Football: England and Ipswich star recalls a glittering career from Burston to Vancouver
Trevor Whymark tells Nick Wells how a boy from Burston became an Ipswich Town legend, played for England, beat David Beckham to the American league and what he is up to now.
After scoring more than 100 goals in the top flight of English and European football you would expect that a striker would earn his fair share of international caps.
Remarkably Trevor Whymark won just a solitary senior England cap for a 20-minute substitute appearance against Luxembourg in a 1977 World Cup qualifier.
It has been a mystery to his former Ipswich Town team-mates and supporters for years why this potent frontman, who was blessed with such aerial prowess, never added more.
But 30 years after that cameo appearance in a 2-0 win, which was ultimately not enough for England to qualify for Argentina 1978, a 57-year-old Whymark sits at his kitchen table in Alburgh, still looking athletic and lean enough to win a place in the current team, without an ounce of bitterness or regret.
His only explanation is that it was a different age, pre-Premier League foreign invasion, when the competition among English strikers was fierce.
Whymark said: "If you're an English striker in the Premier League now, you have a very good chance of being in the England squad. In those days I was up against players like team-mate Paul Mariner, ex-team-mate Dave Johnson, Trevor Francis, Kevin Keegan, Malcolm McDonald, Mick Channon and Bob Latchford; nearly every team had all English or Scottish players. You were probably battling against a dozen players. I'm just happy I have one cap. There are some great players who didn't even get 20 minutes."
But wearing the three lions on his chest and terrorising defences in the air seemed a world away just a decade before when, a small for his age, Whymark played on the wing as a teenager for village side Wortham and then Diss Town. He was spotted playing for Norfolk U18s by an Ipswich Town scout and soon started making a name for himself in the Blues youth team, or so he thought.
One night at the Saracen's Head in Diss, a curious drinker questioned why Whymark's name never appeared in match reports in the Saturday night football paper. Unbeknown to the Burston striker he was too old to play in the youth team but had been registered by the youth team manager regardless under the alias of Trevor Walsh.
Shortly afterwards a young Bobby Robson started his historic reign at Portman Road and noticing the discrepancy, offered Whymark a month's trial to win a professional contract. Eventually after three months on trial, Whymark signed his first professional contract, the day after his 19th birthday, on 30 a week basic, a big jump from the 6 a week he was earning in his office job at a Diss builders' merchant.
He made his debut in February 1970 away to Manchester City and played a handful of games in that and the next two seasons, as Robson's reign at Portman Road got off to a slow start.
But in the first day of the 1972/73 season, Whymark scored the opener in a 2-1 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford, who included the legendary trio of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law in their line-up. Finally the Robson revolution was kick-started, which would see the unfashionable Suffolk side qualify for Europe in nine of the next ten seasons.
One of the many highlights of Whymark's decade at Portman Road included scoring four goals against Italian giants Lazio in a UEFA Cup first leg in 1973.
When Town played the return leg in the Italian capital a fortnight later, Whymark was presented with a trophy to mark his achievement and unbeknown to him it was given by supporters of Lazio's bitter rivals Roma and the picture appeared in the local paper before the game.
This incident only further incensed Lazio's fiery supporters, aggrieved at losing the first leg 4-0, and Town players were met with a hostile reception both on and off the pitch in a match that was later dubbed 'The Battle of Rome'.
The striker endured a man-to-man marker who kicked, punched and spat in his hair but when Colin Viljoen netted a penalty it lit the blue touchpaper.
Whymark, who left the game holding a metal bar for protection, recalls: "I went to congratulate Colin and the Lazio keeper comes running out and along with someone else starts chasing me.
"Somebody kicked Colin, the referee didn't know whether to go: here, there or anywhere. In the end I got behind our goalkeeper David Best, who is a big lad. It must have been five minutes before it all cooled down."
The biggest disappointment in Whymark's career was missing Ipswich's historic 1978 FA Cup final victory over Arsenal after he failed to recover from a knee injury.
