Give it to Moore, He Will Score!: The Authorised Biography of Ian Storey-Moore, The Man Clough Couldn’t Buy

By Stuart Humphreys and Richard Harrison

Give it to Moore, He Will Score! is the authorised biography of footballing icon Ian Storey-Moore, Nottingham Forest' s legendary forward of the 1960s and early 70s.

Scoring more than 100 top-flight goals for Forest, he became the most sought-after striker in the land. An England international, injury robbed him of numerous caps and a place at the Mexico 1970 World Cup.

Moore' s sensational on-off transfer to Derby County for a British record fee was front-page news and left Brian Clough unable to speak to him for two decades. Joining Manchester United instead, he played alongside Best, Law and Charlton before sampling life in the nascent US soccer scene.

Here, for the first time, the authors tell the full story of Moore' s life and career, drawing on their extensive interviews with him, his personal scrapbooks and their own first-hand memories.

With Moore still a hugely popular figure among fans, his story is essential reading for Forest and United supporters, plus anyone with an interest in football history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781801506342

Book preview

Preface

by Ian Storey-Moore

Over the years I had been asked many times to write my autobiography but had always declined. After all, during my long career with Nottingham Forest and regrettably much shorter spell with Manchester United I didn’t win any silverware. Three weeks after my debut for England, I suffered a season-ending injury and missed out on going to the 1970 Mexico World Cup. Rather embarrassingly, two years later Brian Clough and Peter Taylor paraded me as their ‘new signing’ at the Baseball Ground, only for me to end up at Old Trafford. And within a year poor medical care following a freak training ground injury meant the end of my professional career. For these reasons, I have always considered myself just another of football’s many ‘nearly men’.

So, when Stuart and Richard approached me, quite by chance, and offered to write my story, my initial response was to suggest that I was perhaps a little long in the tooth to be extolling distant memories of my ‘so near yet so far’ football career. Fortunately, they persevered and I realised this would be an opportunity for me to thank all of the remarkable, dedicated and talented people who helped a shy, skinny young lad from a council estate in Scunthorpe achieve so much in the game.

In agreeing to do this book I had just one condition. My friend the late, great Jim Baxter said that his autobiography was ‘as frank as I can make it, without losing any of my friends’. While I don’t think any of my stories could ever be as wild as Slim Jim’s, it’s a sentiment I share and the authors have done all they can to respect my wish to avoid giving offence to friend or foe, living or dead.

The first person I would like to thank is a wonderful gentleman called Joe McCormack. He was a scout who watched me playing schoolboy football and saw something in me. Joe recommended me to a friend of his from the wartime RAF who was the coach at Nottingham Forest. When Forest invited me for a trial, Joe spent many an hour with me on the park helping me improve my technique and instilling some confidence in me. Basically, he started my career.

That coach at Forest was Joe Mallett. He was a nice man, quiet and measured. In the early 1960s most coaches were really just fitness trainers but Joe was an innovator, ahead of his time. Even after I had a completely disastrous trial match for Forest, he had the faith in me to invite me back for a second try. I always remember him saying to me, ‘In a game just start by keeping everything simple. Don’t try and do anything too clever. If you see a pass just give it. Don’t try and beat two or three people when it’s not on. Just ease yourself into the game and give yourself confidence.’ That was such good advice and still resonates with me.

The next person to thank would be Forest’s 1959 FA Cup-winning captain, Jack Burkitt. Jack was as hard as nails. When I joined Forest as an apprentice I was seven stones wet through. He helped build my strength and physique by really putting me through the mill in afternoon training sessions, making me run up and down the terraces and lift weights. I cursed him at the time, of course, but he soon made me stronger, quicker and fitter and helped me become a better player, for which I’m forever grateful.

So, the two Joes and Jack were a massive help to me. It was thanks to them that Andy Beattie, Forest’s manager, selected me for my debut in 1963.

Then Johnny Carey took over; another nice, measured man. I’m not sure he took to me initially but eventually I won him round. With him in charge we came agonisingly close to winning the Double in 1966/67. ‘Gentleman John’, as he was known throughout the game, deserved better than to have many of the best players in that team sold from under him. He was possibly the first Forest manager to suffer that fate but, sadly, not the last.

When I started at Forest I made many good friends, some of whom have remained just that for over 60 years now, in particular two Nottingham lads.

Henry Newton, who was already an apprentice at Forest, helped me get through that torturous first trial match. My feet were covered in blisters and I could hardly walk but Henry asked if I was all right and looked after me. He developed into a top midfield player and was desperately unlucky not to be capped by England. He was as tough as old boots, strong and won a lot of tackles, invariably passing me the ball. I still see Henry a lot, especially down at Burton Albion.

