November 29th should be John Charles Day

Football rarely misses a chance to revel in nostalgia so I don't feel out of turn saying that, whenever it's November 29th — once a year — Leeds United fans should be celebrating John Charles Day. Put out the bunting, light the fireworks, join the parade through the town (it doesn't matter which town). Forget about Black Friday. It's John Charles Day, a day for Peacocks fans to remember the glory he wrought at Elland Road in blue and gold.

Some people might resist this notion. Fans who object to commemorating and singing about January 3rd — which was, if you remember the date, the day in 2010 that Leeds beat the team we fucking hate — might take issue over making a big deal about beating Brentford 3-2 at Elland Road in a Second Division match in 1952. The internet hadn't been invented then, but perhaps the journalist who suggested the anniversary, Phil Brown of the Yorkshire Evening Post, could already foresee arguments about looking 'tinpot' seventy years down the line. Rather than turning the day into a festival, Brown wrote that:

November 29th should henceforward be known as John Charles Day at Elland Road, and (discreetly) celebrated as such.

Discretion is one thing, but forgetting about it completely is another. More than seventy years later I think it's time to restore November 29th as a day in honour of arguably Leeds United's greatest ever player.

The feats being celebrated actually illuminate some of the reasons why there are arguments about King John's status as our greatest. 'Greatest' is a particular term that encompasses not only ability and its uses but also achievement, meaning Billy Bremner (and a lot of his teammates) can be called 'greater' than Charles. They played on the highest stages for a decade and won everything, while Charles did his best work for Leeds in Division Two. Another contested term, 'legend', might be more appropriate, particularly because Charles wasn't just playing for Leeds outside the limelight but back when film was rare. We don't have much footage to replay, so his feats are passed down like folk stories — as you're about to hear — making him closer to myth in our modern mind. It's why Luciano Becchio can be called a legend (or so I say, anyway). It's about what the story meant to the people who were there and whose imaginations ensure he's remembered.

What John Charles might be better called is the 'best'. I don't think any single player has come close to Charles' individual performances for Leeds. An "Adonis of a youth," in manager Major Frank Buckley's phrase, "somehow, he looked like a footballer." That's a big part of it. I'm not sure any Leeds player has ever looked more like a footballer. Flip through photos of the Revie team and you see an odd looking bunch. Look at team photos from the 1950s and your eye is immediately drawn to the handsome six-footer with the Brylcreamed hair and inscrutable expression. He was the tallest and strongest on any pitch, the player other teams would look at and think, bloody hell, I bet he's good. They were right to worry, because there was nothing Charles couldn't do. His moves from centre-half to centre-forward are part of his legend, but Leeds and Wales would play him at inside-forward too — like an attacking midfielder — and he was brilliant there as well. Charles' stats from his first spell at Leeds were 162 games in defence, 154 in attack, and 154 goals. He was so good, in fact, that at times he was blamed for low attendances at Elland Road: rather than flock to see the best player in the world, typically perverse Leodensians complained he made the rest of the team look worse.

The accusations of Leeds being a one man team, 'John Charles United', are part of what makes November 29th a special day. In fact November could be called John Charles Month. Searching for balance with an awkward group of players, this was Major Buckley's third attempt at moving Charles, who was still just twenty years old, from defence to attack. It still didn't immediately click. In the West Riding Senior Cup Final on October 8th — held over from the season before — Charles wore no.9 but kept being caught offside. He scored both goals to beat Halifax 2-1 anyway. On October 25th Buckley was persisting, in the league this time, but the Lincolnshire Echo weren't impressed by Charles' play at Sincil Bank:

Look at the position of Leeds. They are playing a stop-gap centre forward in centre half John Charles. He was certainly not their worst forward by any means but there can be no doubt that he’s better at centre half. More than that they have just paid £12,000 for Albert Nightingale as an inside left. Yet their attack was no better than that of Lincoln’s.

Charles scored, though, in a 1-1 draw, his goal coming after 'a beautiful solo run right down the middle', according to the Nottingham Football Post. The Echo's reporter conceded that Charles:

...has a disconcerting burst of speed and is not easily moved off the ball once he gets going. Even Horace Green found he could not get at the ball when Charles went through to score.

The signing of Albert Nightingale from Blackburn Rovers was helpful, as Leeds finally had a schemer who could get the best out of United's wingers and their 'stop-gap' no.9. That stop-gap was also very willing to work at his game. Clearly he had to get used to the offside trap from a forward's point of view, and Buckley told him to use what he'd seen as a defender: "You know all the tricks the centre-forwards use against you — now you can use them yourself." Charles spent hours behind the Main Stand after training, battering a ball against the wall to develop his shooting. He thought about the strikers he least enjoyed facing, who moved across the pitch dragging defenders out of position, and tried to play like them.

Buckley's commitment to his experiment was clear on November 1st, against Hull City at Elland Road, when Charles was the only forward not either moved or dropped after the Lincoln match. He scored a hat-trick as Leeds won 3-1. An equaliser was made by Harold Williams, who beat two players on a fifty yard run down the left wing before cutting inside and passing to Nightingale, who teed Charles up for a shot from the corner of the penalty area to the corner of the net. In the second half Williams put Charles through directly. 'A cracking drive', wrote the Yorkshire Post, 'which beat Billy Bly all the way and set the net shaking and the crowd roaring'; the YEP called it 'a lightning-like left-footed shot' from an acute angle. His third owed a lot to Nightingale, who arrived with a reputation for winning penalties from fouls that started closer to the halfway line, in the defenders' views — he won one of those for Charles to make it 3-1. The referee, 'Mr Paddy Power, of York, has had many better games than this', the Yorkshire Post's Richard Ulyatt said. The penalty was 'the worst decision I have ever seen him make'.

Away to Blackburn Rovers on November 8th, Charles put Leeds ahead with a 'splendidly headed goal following a corner', then got some of the treatment he had to expect now, getting a penalty early in the second half when his fifty yard solo run was well and truly stopped by Rovers' keeper Reg Elvy. Charles was too hurt to take the penalty himself and Williams' shot was saved, so the game ended in a draw after Derek Leaver equalised, breaking his nose in the process. 'Leaver should have reported to his R.A.F. unit yesterday', for his National Service, the Bradford Observer reported, 'but instead, he spent the weekend in a Blackburn nursing home'.

Leeds were away again on November 22nd, at Everton, and had to play bravely to gain a 2-2 draw. Charles scored two equalisers, the first after seizing on a defender's miskick, the second a 'kangaroo-like leap and header at a centre by Meek'. After forty minutes, though, Charles' Welsh international teammate Harold Williams was fouled — or, as the Yorkshire Post put it, 'The lightweight Williams fell to a strong tackle by Clinton, whom he had repeatedly beaten' — and was taken to hospital in Liverpool, then home to Leeds by taxi, with his left leg marred by a fractured fibula and dislocated ankle. Leeds had to hold on for the whole second half with ten players.