Non-league is just fine for Albert

He spent his career working at some of the country’s biggest sporting events – but nowadays Albert Cooper combines his twin loves of football and photography by watching Vodkat League games.

 

Albert was one of the country’s top sports photographers, working both for the The Sun and the Daily Mirror newspapers until his retirement a few years ago. But these days it’s Squires Gate and Kirkham & Wesham who get the benefit of his expertise, thanks to his unexpected introduction to non league football a couple of years ago.

Albert explained: “My grandson joined Squires Gate juniors and I came down to watch him with a new digital camera I’d bought. I took some photos of the kids in his team, and then the club asked me to take photos of the other junior teams. Before long I ended up photographing them all, and then after I came to watch a first team game I offered to take some photos for the match programme. The offer was accepted and I’ve been watching Squires Gate ever since”.

School Lane and Kellamergh Park are a long way from some of the stadiums Albert worked in during a career that began in his home town of Barnsley, where his involvement in photography began.

“I first became interested in photography, and especially football photography at the age of 13, after I bought an old fashioned DIY kit at Barnsley market”, said Albert. “I walked past a stall and noticed some pictures of footballers, players like Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Wilf Mannion and Raich Carter.

“The guy at the stall explained you could print your own photographs using a DIY kit. What you did was you got a negative with a footballer on it, then opened a packet of paper in the dark, and put it in the frame. You then put the negative over it and held it up to sunlight and it produced a photograph”.

Albert’s interest was duly aroused, and after dabbling in printed photography in the bathroom at home – “that didn’t go down too well with the rest of the family when they wanted to use the toilet!” – he left school and joined a firm that ran a photo finishing business as an apprentice.

“I wanted to go to college to learn about photography but couldn’t get a photography course at the local college as there wasn’t one, so I ended up on a commercial art course instead. From there I started doing photos at weddings and christenings, and after I completed my national service, the two brothers who ran the firm decided to go their separate ways, and I looked for another job before I was pushed”.

Albert then joined the Sheffield Telegraph working in the dark room, and was also called upon as an emergency photographer. From there he was offered a job freelancing with a news agency that covered professional sport in the area, and some general news items as well.

It was at this point he began to make his mark. “One Monday morning, I had 13 pictures published in the Sun, which in those days was known as the Daily Herald”, he recalled. “The Picture Editor rang me up and said they couldn’t keep paying me freelance rates, and would I like to come and join their staff. So I became Northern sports photographer with the Sun in 1965”.

Albert’s career as a top photographer was well and truly under way, and in 1970 when the Sun was sold to Rupert Murdoch, he was retained by the new owners (Reed International) who published The Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, Daily Record, Sunday Mail, and Racing Post.

For the next 30 years the list of events he covered reads like a roll of honour for British sport. "At the old Sun I had been Sports photographer, but at the Daily Mirror, I was a News, Features and Sports photographer until 1985, when again I was asked to specialise in Sport", he said.

“My first big tournament was the World Cup in 1966. I covered the North East games, and I was at Middlesbrough for what was probably one of the best remembered games of the tournament, the day that North Korea beat Italy.

“I also covered all the big European games in the North, but I used to go to Wembley as well. To begin with, our very experienced photographer down South was Monty Fresco and he did all the London matches and England games at Wembley. But he retired in 1985, and I had take on the mantle of covering the whole of the country.

"From then on, I covered England games, and was with them in 1990 for the World Cup finals in Italy, the European Championship in Sweden in 1992, and the following year when they went to States on a close season tour. That was the year before they failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup Finals. It wasn’t all football though, and I also went to the Olympics as well”.

As well as covering the big events, Albert also had a regular Friday routine of going to a club to get a picture for the Saturday papers. “I always used to go and do what we called a preview picture. I’d try and find a significant feature about a game on a Saturday, maybe someone playing their 500th game, or take a picture of somebody who had done something spectacular. I used to try and think of headlines around the event and then do a picture to match.

“In the days at the Sheffield Telegraph, I used to do Sheffield United one week and Wednesday the following week, and I always used to make it a fun picture. I remember once that Eric Taylor, who was Wednesday manager, said to me: 'I’ve noticed if you don’t come down on a Friday, there’s a drop in our gates on a Saturday'.

He believed that if there was a picture of Wednesday players in the nationals on a Saturday morning, gates were bigger. It was as if it jogged people’s memories and reminded them Wednesday were at home that afternoon”.

Naturally, being in contact with all the big clubs, Albert formed friendships with many of the players and managers, and not surprisingly has a story or two to tell about some of the household names he knew.

“I always enjoyed going down to Manchester City in the 1960’s, players like Colin Bell, Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee were great guys and real characters. On one occasion a woman from Manchester rang The Sun office and told us her pedigree St Bernard dog had just had 12 pups, and that she was going to name them after the City first team players. Immediately I realised I had the makings of a great picture, so I went down to City and spoke to Joe Mercer and explained that I wanted to take a picture of each player holding one of the pups.

“Joe Mercer wasn’t keen at all, I think he said something along the lines of “It’s not a bloody circus here”. I persisted and eventually he told me to go and see Malcolm Allison. I did, and Malcolm said, “OK, come down after training on Friday and meet us outside the ground”.

“So, on the Friday, two vans turned up with all these massive pups and all the players were there. It was pandemonium, players laughing, the pups licking their faces, it was absolutely made for a picture. Then we got a team group together but one slight snag had arisen. One of the pups had died and I had the job of telling the player concerned that his pup had died and that he couldn’t be in the picture!

Anyway, I was doing this team group, and then Joe Mercer came walking out into the car park. He walked straight up to me and said, 'Hang on, you’ve started without me, where’s my dog!' A few days before he didn’t want to know, but when he came and saw what was going on, he wanted in on the act too”.