David Pleat also started a year before me at Forest but we immediately became good friends. Christmas 1961 was the first I had spent away from home and David and his parents were kind enough to invite me over for Christmas dinner. If you had asked me at that time who was going to go on and become a top-class player, it was David. He had everything – technically very good, could go past people, score goals, right foot, left foot. But somehow he drifted out of the playing side and went into management where he did very well at Luton Town and Tottenham Hotspur. David is hugely knowledgeable about the game and we talk all the time on the phone.

Of course, I owe a great deal to all my team-mates over the years. Throughout the 1960s Peter Grummitt was as fine a shot-stopper as any keeper and would have been destined for a successful England career had he not been playing in the same decade as Gordon Banks. In defence Bob McKinlay made over 600 appearances for Forest yet never won a single cap for Scotland. Terry Hennessey was pure class: a hard but fair tackler, he had tremendous positional awareness. John Winfield never let us down. Alongside Henry in midfield, Alan Hinton was technically very gifted, Barry Lyons was full of energy, and John Barnwell knew how to pick a pass. Up front Frank Wignall was always a handful and set up all three goals for my hat-trick against Everton in the FA Cup quarter-final. Big Frank was unlucky to break his leg when well set to be part of Sir Alf Ramsey’s plans for the 1966 World Cup. Sammy Chapman started out as a forward but later switched to central defence where he became an integral part of the team that won promotion back to the First Division in 1976/77. And ‘Zigger Zagger’ Joe Baker, with his ability to turn a defender and accelerate towards goal, will always be, undisputedly, ‘The King’.

A special mention goes to Peter Hindley, or ‘Tank’ as Forest fans nicknamed him. I shared digs with him. Peter had a big heart and was tough, resilient and quick. In the afternoons we used to put on spikes and just do sprints for about half an hour. I was quicker off the mark but Peter was so powerful that once he got into his stride after about 20 yards he was unbeatable. Poor old Peter died from dementia in February 2021, a sad end for someone who was a wonderful asset to that great Forest team under Carey.

Also, there was our coach Tommy Cavanagh, about whom the BBC’s Kenneth Wolstenholme said, ‘If you can survive a training session with Tommy Cavanagh, you can survive anything.’ He certainly put us through hell, but he made us as fit as any team.

Towards the end of my time at Forest I was privileged to play alongside two youngsters who were just establishing themselves in the first team, John Robertson and Martin O’Neill.

I remember watching Robbo when he was in the youth team. In my column for the Nottingham Guardian Journal I wrote, ‘I think this lad John Robertson will become a top-class player.’ I definitely got that right! Robbo’s remained a good friend to this day.

When Martin came over from Northern Ireland we became friends straight away. He was a tremendous player. He wasn’t just a passer of the ball but was prepared to take people on, which you don’t see so much in midfielders these days, and could score goals, most of them from 25 yards out, or so it seemed!

Although I only played around a dozen matches with each of them, it was nice to see Robbo and Martin go on to fulfil their potential and play such an important part in Forest’s incredible success in the late 1970s. A couple of decades later I enjoyed working with them as chief scout when they were managing Aston Villa. I still enjoy their company.

When I was chief scout at Forest I got on particularly well with Paul Hart, the best coach I had ever worked with, and Dave Bassett. Both of them had a really strong work ethic and were a huge help to me. It was such a disappointment when the outstanding teams they built were dismantled against their wishes. They deserved far better than that.

In my playing days at Manchester United it was a privilege simply to be in the same dressing room as all those legends – George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton. George was a complete one-off, of course, and he showed me the sights of Manchester. David Sadler was a lovely, down-to-earth guy. I still remember how surprised he was when I scored an unbeaten half-century in a charity cricket match against Everton. ‘Blimey, you’ve played a bit!’ was his reaction. Martin Buchan became a very good friend – another wonderful player who had a fantastic career at United. In the weeks and months following my career-ending injury, Paddy Crerand was brilliant – he went out of his way to train with me to try to help me get fit again. Tommy Docherty was good to me also and had really taken to me. It was just so disappointing how it ended.

I would like to acknowledge some of the tremendous players I came up against. Robbo always says that the 1960s and early 1970s was the hardest time to play football because the pitches were so awful and bad tackles went unpunished. A squad of the best opposition players I came up against would be more than a match for any era.

