The trouble with modern football is that players of previous generations are naturally thought of as being not as good as the ones that play today. Recency bias is such that a player like Tom Finney doesn’t get his flowers in the same way as the likes of Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard or Harry Kane are wont to do. For those that saw him play, however, he will always be remembered as one of the finest players that the country ever produced, earning a knighthood for his services to football. He also came close to being a one-team man, spending most of his career at Preston North End.
Finney’s Early Years
Thomas Finney was born in Preston on the fifth of April 1922, just a few hundred yards from Deepdale Stadium. The son of Maggie and Alf, he also had an elder brother, Joe, and four sisters, Madge, Peggy, Doris and Edith. Alf did clerical work for the government, occasionally being made unemployed because of the changing economic climate. The family moved to Daisy Lane when Tom was young, being struck by a tragedy in 1927 when Maggie died, aged just 32. Alf leaned on neighbours and members of the wider family to keep everyone together, all whilst getting Tom interested in football.
Finney had been playing the sport from a young age on the fields near his home, as well as at school, with his ambition being to become a professional footballer. This seemed unlikely when he was a youngster, however, given the fact that he was frail and sickly, being just four foot six inches as a 14-year-old. That was the point at which he left school in order to begin an apprenticeship with Pilkington’s, a local plumbing company. A year later, he spotted an advert in a local newspaper offering trials at Preston North End for people aged between 14 and 18, which was the point at which his life changed forever.
Joining Preston
Finney asked his dad to help him get a trial with Preston, which his dad managed by meeting with a trainer for the football club called Will Scott. The trial was arranged, seeing Finney have a brilliant match to the point that he was immediately offered a contract with a wage of £2 ten shillings a week. His father, however, refused, telling the youngster that he needed to complete his apprenticeship before he’d be allowed to sign a professional contract. The good news for Finney was that Preston were happy enough with this arrangement, offering him an amateur contract instead.
That meant that he was allowed to train in the evenings, after work, then take part in matches for the club’s junior sides. He took inspiration from Bill Shankly, the man who would later become the father of modern-day Liverpool Football Club, and worked with Scott in order to enhance his skills and develop his football technique. As a result, he won a player in the Preston B team, winning four trophies whilst playing for them, pushing himself to become a professional. Unfortunately for the teenager, the outbreak of the Second World War would put paid to any hopes of that in the short term.
Finney in the War
Finney’s elder brother, Joe, played for a local club called Netherfield whilst training at Blackburn Rovers when the war broke out. Their father thought it would be a good idea for the two to be at the same club, but Finney was rejected by Netherfield; something that the club apologised to him for nearly 70 years later. In the January of 1940, he was about to sign for Rovers when he was offered a professional contract by Preston North End, offering him wartime terms of ten shillings per match. He signed, in spite of the fact that first-class football had been suspended because of the war.
There were, however, regional games, which were played in order to maintain morale, with Finney playing throughout the 1940-1941 season. Preston played in the North Regional League and the Football League War Cup with Preston, but in 1942 he was called up and became a trooper with the Royal Armoured Corps. He ended up in Egypt, playing for army football teams against sides made up of locals whenever he was on leave. In the April of 1945, he was part of the final offensive, driving a Stuart tank with the 9th Lancers during the Battle of the Argenta Gap.
Returning to Football
When football resumed on the 31st of August 1946, Preston North End were a First Division side and Finney played on the right-wing in the opening game of the season. More than 25,000 people watched as Preston won 3-2 against Leeds United, with Finney getting one of the goals. His league debut saw the player earn rave reviews, seeing his genius as a footballer recognised by locals. Between 1946 and 1960, Finney played 14 seasons for Preston, with 12 of them being in the First Division and two in the Second. During that time, the club finished second in the top-flight twice.
Only receiving £14 per week as a footballer, Finney supplemented that income with work as a plumber, running a successful business from the 1940s until the 1990s and becoming known as the Preston Plumber as a result. He had become one of England’s most successful players after the war, alongside Stanley Matthews, resulting in an approach for his signature from Italian side Palermo. In spite of this, Finney remained a one-club player. His only cup final appearance came in the FA Cup in 1954, which Preston lost 3-2 to West Bromwich Albion, in part due to the fact that Finney wasn’t fully match-fit.
Finney the England Player
The international debut of Tom Finney came on the 28th of September 1946 when the Three Lions took on Ireland at Windsor Park. England won 7-2 in the Home Championship match, with Finney scoring once. In total, he earned 76 caps and scored 30 times, helping England to 51 victories. He had become England’s all-time top goal scorer when he found the back of the net against Northern Ireland in the October of 1958. Later that month, he played for England for the final time, seeing his goalscoring record equalled by Nat Lofthouse in a 5-0 rout of the Soviet Union.
Part of what made Finney such a success, both for England and for Preston North End, was the fact that he was such a versatile attacker. Football fans would often debate whether he or Stanley Matthews were the best, with Matthews being a better dribbler but Finney being stronger all round. He was a hard tackler, whose small stature allowed him to control the ball well and both score and assist goals. In 1956-1957, he became the only player to win the Footballer of the Year vote for the second time, having also been given the award in 1953-1954, never having been booked or sent off.
The Later Years
Tom Finney made the choice to retire from football in 1960 on the back of a persistent groin injury. He spent his entire career playing for his local club, notching up 433 league appearances and finding the back of the net 187 times. A year after his decision to retire, Preston were relegated out of the First Division, failing to return. In spite of his retirement on the professional front, Finney appeared in charity and benefit games, playing for Toronto City in the Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League in 1962, then making an appearance for Distillery, the North Irish side, in the following year.
As well as continuing to run his plumbing business, Finney also worked for charities and hospitals in the local area. In the July of 2004, he unveiled a sculpture by Peter Hodgkinson, which was based on the Sports Photograph of the Year from 1956, which showed Finney at a waterlogged Stamford Bridge beating two Chelsea players. Although the National Football Museum had been housed at Deepdale Stadium at the time, when it moved to Manchester, the sculpture remained. Having been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1961, he was given a CBE in 1992 and then knighted six years later.
‘The Splash’ is perhaps one of the game’s most recognisable statues. It uses fountains to depict Sir Tom Finney’s iconic slide at a waterlogged Stamford Bridge in 1956… pic.twitter.com/mxVmb1rA4Y
— The Football History Boys (@TFHBs) October 18, 2023
Sir Thomas Finney died on the 14th of February 2014, being one of England’s oldest international players at the time. Bill Shankly had once described him as ‘the greatest player I ever saw, bar none’, whilst Sir Stanley Matthews included him in a list alongside Pelé, Diego Maradona, George Best and Alfredo Di Stéfano. The Football Association, meanwhile, described him as one of ‘England’s all-time greats’.