The footballer Tommy Banks, who has died aged 94, was a quintessential Lancastrian full-back of the 1950s and early 60s – rugged, ebullient, no nonsense, tough, yet admirably good tempered. His big year came in 1958, when he not only helped his beloved Bolton Wanderers win the FA Cup final against Manchester United, but played for England in the World Cup finals in Sweden, appearing in all four matches.
For England he had taken the place at left-back of Manchester United’s captain, Roger Byrne, who had died in the Munich air disaster earlier that year. They were very different players: Byrne composed and elegant, Banks a force of nature. But in the World Cup group stage game in Sweden against Brazil, Banks showed he could play cultured football with the best of them. At one point England’s right-back, Don Howe, mis-kicked and skied the ball, creating instant confusion. But there was Tommy, ready to step in almost casually, stretching out his left foot and coolly bringing the ball down from the air, as if to say: “Anything you Brazilians can do, I can do too.”
England drew 0-0 with Brazil, and were unbeaten in their first three games of that World Cup. However, a 1-0 defeat to the USSR in a group stage play-off put them out of the tournament, and Banks would play just one more match for his country – a 3-3 draw against Northern Ireland in October 1958. He had made his international debut (also against the USSR) in May of that year, so all of his six caps were squeezed into an unusually short period of 139 days.
Born in the Farnworth area of Bolton, Banks stood at 5ft 8in but weighed in at comfortably more than 12st – “granite-like” as Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, once described him – and was therefore admirably suited to the kind of rough-and-tumble football he best liked. After initially working as a coal miner and rejecting overtures from Manchester United’s manager Matt Busby, in 1947 he signed for Bolton, which would be his only league club.
Thanks partly to the interruption of national service he took time to establish himself in the first team and so it was that his older brother Ralph, not he, played at left-back in the famous Matthews final for Bolton against Blackpool in 1953, notable for the outstanding performance of Stanley Matthews for Blackpool, and which Bolton lost 4-3.
A place for Tommy in the team that won the 1958 FA Cup final, thanks to two goals from Nat Lofthouse, was more than adequate consolation. Although it was the only honour he would win at the club, Bolton were a good team in the First Division for his entire playing spell there, and Banks was widely admired for his honesty and belligerent leadership qualities. “You could hear him all over the field, roaring out instructions and praise,” said his team-mate Dennis Stevens, while Bobby Charlton observed ruefully: “If you had any soft spot in your make up then he’d exploit it, and few if any got the better of him.” Despite his uncompromising attitude, Banks was never booked.
In 1961 he was a prominent voice in the successful footballers’ campaign for the abolition of the maximum wage. In the same year – after 255 games for Bolton – he joined non-league Altrincham continuing to display the same wholehearted commitment in the Cheshire League that had made him an England international with Bolton. After two seasons at Moss Lane he moved to Bangor City, where he saw out his remaining playing days until 1965.
He continued to live in Farnworth, and worked variously as a bricklayer, a building contractor and a newsagent. He was upset to see the gradual decline in fortunes of Bolton Wanderers after he left the club, but remained loyal to his team and to his home town, being able to say that he had moved no more than 500 yards from his childhood home during his life.
So geographically constrained had his family upbringing been before his playing days that he often found it difficult to make his parents appreciate the vistas that had opened up to him on his playing excursions around the country, let alone the trips to Europe that he sometimes made. “My mother used to say to me, ‘Where are you playing today, Thomas?’” he recalled. “If it was, say, Wolverhampton, she wouldn’t have known where it was. So I just used to say ‘t’other side of Manchester’”.
In 1952 Banks married Margaret Charles, and they had two sons, David and Lee. She died in 1977 and in 1981 he married Rita Morris.
• Thomas Banks, footballer, born 10 November 1929; died 13 June 2024