In goal it is impossible to choose between Gordon Banks and Peter Shilton, while Peter Bonetti always seemed to save his best performances for games against Forest. The right-back spot would be between Paul Reaney and Billy Bonds. Both were dogged competitors, Billy being as strong as an ox and Paul really quick for a defender. Without doubt the best left-back I played against was Tony Dunne – quick, strong, a really difficult opponent. At centre-back the outstanding partnership of Colin Todd and Roy McFarland might even keep the great Bobby Moore out of my fantasy starting XI.

My four across the middle of the park would be George Best, Bobby Charlton, Colin Bell and Peter Thompson. Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles were good players and fine off the pitch, but they really weren’t very nice to play against. It was just how Leeds were.

Up front the only question would be who to play alongside the great Jimmy Greaves. Denis Law was in many ways a similar player. Martin Chivers and Geoff Hurst played with Jimmy, of course. Mick Jones and Allan Clarke were excellent. Jeff Astle was a handful and his team-mate Tony Brown was a terrific goalscorer. Probably the best foil for Jimmy would be Peter Osgood. He had a nasty streak in him but he could make goals, score goals and was good with his back to goal.

All in all they would make quite some team – if we were ever on the same side I might have to settle for a place on the bench!

After I was forced to retire from the Football League, Ben Robinson was kind enough to hire me as player-manager of Burton Albion. We have been good friends ever since. What Ben has achieved at Burton over the last five decades has been phenomenal. I go to as many matches at the Pirelli Stadium as I can and am generously looked after by the club.

Over the years Manchester United have been very hospitable to former players like Jeff Whitefoot and me and we have always been well treated by the club.

I should, of course, mention the present-day Nottingham Forest. When people like Nick Randall, the chairman, and director Jonny Owen got involved at the City Ground they really embraced the old players and have been absolutely fantastic to me. The club invites me to every home game, which I really enjoy, and always look after me and the other former players extremely well. Jonny also helps organise the regular luncheon club where we meet up with the likes of Robbo, Frank Clark, Colin Barrett, Garry Birtles, John O’Hare and, occasionally, Paul Hart and Sean Dyche. It is a real pleasure to spend time with such a great bunch of players – nice humble people, whose company I really enjoy.

Forest’s manager, Steve Cooper, has been brilliant. He has really taken the old players on board, inviting us to visit the training ground, attend club barbecues and so on. After every match he invites us down to his office for a drink. He’s a really nice guy, a really good coach. What he has done at Forest has been amazing. I’m sure that with him in charge, the club will keep going forward.

Forest fans have always been extraordinarily kind to me. They never bore any ill will over my involvement with Derby County or for leaving as relegation loomed. I am truly humbled to be stopped in the street by those old enough to have seen me play, to see one of my goals on the pre-match video montage, and to hear hearty renditions of ‘When Ian Moore scores a goal …’ at supporters’ club evenings. They are the best.

Of course, I should thank my parents, Vic and Lily. My father was football-mad and used to take me to Roker Park and Ayresome Park, where I marvelled at the wonders of Sunderland’s Charlie Hurley and Len Shackleton and Middlesbrough’s Brian Clough. Dad was always very encouraging, took me everywhere, and watched me play on the park behind our home in Scunthorpe. With my sister Anne, my parents used to come and watch every game I played at the City Ground until they were unable to do so because of ill health. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Last, and very definitely not least, I thank the love of my life, Carol, for putting up with me. When we first met in 1963 she was more into Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, but she took pity on the shy teenager standing by the dancefloor and we’ve been together ever since. Not long after we first met, we were watching a football match on the television at her house and she said, ‘What’s that bit of paper on the pitch?’ It was the penalty spot! She enjoyed coming to the games and mixing with the other players’ wives and girlfriends. Carol has supported me steadfastly, lovingly, through all the highs and lows of my playing career and the adventures in and out of football we’ve had since then.

I hope you enjoy reading my story – our story.

Ian Storey-Moore

May 2023

Introduction

Where it all began

August 1970. Nottingham Forest versus Coventry City, the first match of a new season. An excited young Forest supporter is on his way to the City Ground with his father and brother. It’s Richard’s birthday and he is decked out in a new red shirt and white shorts. As they join the crowds walking through The Meadows towards Trent Bridge an excited teenage female voice exclaims, ‘It’s Ian Moore gone little!’ The seven-year-old has never felt so proud. Forest win 2-0 and his favourite player scores one of the goals. This has been a good birthday.