"It was not the nicest thing because you don't play in the FA Cup final every week," said Whymark.
"But you always think there is the next year. It's harder now, knowing I'm never going to play in a cup final."
Whymark played most of the following season but still did not have 100 per cent movement in his knee and at the age of 29 was transferred to Canadian side Vancouver Whitecaps to play in the North American Soccer League (NASL). The prolific striker had spent a decade at Portman Road under their legendary manager Sir Bobby Robson, but Whymark says he never forged a close relationship with his boss.
"We didn't have the best of relationships on a personal level," admits Whymark.
"But I think he respected me for what I could do and how I did it. And I respected him for what he's achieved and how's it done, so there was a mutual respect in football terms. I never sat down and had a conversation with him about anything other than football."
The NASL enjoyed tremendous success in the late 1970s attracting the world's best footballers, including Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff, for their swan songs
After a freak fall in training helped his knee problems, Whymark, alongside 1966 World Cup winner Alan Ball, helped Whitecaps win the league's top prize, the Soccer Bowl, in front of 64,000 fans in New York. Whymark scored both goals in the 2-1 over Tampa Bay Rowdies and says it made up for missing the 1978 FA Cup final with Ipswich.
"The city had never had a winning team until then," said Whymark.
"It was amazing scenes when we came back, the streets were unbelievable.
"We were attracting 35,000 to the stadium and they estimated half a million people on the streets that day."
The NASL collapsed in 1985 and the latest guise to try and sell the game to the Americans is Major League Soccer (MLS), with their big selling point the arrival of David Beckham to play for LA Galaxy.
Whymark has doubts that Beckham will be able to succeed where Pele and Beckenbauer failed.
He said: "I thought it was a good move for him, if it was going to be his last club.
"I think he's under the illusion that he will be able to raise the standard of soccer, as they call it. But this is about the fourth time they've tried to do it and there has always been bigger and better players than him gone out there and they have just been unable to do it."
Whymark, who had loan spells at Sparta Rotterdam and Derby County during the NASL off-season, came back to England after a second less successful season at Vancouver and finished his professional career playing for Grimsby Town, Southend United, Peterborough United and finally hung up his boots at Colchester United in 1985.
After retiring from the professional game he spent a year as player-manager at Diss Town and after a spell coaching at holiday camps and his own football schools, he started driving jobs selling poultry. The ex-England international is now a van sales driver for Crescent Farm Poultry, Brockdish.
It is hard to believe that current England stars like John Terry and Michael Owen, with their 100,000-plus a week wages, will need to work again when they call it a day.
But just like Whymark, he holds no bitterness for not winning more than one England cap and has no resentment towards today's players' lucrative salaries.
He said: "If you go back to the newspapers 30 years ago, it was same thing about the all the money we were getting.
"I earned good money compared to the era before who were playing in front of 80,000, 90,000 people, and getting peanuts every week.
"I finished the game when the first 1,000 a week players were coming into the game, like Trevor Francis. Now you're talking 50,000 or 100,000.
"Good luck to them."
* If you would like to book a coaching session with Trevor Whymark call 07796 842074.
Factfile
Name: Trevor Whymark.
Age: 57.
Family: Wife, Rita; three
children, Kim (33), Craig (31), Carl (29); four
grandchildren.
Craig is a dancer with pop band Girls Aloud.
Last CD: Send Away The Tigers: Manic Street Preachers.
Last book: Freddie Mercury: The Definitive Biography: Lesley-Anne Jones.
Must see TV programme: Hollyoaks.
Sporting hero: Former Tottenham Hotspur and Scottish international John White and England cricketer Sir Ian Botham.
Thanks to www.prideofanglia.com for easy access to statistics.
Email to a friend
Print this page Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Local pages
Looking for a...
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Diss
Thursday 02 September 2010
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 9 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 9 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North east