Albert also has fond memories of the other club in Manchester. “I used to go to Old Trafford a lot in the early 90’s when they were having good runs in Europe, and became friendly with a lot of players. Steve Bruce and Mark Hughes in particular were great. I used to come up with ideas for pictures based on the opposition. For example, if a team were playing an Italian side, I’d go down with some spaghetti and a chef’s hat.

“I became known as the man with the funny hats, I’ve got a full suitcase full of props and used to come walking into the ground with it. When Steve Bruce saw me coming he’d always say, “Oh no, not another daft hat!”. But the guy always co-operated, he was great.

“Gazza is another character that stands out. I was covering an England game in Sweden, the one that is best remembered for Terry Butcher playing with blood streaming down his face and on to his shirt, and his picture appeared in all the papers the next day.

“All the photographers were allocated a room near to the pitch that we could send our pictures back from, and it was pandemonium. Before the game we couldn’t get the phones to work, we were ringing the numbers to send our pictures and nothing was happening.

“Gazza wasn’t playing in the game, and he came into the room and started throwing joke bombs about. He had a load of those parcel bombs you buy in joke shops that explode when they hit something, and he was walking around, throwing them at walls and photographers, and they were going off everywhere. He was a nutcase!

“Anyway, we were all complaining the phones weren’t working, and I happened to bump into an old journalist I knew who lived in Sweden. I told him about the problem, and he suggested that it was probably due to the phone numbers being programmed in our machines wrongly.

“He told me how to fix mine and get the pictures through so I quietly sorted mine, and sent the pictures through. Gazza came over and saw I was using my phone and asked if he could use it as he wanted to ring a girlfriend. I handed him the phone and never got it back for about an hour and a half. He was a real character”.

Listening to the way Albert talks about his encounters with the greats of British football over the years, I ask him if he would like to be working in the current era.

“No, definitely not”, he says firmly. “In my day I had lots of fun, and the players were great then, far more accessible. These days, you’ve got to talk to three agents to get near them. Looking back at the way I was used to working compared to now, there’s no way I’d want to be trying to arrange those sorts of pictures now. I used to wake up in the morning and say ‘please God, don’t ever let the bosses at the office find out how much I love what I do’”.

For a man who has had the sort of career Albert has had, there is one obvious question to ask, so I ask it – what is his favourite picture out of all the ones that he has taken?

“I get asked that a lot, and when I look back at where I’ve been, and the events I’ve covered, there are millions of great pictures in my mind”, he said. “But the one picture that gave me most pleasure was many years ago, when I wasn’t full time on sport.

“I was doing features, news and sport and the Picture Editor sent me out to a school in Rossendale for disabled and handicapped children. It didn’t sound much of a story, other than that the school had just formed a football team.

“Anyway, I got there and there were kids with all sorts of problems, but the goalkeeper in particular stood out. He played with a smile on his face the whole time, was as brave as a lion – but he had artificial legs. He was fantastic, and it gave me such pleasure to photograph that lad, the expression on his face said it all.

“That to me is what it’s all about. I see players going down and rolling around with what seem to be minor knocks and I think back to that lad who was so brave. I often wonder what happened to him, he was a lovely kid”.

Albert’s full time career came to end when he decided to retire due to suffering from arthritis in his hands and his spine. It appeared that his days of taking pictures at football matches were at an end – until his involvement at Squires Gate began. Even though it only began as a one off, the old journalistic instincts were still in place.

“I was watching my grandson Matthew playing at Squires Gate juniors and taking a few snaps, and there were all these kids playing. It occurred to me that many times over the years I’d asked a well known player if he had a picture of himself playing as a kid, when the newspaper wanted to do a story about their career. So I made a point of photographing all the kids in his team, and before long I was photographing them all”.

Although he spent his career working at big games over the years, Albert’s enthusiasm for Non-League football is just as strong.

“I love Non-League football. Two years ago, Squires Gate got through to the last eight of the FA Vase and I went down with them the night before to Hillingdon. I was excited as I was at the first European Cup final I covered, I was thrilled to be there.

“There’s not a lot of difference in terms of the pictures you take, there’s not the same big crowds obviously, or the same skills, but the players are just as intense and the expression on their faces is just the same, especially when they score”.

As well as Squires Gate home games, in recent months Albert has now added League newcomers Kirkham & Wesham to his “portfolio”. That also came about through a chance meeting.

“Last season when Squires Gate played FC United, we got in touch with a local company to produce a programme for the game”. It turned that the company was owned by Howard Jones, who is the Press Officer at Kirkham & Wesham. We got talking and Howard asked me if I would like to come down and do some stuff for them, and I’ve done a few games for them now. A combination of my fitness and Squires Gate home games means I can’t do every game for them, although it was good to go down and take pictures on the day they managed to get the FA Vase trophy down there”.

 

Although Albert will keep going as long as he can, he is in the process of grooming a successor to take over from him – his grandson Matthew.

“He likes to come with me to watch the games, although he usually ends up kicking a ball round with his mates at some point. Anyway, one day none of his mates were around, so he asked me if he could have go with my camera. Eventually I gave him my spare equipment and he had a go, and I was pleasantly surprised as he had taken some good pictures.

“Funnily enough, normally he isn’t great at concentrating on things but watching the football he was great. I was helping him, telling him to watch for certain things, and he’s come on well. I’m never sure if I’m going to be feeling fit enough these days to go out and do a shoot, and I don’t know if I’ve got another season left in me, so he might be my successor at Squires Gate in the not too distant future”.

Albert has very kindly lent me some of his pictures from the past and present to display on the site – click the button on the left to view them.

The Vodkat League on-line magazine