Thanks to Dave from Sukan Sports, we have the opportunity to ask some questions of Phil Parkes, the ex. QPR, West Ham and England Goalkeeper. Not only was Phil part of the Sukan Sports team but in 1979, he transferred from QPR to West Ham for a then World Record fee for a Goalkeeper (£500,000).
This is a unique chance to ask some questions of a goalkeeping legend. We need to be quick though. We have about 20 odd hours to get the questions to Dave.
What is your favorite change in the game from when you played to now? What is your least favorite?
Liviu Bird
You were part of the transition between bare hands, and a surge of early (but fantastic) goalkeeping gloves. How do you compare playing with bare hands to playing with gloves?
Seriously, what are the odds that there would be two First Division keepers named Phil Parkes?! Were you ever mistaken for your namesake who played for Wolves and in the U.S. with the Chicago Sting?
LarryO61: Seriously, what are the odds that there would be two First Division keepers named Phil Parkes?! Were you ever mistaken for your namesake who played for Wolves and in the U.S. with the Chicago Sting?
Larry, you beat me to my question! I remember the 'other' Phil Parkes playing for Vancouver when they won Soccer Bowl '79!
To Phil: What were your duties as director of Sukan? Did you just lend your name as a professional keeper or did you actively participate in the running of the business, since Dave has stated he ran the day to day affairs?
Phil
1. You were a great keeper who unfortunately due to being around in the Clemence/Shilton era put a dampener on getting more caps for England. Did you feel how ever well you played that England was a closed shop?
2. What made you make the leap from Bare Hands to Gloves?
3. What were your favourite gloves?
4. Do you think todays goalkeepers should be made to play bare hands one week - to see how tough you guys had it?
Regards
Rob
PS Jimmy thanks for getting this arranged with Mr Holmes - you are top drawer!
One Save doesnt make a Season....
Just a quick update on this. Phil has been given all of the questions but is now taking a well earned holiday. I am sure he will be giving the questions lots of thought while sunning himself on a nice beach somewhere
We will have the answers sometime early in the new year. Thanks.
Phil Parkes has returned from foreign parts, not on a beach as Jimmy suggested, and I have just spent the evening with him and will now answer the questions on his behalf. Although I am typing this they are Phil's answers, although I will probably add my own comments later.
"My favourite change in the game is the quality of the pitches now. There has been such a tremendous improvement at the top level that virtually every game, whatever the weather, whatever the time of the season, whichever club, the game is now played on flat firm pitches. I was usually dealing with mud or bare bone hard goalmouths and for that I do envy todays players. The least favourite change is the banning of the backpass to the goalkeepers hands. They changed the rule intending to speed up the game, but I don't think that it has worked as players will always find ways to waste time if they want to. For instance when was the last time that you saw somebody penalised for keeping hold of the ball for longer than 6 seconds, although this law is almost constantly broken. The taking of free-kicks seems to take for ages, the specialist long throw-in expert takes an age to come across and take the throw, wipe the ball and wait for his defenders to move forward. All of these things waste time so I would go back to allowing back passes to the goalkeepers hands."
"There were some great goalkeepers around during my time, although I am not sure I would include Jimmy Rimmer in that list, and I am not frustrated at winning only 1 cap. I am an England international and nobody can take that away, I may have been frustrated if I had not won that 1 cap. I see some of the West Ham home games, working in the hospitality suites, and "Match of the Day" and from that I would say that David James is probably the best available, but I consider him a good goalkeeper rather than great. He is still prone to the odd error and by this late stage of his career he should have removed them from his game."
Phil Parkes continues "I signed for Starcraft Sports in early 1979, just after my transfer to West Ham United, to endorse their cheaper Metric goalkeeping gloves and to wear Onitsuka Tiger football boots. They were the U.K. distributors for Onitsuka Tiger and I was the first player that they signed up. The boots were probably the best that I ever used and they were especially made for me, in a size between 10.5 and 11, as after measuring my feet they decided that I was not either 10.5 or 11 so they would make me pairs in my size. My name was used to promote the cheap Hong Kong made Metric gloves, they were also selling the Peter Bonetti gloves at this time, and the arrangement was that they would supply me with better quality German made gloves for me to use, although they did not plan to sell these gloves. The gloves they supplied were not very good, so for most of my contract I was in fact wearing UHL 031 all foam gloves with the uhlsport logo covered up, and small attempts made to make the gloves look a little like I was supposed to be wearing. In the F.A. Cup Final unfortunately a piece of disguise came off the gloves and Starcraft were not too happy, I don't think they had been aware of what I was doing until then, but the gloves they supplied me with were not up to the uhlsport quality. There was no pressure on being the world's most expensive goalkeeper, as I had nothing to do with the price that West Ham United paid, which incidentally was £565,000 rather than £500,000. By this time I had been a professional for over 10 years, was an international and had played in European games so John Lyall knew the type of goalkeeper he was buying. I felt more pressure in moving from Walsall to Queens Park Rangers as this was a step up in standard and meant leaving home to live in London where I had no friends. About a week after my record transfer to West Ham United, Trevor Francis was made the first British million pound footballer, so the press anyway soon moved on to him as the big story. In many ways I wish I had been transferred for 1 million because as I had not asked for a transfer I was entitled to 5% of the transfer fee, and 5% of £1,000,000 would have been better than 5% of £565,000. I also missed out on a testimonial at Queens Park Rangers as I was there for about 9 years rather than the required 10 years."
