Boulton’s respect for game he loves

PETER JACKSON

THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW

COLIN Boulton of Derby County stands astride the Himalayan peaks of Football League champions, the only uncapped goalkeeper to have been a permanent fixture throughout two triumphant campaigns. Winning the title against the odds in 1972 under ‘Old Big ‘Ead’ and regaining it against still greater odds three seasons later ABC, (After Brian Clough), required negotiating a perilous route through 84 matches.

Boulton, alone among Derby’s champion squads, played every minute of every one.

And now, some half a century later with his 79th birthday around the corner, he stands out for reasons which have nothing to do with his inheriting the family tradition for survival set by his father during the Second World War. Don Boulton joined the Navy at 16 the day before war broke out and was serving on HMS Galatea in December 1941 when U-boat 557 torpedoed the cruiser off the Egyptian coast with the loss of almost 500 lives.

“Dad was blown into the Mediterranean by the blast,” says Boulton, junior. “He held onto a fender from the ship for eight hours before being rescued. He found his way back to Plymouth and went back to sea for the rest of the war on HMS Bermuda.”

A policeman for the rest of his working life, Don Boulton died last month at the age of 101, the last of the few who survived the Galatea disaster. His son was back in Cheltenham last Tuesday leading the family tributes to ‘a true gentleman’ at a celebration of his father’s long life.

Boulton, junior, stands out because he moves to the beat of a different footballing drum and has done so since he finished moving to the one which earned him a place in Derby County’s greatest XI of all-time. The goalie revered by generations of Rams‘ supporters saves all his passion these days for rugby union but there’s a great deal more to his conversion than that simple statement. “I haven’t attended a football match or watched football live on TV since about 1990,” he tells me. “I despise everything about the game. I can’t stand managers who act like demented chickens and players who dive around as if they’ve been hit by exocet missiles.

“You don’t see that in rugby. You don’t see coaches behaving like managers in football or players rolling around feigning injury. Instead you see people like Rob Baxter (Exeter Chiefs‘ Director of Rugby) who supervise their squad without any show of histrionics.

“The former Derby County goalkeeper who now despises everything about game of football”

“I have so much respect for professional rugby players. They have pushed their fitness, speed and strength to unbelievable levels. When it comes to respecting the referee, they are miles apart from their counterparts in football. You do get the odd bit of back-chat in rugby which I don’t like but rugby players accept the referee’s decision. They know they’ll lose ten yards if they do. I’m totally amazed that football still refuses to introduce the same rule as a deterrent to arguing with referees.”

When Clough ruled the roost at Derby, he banned his players from even the mildest query of a referee’s decision. Boulton delves deep into the early days for an anecdote to illustrate the costly nature of breaking his master’s rule.

“We played Airdrie in the final of the Texaco Cup, a pre-season competition. If Drew Jarvie (former Scotland international) kicked me once, he kicked me half-a-dozen times.

“When he kicked me in the back, I got up and whacked him. Jack Taylor (the 1974 World Cup final referee) didn’t see it but the TV cameras did and it was all over the papers.

Cloughie had me in the following morning. He fined me 100 quid and if I’d try to protest on the grounds of extreme provocation, he’d have doubled the fine on the spot.”

Footballers following rugby, especially at Six Nations time, are not a new breed. Boulton is different in that he claims to have made a complete disconnect from the round ball game (“I don’t even read the football pages of the papers”.)

“I went to Pride Park a few years back for an occasion to mark some anniversary of Derby’s League championship team,” he says. “We were waiting in the tunnel to go out onto the pitch to be presented to the crowd and I’m standing behind Roy McFarland (former England centre half). We’re waiting by the door to the referee’s room and before the ref can open it someone is ranting in his ear. I said to Roy: ‘Who’s that shouting at the ref ?’

“‘Oh,’ says Roy. ‘That’s the assistant manager’.

“And I said: ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen in rugby’.

“Anyway after the presentation, while the rest of the lads were watching the second half, I found a quiet room back stage at Pride Park and watched a rugby match on TV.”

This coming season, like all those since his youth, Boulton will be following Gloucester RFC in the English Premiership rather than Derby on their return to the Championship. “They had a bit of a nightmare last season but Gloucester are my team,” he says. “I was born and bred in Cheltenham so I know all about Kingsholm and the history.

“But that doesn’t blind me to the fact that Newcastle and Gloucester should have been demoted to the Championship or one of them involved in a play-off against Ealing Trailfinders. Had football imposed the same restrictions, the likes of Wimbledon and Bornemouth would never have had the chance to play in the Premier League.”

Boulton’s playing days ended in a double fracture of his left leg playing for Lincoln City against Crewe Alexandra. “August 30, 1980, at Gresty Road, 3.20 in the afternoon,” he says. “I came out for a cross as I’d done a million times, collided and came down with a deafening crack. I broke my tib and fib, spent the next nine months in plaster.”

Back in the real world and out of work, he refused to draw the unemployment benefits to which he was entitled. “I was too proud to sign on the dole. So I went to work for a firm making burglar alarms, knocking on doors for 12 months which was a real eye-opener.”

When the sports equipment company Mitre learnt about his success, they employed him as a regional manager for the remaining 27 years of his working life. “The job enabled me to see Wales at the Arms Park,” he says. “What an experience that was. Barry John had retired by then but I did play with him in a charity football match at Cheltenham when I was still at Derby. Once he got the ball it was so hard for anyone to get it back that we felt like asking for another ball for the rest of us….”

Boulter remains as forthright in his views as those expressed in occasional letters emailed to The Rugby Paper. “Not everything is hunky-dory with rugby. I think the game in England should be run by people like Simon Halliday, Clive Woodward, Martin Johnson and Jonny Wilkinson.

“The international ban on players who sign for clubs outside England, like Jack Willis and Henry Arun-dell, should be lifted. It smacks of restrictive practice. It’s high time we had a rugby version of the FA Cup, one involving every club in the land. We’ve got to create more interest in the game and try something different, like a British and Irish League and Georgia being allowed into the Six Nations. We also need more of the game on terrestrial television.”

While Derby are three matches into their new season, their old goalkeeper is still warming up for his and the start of the Premiership campaign on September 20.