Tommy Booth = legend

urmston said:
One of my big boyhood City memories was Tommy's late winner v Everton in the Cup semi.

I was 9 at the time and on the day I was watching a football match on the local park with some other boys. We were all listening to the commentary from Villa Park on our little transistor radios which were all the rage at the time.

I remember telling the goalkeeper that Booth had scored and then walking to the halfway line to tell my dad.
I was lucky enough to be at villa park that day,magic.
 
salfordpaul said:
tommy was in the pub with us in aarborg couple of years ago in his official city capacity, he s as good off the pitch as he was on it! ledge

When was Tommy last a first choice for City? I started following them in 1977 and he never really was after that - although he kind of got a shirt when Paul Futcher turned out to be crap. Why didn't Bookie have any faith in him when Mike Doyle was sold on?
 
isab23502 said:
When was Tommy last a first choice for City? I started following them in 1977 and he never really was after that - although he kind of got a shirt when Paul Futcher turned out to be crap. Why didn't Bookie have any faith in him when Mike Doyle was sold on?

He lost his place as the regular centre back in 1975 when we bought Dave Watson, with Watson and Doyle being the preferred pairing for the next couple of seasons.

The BM history site players section lists his appearance numbers per season from then onwards (you can access them here: http://www.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/History/Players/Player.aspx?id=548 - they cover all competitions and include both starts and coming on as sub) as:

1975/6 - 35 games (he got a run in midfield when Bell got injured)
1976/7 - 17 games (mainly covering for Watson and Doyle when injured, IIRC - Doyle got a bad one about 2 months before the end of the season)
1977/8 - 49 games (he was pretty much an automatic choice as Watson's partner, overtaking Doyle in the pecking order)
1978/9 - 31 games (we bought Futcher to partner Watson, but it wasn't a successful signing and the new boy only played 21 games, with Booth being preferred more often than not)
1979/80 - 26 games (Caton was an ever-present that season, while Booth competed with Futcher and Stepanovich to partner the youngster)
1980/81 - 37 games (got a decent amount of match time, but Caton and Reid was generally the first-choice pair including in the Cup final)

He played a single game at the start of the following season but was basically surplus to requirements after John Bond signed Kevin Bond so was sold to Preston early in the campaign for a pretty small fee.

I was only a kid, but I think that Watson was, probably fairly, regarded as an upgrade and the feeling was that Doyle complemented Watson a bit better. When Doyle left, we'd have been better in retrospect keeping faith with Booth rather than buying Futcher for what at the time was a very big fee, but I think that it was considered that his style was likely also to fit better with Watson's. Moreover, as a star of the England under-21s at the time, Futcher was expected to be a mainstay of our team for a long time to come whereas Booth was already 30-ish by then.

In the days before the concept of squad rotation was really commonplace, Booth was an excellent squad player, though. Even though he was only an automatic pick for one (1977/8) of his last six full seasons at City, he played in well over half the games in four of the other five of those seasons. I have a vague memory of Tony Book commenting that he was contacted regularly by other First Division teams keen to sign Tommy, but the player was happy to stay with City. That was certainly to our benefit.
 
petrusha said:
isab23502 said:
When was Tommy last a first choice for City? I started following them in 1977 and he never really was after that - although he kind of got a shirt when Paul Futcher turned out to be crap. Why didn't Bookie have any faith in him when Mike Doyle was sold on?

He lost his place as the regular centre back in 1975 when we bought Dave Watson, with Watson and Doyle being the preferred pairing for the next couple of seasons.

The BM history site players section lists his appearance numbers per season from then onwards (you can access them here: http://www.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/History/Players/Player.aspx?id=548 - they cover all competitions and include both starts and coming on as sub) as:

1975/6 - 35 games (he got a run in midfield when Bell got injured)
1976/7 - 17 games (mainly covering for Watson and Doyle when injured, IIRC - Doyle got a bad one about 2 months before the end of the season)
1977/8 - 49 games (he was pretty much an automatic choice as Watson's partner, overtaking Doyle in the pecking order)
1978/9 - 31 games (we bought Futcher to partner Watson, but it wasn't a successful signing and the new boy only played 21 games, with Booth being preferred more often than not)
1979/80 - 26 games (Caton was an ever-present that season, while Booth competed with Futcher and Stepanovich to partner the youngster)
1980/81 - 37 games (got a decent amount of match time, but Caton and Reid was generally the first-choice pair including in the Cup final)

He played a single game at the start of the following season but was basically surplus to requirements after John Bond signed Kevin Bond so was sold to Preston early in the campaign for a pretty small fee.

I was only a kid, but I think that Watson was, probably fairly, regarded as an upgrade and the feeling was that Doyle complemented Watson a bit better. When Doyle left, we'd have been better in retrospect keeping faith with Booth rather than buying Futcher for what at the time was a very big fee, but I think that it was considered that his style was likely also to fit better with Watson's. Moreover, as a star of the England under-21s at the time, Futcher was expected to be a mainstay of our team for a long time to come whereas Booth was already 30-ish by then.

In the days before the concept of squad rotation was really commonplace, Booth was an excellent squad player, though. Even though he was only an automatic pick for one (1977/8) of his last six full seasons at City, he played in well over half the games in four of the other five of those seasons. I have a vague memory of Tony Book commenting that he was contacted regularly by other First Division teams keen to sign Tommy, but the player was happy to stay with City. That was certainly to our benefit.


Thanks for that - interesting. We seemed to have a few like that in those days - Keith MacRae (given his transfer fee) must have been a fairly unambitious character given he stayed in the stiffs for about 6/7 years through all his best playing days!
 
isab23502 said:
Thanks for that - interesting. We seemed to have a few like that in those days - Keith MacRae (given his transfer fee) must have been a fairly unambitious character given he stayed in the stiffs for about 6/7 years through all his best playing days!

I can see why Booth would have wanted to stay: it was 'his' club, and he was still getting a decent amount of game time. I suppose it's a bit like Dave Connor, who was just before my time. Connor made his debut in 1964/5 and left during the 1971/2 campaign. He was also sought after by other clubs because he couldn't nail a regular sport at City, but as a local lad playing around 20 games a season (154 starts in all competitions in his seven years as a first-teamer) he was presumably fairly happy to be part of the successes we were having in that era.

MacRae, though, played only two first team games in total in five seasons between the start of the 1975/6 campaign and the end of 1979/80, having lost his starting place to Corrigan in March 1975. The Scot then played four matches when Corrigan was injured in September 1980 before leaving for the States when Alex Williams came through and was considered good enough to understudy Big Joe. I know MacRae was considered not to have lived up to his billing after he cost a British record fee for a goalkeeper, but you'd have thought he'd have been good enough to be a first teamer somewhere and would have preferred that to pretty much non-stop reserve football at Maine Road.
 
Did anyone attend Tommy Booth's testimonial? Can anyone remember who played etc?

I'm on the look out for a shirt from the game.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86097636@N03/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.flickr.com/photos/86097636@N03/</a>
 
i’m sure around the start of the 76/77 season brian clough tried signing him for forest.but for whatever reason tommy don’t want to go , this was before cloughies side got promoted and went on their phonominal run which included a first division title . two european cups and a league cup.tommy got his place back alongside dave watson after mile doyle suffered a bad injury away at west ham
 

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