Phil Parkes continues "I did indeed start my career using bare hands in the dry and cotton Peter Bonetti gloves in the wet. The change to using the German latex gloves was easy because the gloves were so much better than bare hands. Once I had made the change I very rarely reverted to bare hands although sometimes in training I would because the gloves were in short supply and I did not want to wear out the gloves too quickly. I first encountered these gloves in Germany during the summer of 1975 on a pre-season tour when we were playing on a small village style pitch, rather than in a stadium, and the weather conditions were terrible. Before the game I noticed the opposition goalkeeper was wearing these gloves and he asked me if I would like to try them, which I did, and was pleasantly surprised at how well they worked so I wore them through the game. When the match had finished I went back to the opposition goalkeeper to return the gloves to him, which he refused saying that I should keep them. The conversation then got round to whether I could purchase some more from him, and the Queens Park Rangers manager, Dave Sexton, immediately bought about half a dozen pairs for me. However he would only give me one pair at a time, so I had to keep using this pair and when they were worn out take them to Dave Sexton for him to see that they were really worn out, and then he would give me a new pair. I believe that I was the first goalkeeper in the English First Division to use this type of glove. For todays goalkeepers I would not suggest that they use bare hands at all as the technique is different, and I think that there would be a risk of hand injuries if they did. I believe that the goalkeeper in Germany who gave me his gloves was the Swedish international Ronnie Hellstrom. I cannot remember any difficulties arising over having a namesake playing at the same time, although of course sometimes people would get a little confused. As most of you will know we are from the same area of England, and before signing for Walsall I did train with Wolves and played 1 game for their 4th team, or B side as it was called. On the same day that I played for this 4th team the other Phil Parkes was playing for the Wolves first team. I think we played against each other only twice, once in a friendly game arranged because of bad weather postponements, me for Walsall him for Wolves, and once in the Football League when I was at Q.P.R. and he was at Wolves. The match programme had Phil Parkes playing in goal for both teams."
Phil Parkes continues "My duties as a director of Sukan Sports were very few, as Dave has previously told you he dealt with the day to day running of the business. It was a small business and I was happy to let him run it how he wanted, thinking that he was capable of doing it and if he needed anything from me he would ask. We generally met about 3 times a year, and spoke on the phone as and when either of us needed to speak to the other. Hopefully using my name helped the business in various ways, and judging from some of the comments I have seen on this site, you, our customers, were generally happy with the way it was run."
Davecav butting in to add that Sukan Sports could not have got started let alone kept going without Phil Parkes, and from my point of view he was the perfect business partner as he left me alone to do my thing, but was always there when I needed to discuss anything. We traded as Sukan Sports although the limited company was Renabeach Ltd., and Phil owned 51% of the shares while I had the other 49%. This split was deliberate as although I was in effect running it and making decisions, he as the major shareholder could always object and change things, but I cannot remember any occassion when he said that he objected to what I was doing.
Finally back to Phil Parkes again "I was never unduly concerned as to which style of gloves I wore as long as they were comfortable. Probably my favourite was the all foam UHL 031 which I used in all 3 of my Wembley appearances although they were meant to be disguised as something else. If I had known that uhlsport were going to discontinue them I would probably have tried to get a quantity to keep me going longer, but having said that I was happy to use the UHL 034 as well."
"Thank you for the questions, I am sorry it has taken a little while to answer them, but hopefully the answers have been of some interest to you. Finally, remember it is the goalkeeper who saves the ball not the gloves, so get the goalkeeping right."
davecav: for most of my contract I was in fact wearing UHL 031 all foam gloves
for most of my contract I was in fact wearing UHL 031 all foam gloves
YES! I knew I liked Phil Parkes!Excellent work and many thanks Dave and Jimmy.
A great insight into goalkeeping during the 1970's and 80's.
Many many thanks to Phil and Dave for the very honest and interesting answers.
An incredible and very rare look into the history of one of the greatest keepers around!! I'm sure all of us, especially those of us in the 40-ish age group who loved Sukan Sports, really appreciate having access to Phil Parkes and just as much to Dave. Brilliant!