Ron Springett, the footballer, who has died aged 80, was England’s first choice goalkeeper for four years between 1959 and 1963, then mostly sat on the substitute’s bench until 1966, after the mantle passed to Gordon Banks.
Only 5ft 8in tall, but with an accurate technique and lightning-fast reflexes , he was capped for England 33 times, first in 1959 against Northern Ireland and lastly against Norway in 1966. “You think about this nice velvety blue cap and that it’s presented to you,” he recalled. “I got up one morning and I heard this rattle at the door and this parcel tried to come through the letter box. When I opened it, it was my first cap.”
One of six children, Ronald Deryk George Springett was born on July 22 1935 in a working-class area of Fulham, from where he was evacuated during the war. After the conflict ended he was educated at Ackmar Road School, Parson’s Green, from which he sometimes played truant when Chelsea were playing at home at Stamford Bridge.
Ron Springett in 1962
After two years of National Service, including a short time in Egypt during the Suez Crisis, Springett became an apprentice motor mechanic at Shell Mex, and began playing Sunday league football for Victoria United, training during his lunch breaks . A supportive Shell Mex supervisor wrote to Fulham and Queen’s Park Rangers suggesting that Springett might be good enough for a trial. Fulham rejected him as being too small, but QPR’s Jack Taylor seized the opportunity. In 1958 he moved to Sheffield Wednesday for the princely sum of £10,000, at once proving pivotal at reversing the previous season’s relegation. He continued to live and train in London, riding the Master Cutler express train service to Sheffield on Fridays .
His England debut came the following year in the match against Northern Ireland in which he frustrated a penalty from Jimmy McIlroy to help secure a 2-1 victory. In an international career of ups and downs, during an April 1960 tie against Scotland at Hampden Park, he sustained a broken finger. After the match he took a taxi to the local hospital to be treated, the driver refusing to charge him, though observing, “I should charge you double because you stopped us from winning.”
Two years later, during the World Cup quarter final against Brazil at Vina del Mar, Chile, a black dog wandered on to the pitch and Springett would recall how both he and the Brazilian forward Garrincha had tried to catch the animal, but without success. Eventually the England striker Jimmy Greaves got down on all fours and managed to get close enough to grab the dog. But the animal proved a lucky mascot for the south American team which won the match 3-1, Garrincha later adopting the dog as a pet.
Dogs were not the only animal hazards in Chile. Before travelling to the country, the England team had been warned to beware of poisonous spiders, so for a bit of fun, Springett and the England captain Johnny Haynes bought some fake arachnids in a joke shop to fool their team mates. On closer inspection later, one fake spider in Haynes’s bed turned out to be moving, prompting the England captain to run out from the team’s quarters on to the training pitch, where he was bitten by a dog.
Ron Springett in yellow with the England team at Cardiff in 1965
Springett saw two World Cups, though he would watch England’s 1966 triumph from the bench, where Sir Alf Ramsey had placed him following a disastrous performance against France in February 1963, in which Springett conceded five goals. The match had been played under bright floodlights which he always found difficult. Though commanding on the line, his vision was not perfect and he was sometimes susceptible with shots from afar.
In May 1967 he returned to QPR, in a transfer agreement which saw him swapped with his younger brother Peter, also a goalkeeper.
A popular player with football fans, especially during his time at Sheffield Wednesday, he always took time to sign autographs, once signing more than 10,000 photographs in a brochure for a testimonial match held in his honour, in September 1967, between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United.
In 1966, only the 11 players on the pitch during the final against West Germany received winners’ medals. In 2007, however, Fifa changed the rules to award medals to all the winners’ squad members. In 2009 Springett attended a cermony at 10, Downing Street, where he was presented with his medal by the prime minister, Gordon Brown.
Ron Springett is survived by his wife Barbara, whom he married in 1958, and by their daughter.
Ron Springett, born July 22 1935, died September 12 2015
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