The only thing peers did in July 1973 was wear ostentatious red dressing gowns and occasionally vote in the House of Lords. By the end of the football season nine months later, peers held the key to the sport’s most coveted new individual prize.
The Football Writers’ Association (FWA) had been voting for the country’s best player for 26 years, but those who did the on-field heavy lifting each week weren’t entrusted with such significant responsibility. That was until PFA secretary Cliff Lloyd and chairman Derek Dougan combined forces in 1973-74.
In the previous decade, the players’ union had won notable High Court cases to abolish the £20 maximum wage and require freedom of contract, thanks to former players Jimmy Hill and George Eastham respectively. Now Dougan, a Wolves forward who espoused collective players’ rights, wanted to promote the image of footballers in a more creative way. Naturally, that involved Norman Hunter dressed in a frilly-fronted pastel dinner shirt, to match lamb-chop sideburns, on stage at a Park Lane hotel as the PFA’s first Players’ Player of the Year.
“The footballer’s image as a thick-headed yokel who needs constant discipline and cannot be trusted to manage his affairs is a distant throwback,” declared a beaming Dougan that evening. “Anyone who doubts the social progress of the modern footballer has only to switch on the Player of the Year Awards on television – without doubt, the best night on the sporting calendar.”
Hunter’s crowning as the inaugural PFA winner felt instructive.
