It's sad to report the death of another of Coventry City's iconic players from the 1960s, Ronnie Farmer. Ron who was 86 and had been in a nursing home for some time, passed away on Saturday.
Ron was a key player in the club’s rise from Division 4 to Division 1 between 1958 and 1967 and was one of only four players to appear for the club in all four divisions of the Football League (George Curtis, Brian Hill and Mick Kearns were the others).
A skilful half back with excellent passing skills, he was signed from Nottingham Forest in November 1958 and was an important member of the team promoted from Division Four that season. Over the next seven seasons Ron was a virtual ever-present in the side with his main strength being winning the ball and feeding his forwards with penetrating passes. He also had a penchant for scoring long-range goals and taking penalties and during his City career he missed only one out of 23 spot-kicks.
Born in Guernsey in 1936, Ron was evacuated from the Channel Islands to Birmingham a day before the Nazis invaded the islands in 1940. After returning to the island five years later he made his name at the North Athletic club and later attracted the interest of Nottingham Forest. Along with his elder brother Bill (a goalkeeper) he moved, aged 16, to the mainland to try and carve out a professional football career. Bill was ten years older than Ron and won a first team place at the City Ground soon after arriving. He went on to play 58 games for Forest between 1953 and 1956 before joining Oldham Athletic.
Ron had stiff competition for a first team place but finally got his chance in January 1958 against Gillingham in the FA Cup. In the same Forest team was Scots-born winger Stewart Imlach, someone whose path would cross with Ron again later. Forest were a newly promoted First Division team, managed by the legendary former Villa player Billy Walker, and Ron had the chance to play nine league games against top opposition that season.
In the summer of 1958 Forest signed former Manchester United wing-half Jeff Whitefoot and Ron was restricted to reserve team games. In November of that year City manager Billy Frith signed him in a £6,000 double deal with goalkeeper Arthur Lightening and he went straight into the City first team in a 5-1 home win over Chester. Nemo in the Coventry Telegraph wrote: 'After a quarter of an hour feeling his way, Farmer settled down to a polished display of wing-half play and soon achieved complete understanding in midfield with (Paddy) Ryan'. His first City goal came in a 3-2 home win over Crewe when he netted from just outside the penalty area. The signings of Farmer and Lightening were a major boost to the club’s Division Four promotion hopes and Ronnie played in 26 successive games as City finished runners up and were promoted to Division Three.
In 1959 brother Bill joined him at Highfield Road on a free transfer from Worcester City but failed to win a first team place. Ronnie, on the other hand, blossomed in the higher league. The half-back line of Kearns-Curtis-Farmer became the lynchpin of the team in the early 1960s and although Jimmy Hill successfully converted Mick Kearns into a full-back, another stalwart Brian Hill became the regular right-half.
Hill arrived at Highfield Road in November 1961 at a time when Ron was on the injury list and quickly assessed the squad he had inherited. In early March Ron returned to first team action but Jimmy had largely decided the major surgery required to the playing staff and it seemed that Ron wasn't part of his longer term plans. Jimmy had his eyes on Ards winger Willie Humphries and wanted to offer Ron in part exchange for the Northern Irish winger.
A few years ago Ron described what happened: ‘I had not played for the first team under Jimmy but he called me in and said how did I fancy a move to Ireland, I want to sign Humphries and I'd like to offer you to Ards? I told him that he hadn't seen me play and anyway I didn't fancy a move to Ireland. Whenever we met he reminded me that he was going to sell me before he’d even see me play’.
Ron played in every game until the end of the season and his performances, including five goals in the last seven games, convinced Hill that he was worth keeping. In 1962-63 he was a regular at wing-half but youngsters Dietmar Bruck and Brian Hill were snapping at his heels and the manager preferred Bruck in the latter stages of the memorable FA Cup run meaning Ron missed out on the big games with Sunderland and Manchester United.
