gave me a lot of information when I got in touch with them. It’s a shame that some weren’t as helpful as others but that’s the way it is!
I also managed to track down the wife of the late Billy Lynn and she was very helpful with filling in the gaps on Billy’s later life. She was chuffed to bits with the book when it was published.
Did writing this book change your mind about what footballers do after they retire?
Not really, as I always knew that footballers before a certain era had to carry on working after retiring from the game as there wasn’t as much money as there is now.
What post-football careers do you think members of Town’s current squad might have?
Schindler would be a male model wouldn’t he?! It’s a shame Jonas Lossl has gone now because I think he’d be a great Norman Wisdom tribute act!
Do you have any other Town-related books planned?
No plans set in stone but there’s ideas floating around, I won’t be revealing any ideas in case they get nicked!
Finally, how would you rate Town’s chances this season?
Mid-table, I don’t think there has been enough investment in the team and those that are still here from the PL days either aren’t good enough or don’t want to be here. There’s a couple of exceptions of course, but most of them fall into the former category.
I could bore you to tears on this but until the board actually back Siewert with some money and allow him to have his own team (and not Wagner’s players), then we are going nowhere fast.
Thanks to Lee for taking to time to be interviewed about his book. You can buy Where Are They Now by Lee Morris on Amazon.