RoystonFoote'snephew Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Just heard that Frank Worthington has died aged 72. He was truly one of my favourite players when I was a kid, being on of the most skilful big men I ever saw. A bit of a maverick but a true entertainer I well remember him scoring against us in Huddersfield's promotion to the old 1st Division. Many suppoorters of the many clubs he played for will be very sad today. RIP Frank. Heartfelt condolences to family, friends and football fans everywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick jones of hereford Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 RIP Frank, he was a real character. When I was at Leicester Uni back in the early 70’s he was known to have an occasional lunchtime drink or two before a match... and still played the most fabulous football. Amazing skills. sad loss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciderhead433 Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Had a drink with him in the Waterfront when he played for Preston. RIP to a great footballer and character Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davefevs Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 RIP Frank - maverick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curr Avon Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 A real entertainer and great goal scorer. Including this wonder strike for Bolton against Ipswich. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweeneys Penalties Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 17 minutes ago, Curr Avon said: A real entertainer and great goal scorer. Including this wonder strike for Bolton against Ipswich. so good even the Ref applauded Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Offside Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Another iconic figure gone. RIP Frank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tin Soldier Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 RIP Frank Worthington, my boyhood hero. The best left foot I have ever seen at Ashton Gate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BTRFTG Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Frank was one of the reasons I fell in love with football. Immensely talented but more importantly one of those entertainers one wanted to watch irrespective for whom they played. His biography ( One Hump or Two?) is as much scream as the screamers he blasted in from all angles. Frank was the personification of all the good things missing from football these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 47 minutes ago, Sweeneys Penalties said: so good even the Ref applauded can you imagine the grief a ref would get now?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Rollason Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 absolute Rolls Royce of a footballer.rip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TedsHeadIs Red Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 47 minutes ago, GasDestroyer said: RIP Frank Worthington, my boyhood hero. The best left foot I have ever seen at Ashton Gate. Apart from Alan Walsh, but RIP Frank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingswood Robin Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 That's sad news, what a character. Along with Peter Lorimer, scored the types of goals that made you want to watch football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garland-sweden Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 RIP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tin Soldier Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 1 hour ago, TedsHeadIs Red said: Apart from Alan Walsh, but RIP Frank. Walshy was good also but Frank had the ex factor about his game. I remember watching Frank Worthington at AG on the left playing for Bolton and he was putting it on a sixpence time and time again as he switched play from the left to the right. Sadly missed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Geoff Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Always remember the intro to The Big Match on Sunday afternoons. The music started and Frank came onto the pitch juggling a ball...... and as for that goal vs Ipswich an entertainer in every way. RIP Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
italian dave Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 As others have said, one of the reasons I fell in love with football. A real entertainer who could do things no-one else would even have the audacity to try. RIP Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grem Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Entertainer off the field too. Used to buy Shoot magazine regularly and remember his creative answers in the “Focus On” section. One springs to mind. Q Most Difficult Opponent? A My ex Wife Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malago Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 In 1972 Frank Worthington was about to sign for Liverpool for £150,000 when the club doctor checked his blood pressure as a formality. As the dial shot up, Liverpool’s manager, Bill Shankly, stroked his chin. “Aye son, it’s just tension.” He thought Worthington was overwhelmed with excitement at joining the Reds and told him to take a holiday in Majorca and come back. Over the next two weeks of his Balearic escapade, Worthington (who was dating Miss GB at the time) had an encounter with a woman he met on the flight, a threesome with a Swedish mother and daughter and a romp with a Belgian model. On his return to Liverpool the blood pressure dial shot up to maximum again. The maverick Yorkshireman, who looked like David Niven, wore cowboy boots and drove a Ford Mustang, signed for Leicester City instead for a more modest fee. Some months later he lined up for Leicester at Chelsea, whose star guest that day was Raquel Welch. As Chelsea stars clamoured in vain for the Hollywood siren’s phone number after the match, Worthington sold them the sort of dummy he was famous for on the pitch and whisked Welch off to a nightclub. “She tried to kiss me on the dance floor,” recalled Worthington. “Happily, I didn’t have my moustache at the time. She wore the tightest jeans I have ever seen.” Worthington was obsessed by Elvis but seldom lonesome on any night. He approached football as principally an entertainment business while abiding by a credo of three Bs: “birds, booze and the beautiful game”. As such, he belonged to