In August 1963 he became the only City defender to score a hat-trick when, against Crystal Palace at Highfield Road he scored two penalties and a stunning 35-yard free-kick past a dazed, future City goalkeeper Bill Glazier in a 5-1 victory. Farmer was ecstatic but he recalls that Jimmy Hill wasn’t impressed. Ron explained : ‘it was tradition that if you scored a hat-trick you got to keep the match ball but when I asked JH for the ball he said that because I scored two penalties it wasn’t a proper hat-trick!’ That season he played 44 league games and scored 11 goals – eight from penalty kicks – as City won the Third Division title and was voted City's Player of the season.
Ron was entrusted with taking spot-kicks soon after Jimmy Hill’s arrival in 1961 and over the next five seasons he missed only one out of 23 attempts – that was at Millwall in 1964 when a win would have virtually clinched promotion from Division Three. Farmer, worried that goalkeepers were rumbling his strategy of always hitting the ball to his right, hit the spot-kick towards the other corner but, although goalkeeper Alex Stepney was helpless, the ball hit the post and bounced to safety and the game ended 0-0. His nonchalant penalty-taking style fooled many goalkeepers. The kicks may not have been powerful but they were always deadly accurate in their execution. Ron went on to take a further eleven penalties for the Sky Blues and never missed another and holds the club record for most penalties scored.
In 1965-66 the Football League introduced substitutes and Ron became the first City player to be substituted after fracturing his cheekbone in a collision with Manchester City's Johnny Crossan and was replaced by Bruck. City missed out on promotion by one point but Ron had another excellent campaign.
In the 1966-67 Division Two promotion season there were signs that 31-year old Ron was slowing up but he played 34 games however an injury cost him his place to Brian Lewis and he missed the final memorable run-in. The club’s defence, with Curtis, Hill and Kearns still going strong, was the team’s strength and the key factor in the 25-match unbeaten run. Ronnie managed two goals, a trademark penalty in a 4-2 Boxing Day win over Rotherham and a 30-yard free-kick which ‘slithered’ past Norwich’s goalkeeper in a 2-1 home win.
%20(champions).JPG)
Ronnie remembered having a stinker in the opening game at home to Hull: 'I misplaced so many passes that I fully expected to be substituted. Nothing I did came off and I was crap but I kept running and tackling. Before the next game we had a team-talk and JH went round the room asking us how we thought we had played. I told him, "I was surprised you didn't take me off, I was hopeless", he replied, "you kept running, you kept tackling and you blocked some passes, all that was wrong was your passing and the rest of your game was fine, so I wasn't going to take you off".
In 1967 as Ron reached the milestone of 300 games for the club Jimmy Hill paid him a tribute, ‘The ironic thing is that towards the end of my first season here, he was hit by injuries and I contemplated giving him a free transfer because I had not had a real chance to see what he could do – and he was being barracked by the crowd. Afterwards I kept telling people he was our most accurate player. It is a wonderful performance by him and he has really earned his testimonial.’
In the First Division Ron played just four games, all away from Highfield Road, taking his total appearances for the club to 315. He had the honour of returning to Forest’s City Ground as a Coventry player and was one of City’s eleven heroes in a memorable 3-3 draw. One of his greatest regrets was not playing a home game in the top flight. In October 1967 he signed for Fourth Division Notts County on a free transfer. His move however cost County a few bob as Jimmy Hill insisted that they paid Ron his reward for foregoing his Coventry City testimonial. He rejoined old friends Stewart Imlach (coach at Meadow Lane) and Billy Gray (his former Forest manager) and spent two happy seasons in the twilight of his career.
In 1969 he joined non-league Grantham but soon after was lured back to Highfield Road as youth team coach. He led an outstanding crop of young players to the FA Youth Cup final in his first season including Dennis Mortimer, Bobby Parker and Alan Green and although the final was lost to Tottenham Ron was feted as a good coach. In November 1971 however he was sacked as manager Noel Cantwell brought in Tony Waiters as his Director of Coaching, three months later Cantwell and Waiters would lose their jobs.
A disillusioned Ron went to Massey Ferguson where he worked in the factory alongside several other ex-City stars and played and coached an excellent works team. He continued to live in Coventry after retiring and was one of the first members of the Former Players Association when it was formed in 2007. He continued to attend home games up until the start of this season, ironically his final game was the Forest home game.
He leaves three children, Justine, Adam and Matt.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment