Alan Ball is a Portsmouth winner again - just like the old days

I was 14 when Alan Ball became Pompey’s manager for the first time – a couple of weeks after I’d been chatting to him on the touchline at Burnaby Road as he oversaw a Blues youth game.
Former Pompey boss Alan BallFormer Pompey boss Alan Ball
Former Pompey boss Alan Ball

On that occasion at the United Services ground he’d been tearing his hair out at his young team’s inability to put a free-kick into the box without it being cleared by the first defender.

I can’t recall if we saw the flat cap being sent hurtling to the ground that day, but the act would not have been out of place.

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Given that Bally was PFC boss from when I was 14 ’til after I’d turned 19, it’s not surprising he and his teams made such an impression on me.

And it perhaps partly explains why he won a poll of readers of this column to vote for their favourite Pompey manager of all-time.

I often write about the 80s team that took us up to the top flight at the third attempt, and when I did similar polls for your favourite defender, midfielder, winger and so on, the likes of Noel Blake, Mick Kennedy and Vince Hilaire were prominent.

It seems a good number of my readers are as old as me!

As reported last week, Jim Smith came third in this vote, Harry Redkmapp second – a very close second behind Bally.

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Now, it’s only right to share some of the comments about the England World Cup winner people made when voting for him.

Plenty who named him as their No1 would have done so because they remember that 80s team so vividly and fondly; others would have done it in honour of the little man’s feat of keeping us in the second tier at its other end when he returned for a second spell in 1998.

Of those readers who voted for Bally, the first – Tony Cook of Ryde – summed him up nicely: ‘Pompey’s best manager? It has to be Bally. For sheer passion and the fact that he “got” what Pompey was all about. He was a great man.’

Ant Coombes said: ‘Bally by a mile. So much dignity, so much class – the fact he could’ve walked into any pub in Pompey or Southampton and be welcomed with open arms says it all about the great man. Promotion and the original great escape top it off nicely.’

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Chris Clark commented: ‘Alan Ball – his passion for club and fans knew no bounds, the team he built in the 80s were street fighters just like him.’

Derek Searle is obviously in tune with reader opinion as he voted for a top three in the same order as the results of the overall vote, with the Bald Eagle and Harry behind Ball.

Derek said of his winner: ‘SIR ALAN BALL! What a guy, what a character, what a fighter, what a winner! And if he’d had more transfer money, who knows?

‘Wore his heart on his sleeve, but would talk to anybody, and we loved him all the more for it. Ballie The Best!!’

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Mick Reddington was another to explain his vote for Bally: ‘As much as I remember him from the 80s, what sticks in the memory for me is in his second spell when he risked his job during the 98-99 season by speaking out about financial problems that were beginning to set in, which ended in the club going into administration.

‘At that time Bally was thinking of his players and the staff and the fans, not himself. A true legend.’

There are many days of big Pompey news that I remember as if they were yesterday but chief among them would be each of the days when Bally was sacked, and the terrible day in April 2007 when we received the shocking news he had died.

How sad he was taken too soon – but how heartening that more than 30 years after he first arrived on the Fratton payroll, he is still in our thoughts and memories.

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So much have I enjoyed gathering and sharing praise for his managerial abilities, I am now going to turn attentions to the no-nonsense team he built during that mid-80s era.

Over the coming weeks in the Sports Mail, I will be going back to those player votes and focusing on a few of the legends that played under him.

Well if ITV can re-run Euro 96 in these strange times, I’ll be damned if I can’t go back in time to a golden age of Pompey’s.

If you have a favourite game or player from those days email s[email protected] and I’ll share it with the group!

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