In my entry titled One Night in St Helens I wrote about how the Saints most successful run in the FA Cup saw them knocked out of the competition in the final qualifying round. Their match on Saturday is the first time they’ve appeared in the preliminary round since 2010. However they do have a part to play in one of the most famous and infamous events in FA Cup history.
With 17 minutes remaining of the 1956 final Manchester City’s German keeper Bert Trautmann dived at the feet of an on-rushing Birmingham player. He sustained a bad neck injury but played on, making two crucial saves to help his team win the game 3-1. A few days later it was confirmed his neck had been broken. A moment which earned him respect, awe, notoriety and legendary status, quite an achievement for a German in Britain so soon after the end of World War 2.
His story is relevant here because Manchester City signed the promising keeper from St Helens Town. His journey from Nazi to football hero took him via a prisoner of war camp in Lancashire, to the Liverpool County Combination League and then Main Road.
In addition to his own biography there is much to read on Trautman, especially as he was the subject of a film The Keeper in 2019. Interestingly his story is not well-known in Germany as, despite becoming recognised as one of the best goalkeepers in the world he never played for his own national team because he was playing his club football in England.
Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone visited the set of ‘The Keeper’. “By all rights, he should have been dead before he even discovered his gift for goalkeeping,” he wrote. “On the Russian front, as the Nazi forces retreated, Trautmann was blown up but survived. In France, he was buried in rubble for three days after being bombed again. He was captured by the Russians and the French but escaped both times. In 1944, he was one of the few survivors of the Allied bombing of Kleve, and was trying to get home to Bremen when he was caught by two American soldiers in a barn in France. The soldiers decided Trautmann had no useful information to give them so marched him out of the barn with his hands held up. He thought he was going to be shot, so he fled, jumping over a fence. However, he landed at the feet of a British soldier, who greeted him with the words: “Hello Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?” This time, he didn’t run.” It’s little wonder that breaking his neck at the feet of a Birmingham City footballer was nothing other than a pain to be overcome.
While it was Manchester City and the FA Cup Final which turned Trautmann into a sporting icon, as he told the St Helens Star in 2009 it was his years at Town which turned his life around.
“St Helens gave me a new life. The war and the subsequent three years as a POW took eight years out of my life. When I came out of the POW camp I was welcomed into a beautiful community in Sutton. It was a mining district – miners are the same the world over and very warm-hearted and the people too to me.”
And it changed the fortunes of the football club too, with attendances peaking at 6000 when the German shot-stopper was between the sticks. Decades later he would still donate items for auction to help fund the club. With the fans came scouts and Trautmann would soon move on, replacing the retired Frank Swift in Goal at Manchester City. Whilst a prisoner of war Trautmann helped build the ring road around Manchester Airport.
There’s something about the FA Cup which taps into our interest in human stories and it’s this which has inspired me to write this blog. Had St Helens reached the first round in 1985, or if they ever do, we can be certain the tail of Trautmann will be a major part of any media focus on the club.
Read the Guardian articleand the St Helens Star interview here.
Glory Hunting 