Even a nice semi was a marked improvement on conditions a decade or so earlier (before Jimmy Hill had successfully fought against the cap - the maximum wage - on players' salaries), when, the best a successful player could have hoped for, was "a good working class lifestyle".
Last week, I read quite a few of the pieces written after the death of Jack Charlton, & watched a number of interviews with him; one very striking story described how Jack Charlton came to learn of the Munich air crash disaster.
His brother Bobby, who at the time was a young player who played for Manchester United with the original "Busby Babes", was on the plane. Also on the plane were three of the guests who had attended his (Jack's) own wedding, which had taken place a mere three weeks earlier, three fellow footballers, all three good friends of his, all of whom he later learned had lost their lives when the plane crashed on its third attempt at take-off on an icy run-way.
Charlton - and the Charltons were a close knit northern family, all his life, Jack was exceptionally close to his mother - who himself played for Leeds at the time, described graphically, the memory forever etched on his mind, memory, and soul, how he had just emerged, naked, dripping, from the baths & showers, after a training session, in Leeds, to be told, casually, by a member of the training staff, who had stuck his head into the room, that the plane carrying the Manchester United team had crashed in Munich. He related how he had simply stood there, naked and stunned, then threw his clothes on and dashed to the office of that person to learn more, only to be told that nothing more was known.
Wild with worry (for his mother above all), his first thought was to get home to Ashington, in Northumberland, to comfort his mother. He took the train, - a nightmare journey - followed by the bus, - the final leg was on foot, - to get home. Crossing the square, between the train station and the bus stop, he saw that the evening paper had just been published, with further news, including the names of some of the survivors. He immediately ran across the square, bought a copy, anxiously scanned the list of names, found his brother's name among those reported alive but injured, and realised, with a shattering relief, that he could now proceed to visit his mother to confirm and report that Bobby - his brother, her son - had survived this disaster.
Decades later, as he recalled that fraught journey, in graphic detail, he merely mentioned, as an aside, that he took the train because he didn't have a car; nobody did, in those days, not working class kids who had managed to escape the mining pits with a skill that allowed them a career playing football.
