[BITList] £100 a week

[John Feltham]

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Haynes,  John Norman  [Johnny]  (1934-2005), footballer and businessman, was born on 17 October 1934 at the Middlesex Hospital Annexe, St Pancras, London, the son of Edward Robert Haynes, printer's packer, later Post Office clerical assistant, of 3 Grafton Terrace, St Pancras, and his wife, Rose Clara, nee Newton, Post Office telephonist. Brought up in Edmonton, north London, he was an outstanding schoolboy football player who quickly brought himself to the attention of a wider audience when he starred for England schoolboys against Scotland at Wembley on 15 April 1950. The match was shown on live television, a rare event in those days, and England won 8-2. His progress was noted by Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, the latter of which he supported. He visited Arsenal with his father but decided that to go to a club with so many good players might hinder his progress. He later wrote that Highbury seemed more like the stock exchange than a football club. A fellow north London schoolboy had already signed for Fulham and that may have influenced Haynes to do the same. Fulham were a mid-table second division club, but Haynes would be a key factor in elevating them into one of the most fashionable in the capital; their followers included many of the west London entertainment set. His first two seasons were largely spent on loan to the non-league clubs Feltham, Wimbledon, and Woodford Town, before he made his debut in the football league against Southampton on Boxing day 1952. Between then and January 1970 he made a further 593 league appearances, scoring 146 league goals, 9 more in 44 FA cup games, and 2 in 20 football league cup matches.

Though right-footed, Haynes had a fine left foot and was a regular goalscorer, but it was his passing that marked him out as exceptional. He probably gave the right pass at the right moment more often than any of his contemporaries, mostly from a central midfield position. He was a master of all the distances but it was the cross-field pass from left to right, setting the wing-forward free, or the long through ball to a forward roaming clear of the centre of the opposition's defence, that were his specialities. He was a very hard worker, both on and off the field, and a supporter of coaching and a more thoughtful approach to the playing of the game, attitudes not always welcomed by his contemporaries. He was also very self-critical and could easily become frustrated not only by his own failings but by those of his colleagues.

Two defeats by Hungary and a disappointing performance in the 1954 world cup persuaded progressives at the FA to set up an under-twenty-three team to aid the process of developing a more successful national side. The England manager, Walter Winterbottom, was given more time to prepare the England team for international fixtures, and results improved. Haynes became a key player, appearing in thirteen of the sixteen unbeaten matches between November 1955 and November 1957. The death of eight Manchester United players in the Munich air crash in February 1958 disrupted the progress of the England team and thereafter they were exciting and frustrating in turn, and somewhat unlucky in the world cups of 1958 and 1962. By then Haynes had been the captain in twenty-two successive internationals and no one could have been more upset by this failure of potential.

If success at international level proved elusive Haynes was a major beneficiary of the agreement between the Football League and the Professional Footballers' Association to remove the maximum wage in 1961. The chairman of Fulham, the comedian Tommy Trinder, had occasionally joked that Haynes was worth one hundred pounds a week, and after the abolition of the maximum wage Haynes became the first English player to earn that sum, although it was only half of what he would have received if Fulham had allowed him to move to Milan. He was probably one of the first professional footballers to employ an agent and he had begun to take advantage of other commercial opportunities, replacing Denis Compton as the centrepiece of the Brylcreem advertising campaign.

Haynes's football career was severely undermined by a car accident on Blackpool promenade in 1962. He broke bones in both feet and badly injured a knee, causing him to miss most of the 1962-3 season. He was probably never quite the same player again although he regained sufficient fitness to turn out for Fulham a further 236 times. Tottenham Hotspur were apparently keen to sign him in 1963 as a replacement for John White, but Fulham refused to allow him to leave. He was not chosen for England after 1962 and it is tempting to conclude that had he not suffered serious injury he would have been the captain of the England team in the 1966 world cup, when he would still have been only thirty-one.

Haynes's later years at Fulham coincided with a decline in performance before failing crowds. He retired in 1970 and moved to South Africa, playing for Durban City other clubs, and twice being a member of a championship-winning side for the only times in his career. He later ran a bookmaking business. He was married three times: first, on 28 December 1972, to Elizabeth Ellen (Libby) Tucker, an American actress, and later businesswoman, daughter of Allen Marshall Tucker, real estate broker; second, in South Africa in 1976, to Marjorie (Marge) Green; and third (on 8 October 2004, after a partnership lasting almost two decades) to Avril Cassidy, otherwise MacKinley, nee Carnie (b. 1939), daughter of Alexander Carnie, accountant. In 1985 he returned to Britain and lived with Avril in Edinburgh, where they had a dry-cleaning and office cleaning business. On 17 October 2005 he was driving along Dalry Road in Edinburgh when he suffered a brain haemorrhage. The car veered into incoming traffic and hit a light goods vehicle. He was kept on a ventilator at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for some thirty hours, until it was switched off, on 18 October. His wife, Avril, injured in the accident, survived him. A month after his death it was announced that Fulham's Stevenage Road stand would be renamed the Johnny Haynes stand. In October 2008 a statue of Haynes was unveiled in front of the Craven Cottage gates.

Tony Mason 

Sources  J. Haynes, It's all in the game (1963) + J. Moynihan, The soccer syndrome (1966) + J. Moynihan, The soccer syndrome, new edn (1987) + The Independent (19 Oct 2005); (20 Oct 2005) + The Times (19 Oct 2005); (20 Oct 2005); (22 Oct 2005); (26 Oct 2005); (1 Nov 2005) + Daily Telegraph (20 Oct 2005) + The Guardian (20 Oct 2005) + M. Taylor, The association game: a history of British football (2008) + M. Plumb and K. Coton, Johnny Haynes: the maestro (2008) + private information (2009) [M. Plumb; K. Coton] + b. cert. + m. certs. [1972, 2004] + d. cert.
Archives  FILM BFI NFTVA, light entertainment footage
Likenesses  photographs, 1950-98, Photoshot, London · photographs, 1950-2002, PA Photos, London · photographs, 1952-68, Getty Images, London · K. Coton, bromide fibre print, 1966, NPG [see illus.] · obituary photographs · photographs, repro. in http://www.johnnyhaynesstatue.com/statue/ · photographs, repro. in Plumb and Coton, Johnny Haynes (2008) · statue, Fulham Football Club, London
Wealth at death  £54,422.22: confirmation, 13 Jan 2006, CCI