December 1971. Forest versus Double-winners Arsenal. As a Christmas treat, Stuart’s father has bought seats for him and his brother in the East Stand, in line with the edge of the penalty area at the Trent End. They watch the crowds of supporters making their way over Trent Bridge towards the ground. A quarter of an hour into the match, their favourite player receives the ball right in front of them and runs at the Arsenal defence. And runs. And swerves, swerves again, shoots and scores. Along with almost 43,000 others, they have just witnessed one of the greatest goals ever scored by a Garibaldi Red.

Down the years, Stuart and Richard, friends since their first day at school, would discuss Ian Storey-Moore’s remarkable footballing career and regret that his story had not been told in print.

February 2022. A chance encounter in a coffee shop. Stuart takes the opportunity to thank the trim 77-year-old for some of his best childhood memories and, seizing the moment, raises the subject of a biography. And, well, you have the result in your hands.

Heroes

They say ‘never meet your heroes’ for fear that the person you have worshipped from afar, perhaps for a lifetime, will turn out to be a crushing disappointment in the flesh. Happily, Ian Storey-Moore is a wonderful exception, as kind and unassumingly gentle off the pitch as he was exhilarating and supremely talented on it. He took quite some persuading to agree to us writing this book. Indeed, he did so on the understanding we would give full credit to all those who helped him not only shine as a professional footballer but also navigate his way through the vicissitudes of an enforced early retirement. Essentially, Ian is a humble and modest man who has absolutely nothing to be humble or modest about.

Moore’s career at Nottingham Forest truly spanned the club’s postwar successes. As a 16-year-old he was mentored by 1959 FA Cup winners and, a decade later, he inspired future mainstays of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s all-conquering team of the late 1970s.

His breathtaking hat-trick goal in the last minute of the 1967 FA Cup quarter-final to knock out holders Everton prompted Sir Alf Ramsey to pick him for England, his mother to faint and the majority of the 47,500 crowd to go ‘completely and utterly bonkers’.

At the height of the Swinging Sixties and continuing into the 1970s Moore was a pin-up: legions of female fans regularly voted him top of the popularity charts, ahead even of George Best.

His England debut pitted him against Johan Cruyff and the birth of Total Football.

Moore scored over 100 top-flight goals for Forest, averaging one every two games. He was the club’s top scorer in five seasons out of six.

He scored arguably the greatest goal ever seen at the world-famous City Ground and became the most sought-after striker in the country. His sensational on-off transfer to Derby County filled the front and back pages for months and left Clough unable to speak to him (at least without expletives) for 20 years.

At Manchester United he played alongside European Cup winners including the peerless Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton. Starring for one of the most glamorous clubs in the world, he was well-placed to add to that single England cap and had hopes of racking up another century of goals with his second club.

However, at the height of his playing career, Moore would fall foul of cruel bad luck (and crude foul play) which has, quite unfairly, left him with melancholy thoughts of being a ‘nearly man’. On the contrary, Ian Storey-Moore was – and will always remain – an iconic, once-in-a-generation footballer, a ‘legend’ long before that term became utterly over-used in the modern age.

What’s in a name?

As his career at Forest blossomed, Ian Storey-Moore would often be asked about his double-barrelled name. How did that fit with his roots on a council estate in Scunthorpe? Eventually, he asked – pleaded – to be called simply Ian Moore. That he preferred to drop the ‘Storey’ was somewhat ironic as that is actually his paternal family name. Only when Ian’s great grandfather died a few weeks before his grandfather was born did ‘Moore’ enter the equation, his widowed grandmother marrying a Tyneside publican by that name. Henceforth, Ian’s grandfather adopted his stepfather’s name and ‘Storey-Moore’ was born.

Throughout the book we have generally used ‘Moore’ to make it easier going for the reader.

As for the title of the book, we quickly brushed aside Ian’s self-deprecating suggestion of ‘The Nearly Man’ and decided to opt for one of the many songs and chants dedicated by the Trent End to their swashbuckling hero. It was an era unmatched for fans’ inventiveness in transforming chart hits and movie theme tunes into serenades from the terraces, so we had a lot to choose from. We describe many of them in a chapter towards the end of the book.

Never forgotten

This book is intended as an appreciation of and ‘thank you’ to one of Forest’s greatest ever players and a tribute to the team he almost helped to the Double a decade before the club’s ‘glory years’. It is also a love letter to a wonderful era that is long lost but not forgotten. The Nottingham of the 1960s when the Beatles played ‘upstairs at the Co-op’ and football fans made their way to the City Ground and Meadow Lane along Arkwright Street, lined with its kaleidoscope of small shops and restaurants. When three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon brought longed-for relief from the factories and pits.