an elite club of good-looking, shaggy-haired English footballers in the Seventies, including Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles and Alan Hudson, who graced the game with their skills but were largely left out of the national team as stories of their off-field antics preceded them. Swaggering around the pitch with his socks round his ankles and no shin guards, Worthington was a target for football’s hardmen in the days when near assault would go unpunished by referees. He made fools of the likes of Tommy Smith of Liverpool and Johnny Giles of Leeds, despite their threats to o “break my f****** legs”. Worthington was too good to be ignored by England in a decade when the national team was short of flair. He drew a rare expletive from England’s otherwise composed manager Alf Ramsey by turning up at Heathrow airport for an England under-23 game in 1973 in high-heeled cowboy boots, a red silk shirt and a lime velvet jacket. He still won eight caps for his country in 1974. Before a match in Bulgaria he “cleaned up” in an all-night game of three-card brag with Kevin Keegan, Emlyn Hughes and Malcolm Macdonald; each hand being played for a week’s wages. He then scored in a 1-0 victory for England and celebrated by “getting together” with the principal ballerina of the New York State ballet, who was performing in Sofia. When Don Revie took charge of England later that year, Worthington’s international career was over at the age of 25: “He wanted the yes-men. He didn’t like the individuals, the characters, the rebels.” Thereafter Worthington’s career was punctuated by flashes of brilliance to remind fans that he was among the most gifted players of his generation. In April 1979, now playing for Bolton Wanderers, he received the ball with his back to goal in a game against Ipswich Town. He nonchalantly played “keepie uppy” before flicking the ball over his head, spinning past the flatfooted Ipswich defender Terry Butcher and volleying the ball into the net. Even the referee applauded. He then suggested to Butcher, a future England stalwart, that he would have had a better view of the goal in the stands. Widely regarded as having the best left foot in the game, Worthington was inevitably compared to George Best. Yet while the Northern Irishman fell out of love for the game and walked away from it at 26 (to make several abortive comebacks), Worthington enjoyed the favours of film stars, Page 3 models, and hotel chambermaids alike while carrying on playing professionally until he was 39 — even as the clubs, crowds and pay cheques dwindled. He was still playing five-aside football in his sixties. Worthington did, however, make concessions to rein in his social life. He toldThe Guardian after turning 30 in 1978: “I used to get about a bit, but I am quieter these days. Instead of going out seven nights a week, I keep it to six.” Frank Stewart Worthington was born in Shelf, near Halifax, West Yorkshire to Eric and Alice Worthington in 1948. His father, who served as a paratrooper at Arnhem, was a professional footballer who had been on the books of Manchester United but had to be content with a career at Halifax Town. His elder brothers, Bob and Dave, would also play professionally. The young Frank developed his silky skills in family kickabouts to counteract the strength of his elder brothers. He signed for second-division Huddersfield Town in 1966 and within a year was lining up against West Ham in a cup match. Before kick-off the teenager entered the West Ham dressing room that included the World Cup winners Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst. Throwing a ball to Moore he said, “sign that Mooro”. The England captain signed the ball and the cocky youngster proceeded to play superbly as Huddersfield stunned the London team. Ian Greaves, his manager at Huddersfield, gave up trying to coach him after once trying to give Worthington a “bollocking”. “We stood there, looking at each other, eye to eye, but he must have flicked the ball up 47 times. He flicked it up and caught it behind him on his neck, down the back of his neck, hoofed it over his back and caught it on his foot. I thought, ‘How do you give him a telling-off when he’s doing that?’” With Worthington terrorising defences, Huddersfield won promotion to the old First Division in 1970. He was then ill-advisedly asked to design Huddersfield’s matchday suits for the top flight in an eye-dazzling shade of blue. He signed for Leicester after Huddersfield’s relegation in 1972. Into his thirties he won the Golden Boot for top scoring in the First Division in 1979. In the Eighties the shoulder-length mane was replaced with an Elvis quiff as he played for Birmingham City, Leeds United and Southampton. When he became player-manager of Tranmere Rovers in 1985, Simon Barnes, of The Times, was moved to observe: “Life and football cannot be all bad if Frank is still around.” In a playing career spanning three decades Worthington scored 266 goals in 882 appearances. He was still playing for Halifax reserves in his mid-forties. Worthington divorced his Swedish first wife, Birgitta, with whom he had a son, Frank Jr, and a daughter, Kim-Malou. They survive him along with his second wife, Carol, née Dwyer. In his later years he became a popular after-dinner speaker. His single regret was not seeing Elvis play live. Frank Worthington, footballer, was born on November 23, 1948. He died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on March 22, 2021, aged 72 Obituary The Times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Shadow Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 10 hours ago, Ciderhead433 said: Had a drink with him in the Waterfront when he played for Preston. RIP to a great footballer and character If I remember rightly he either came on as a sub or got subbed himself at a night game at AG against Preston. Large sections of our fans gave him a standing ovation. His silky skills were so evident that night. A true Maverick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BS4 on Tour... Posted March 23, 2021 Report Share Posted March 23, 2021 Rest easy Frank - I absolutely loved him as a footballer - to be that charismatic, creative and skilful, in an era when defenders could do what they wanted with little fear of retribution from the refs, is a real testament to his ability - one of the best - cheers Frank ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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