A time before home and away supporters were segregated, when the world-class talents of George Best, Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Moore could be marvelled at for a few shillings at the turnstile. A time when football pitches often resembled ploughed fields, when bone-shattering tackles were legitimised by outdated rules and lenient referees, and when footballers, while well-paid by the standards of the day, usually finished their playing careers not knowing how they would make ends meet.

Moore also spent a decade as a player-manager in non-league football and we are delighted to shine the light on this essential part of the nation’s footballing fabric.

These are the ingredients of the fascinating life and career of Ian Storey-Moore. We thank him for refreshing our cherished memories of him, his team-mates and his era, and for allowing us to tell us his story. And we thank you for reading it.

Stuart Humphreys and Richard Harrison

May 2023

1

War baby

‘All day long all we could see were German bombers.’

Lily Storey-Moore, Ian’s mother

In September 1939 Vic and Lily Storey-Moore took in a lodger at their rented house on Mersey Road, Ipswich, a short walk from the docks. Elsie Bonnett had been sent by the authorities to the Suffolk town to help organise the evacuation of schoolchildren should the expected air raids start. They duly did.

In the summer of 1940 the Luftwaffe bombed Ipswich incessantly, devastating the dockyards and surrounding areas. Also, each day vast formations of German bombers flew overhead towards their targets in London and the Midlands. On their return journey back across the North Sea, those that had escaped the attention of the ack-ack guns and RAF fighters would jettison surplus fuel over the town. Soon Vic and Lily were forced to move to Felixstowe Road, a mile or so further away from the docks.

Before long, with no let-up in the bombing raids, the order to evacuate was given. Lily, by now heavily pregnant with her first child, escaped to the relative safety of Cheltenham.

A few months later Lily and her daughter, Anne, were allowed to return home. Along with her baby’s gas mask and favourite rag doll, Anne was put on the first available train and entrusted to the care of a soldier. Lily followed on the next train. At Ipswich railway station they were met by Vic, all happily reunited.

In 1942 the family moved again, this time to a three-bedroomed semi in Beechcroft Road in Ipswich’s Castle Hill district. There they were joined for the rest of the war by Vic’s mother, Annie, who had moved down from Sunderland, itself a prime target for the Luftwaffe.

In later years Lily would reflect that, strange as it may seem, the war had been an enjoyable time to live through: no one locked their front doors, and everyone got on well together and looked out for each other.

On 17 January 1945, a few months before VE Day, Lily gave birth to a son, Ian.

The immediate postwar years were austere, with petrol, clothes and most foodstuffs rationed as the country struggled to get back on its feet. But Vic, an architect with Ipswich Town Council, successfully applied for a new job – a promotion – and in the middle of the harsh winter of 1947 the Storey-Moores moved to Ashby, a suburb of Scunthorpe. And with that, two-year-old Ian would enjoy the most tremendous piece of good fortune.

2

Boom town

‘Not bad for a lad from a council house in Scunthorpe.’

Ian Storey-Moore

Field of dreams

Ashby had been one of five villages amalgamated to form the borough of Scunthorpe in the 1930s. Vic’s new position as chief architect of Scunthorpe Borough Council meant he had the pick of council houses to choose from on the rapidly expanding Lincoln Gardens estate.

To young Ian’s delight, 107 Lincoln Gardens was situated right next to playing fields that extended as far as the eye could see. This was where he would spend his schoolboy years acquiring and developing his footballing skills – that is, when he wasn’t playing cricket.

When the Storey-Moore family arrived in Ashby the midwinter snow was several feet deep and for weeks it just kept snowing. This did little to endear the place to Lily, who had really not wanted to move away from Ipswich, but Vic’s new job had been too good to turn down. Moreover, Scunthorpe really was a boom town as its three steelmakers – Redbourn, Appleby-Frodingham and Lysaght’s – worked flat out to make their vital contribution to Britain’s postwar reconstruction.

Number 107 was a three-bedroom semi on what was colloquially known as ‘NALGO Avenue’ as most of the residents worked for the council and, thus, were members of the white-collar trade union that represented local government officers.

By no means affluent, the Storey-Moores didn’t go short of anything. Vic’s job was well-paid and he was always able to pay his bills. Household affairs were very organised. Vic kept a box in which he set aside money for the coal, gas and rent. Everything was paid straight away – there was no credit, no getting into debt. Vic’s oft-repeated mantra to his son was, ‘Ian, if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.’ Each week he would give his wife a ‘white fiver’ – a large £5 note printed in black on white paper – for the housekeeping. Lily spent this wisely and rarely bought anything new: if the children needed a jumper, she would knit it, if a sock