Jimmy Greenhalgh

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Jimmy Greenhalgh
Personal information
Full name James Radcliffe Greenhalgh
Date of birth (1923-08-25)25 August 1923
Place of birth Manchester, England
Date of death 31 August 2013(2013-08-31) (aged 90)
Place of death Darlington, England
Position(s) Wing half
Senior career*
Years Team Apps (Gls)
Newton Heath Loco
1946–1950 Hull City 148 (5)
1950–1955 Bury 122 (1)
1955–1956 Wigan Athletic
1956–1959 Gillingham 16 (1)
Managerial career
1966–1968 Darlington
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

James Radcliffe Greenhalgh (25 August 1923 – 31 August 2013) was an English football player and manager. He played as a wing half, and made nearly 300 appearances in the Football League for Hull City, Bury and Gillingham. As a manager, he took charge of Darlington from 1966 to 1968, and had a lengthy career in coaching and scouting.

Life and career[edit]

James Radcliffe Greenhalgh was born on 25 August 1923 in Manchester,[1] where he grew up in the Moston district and worked as a butcher's assistant.[2] He played football for Newton Heath Loco before signing for Third Division North club Hull City ahead of the first postwar Football League season.[2] He was reported to have chosen Hull because wartime bomb damage meant there was no housing available for him and his wife local to rival suitors Wigan Athletic and Everton.[3] He went straight into the League side, occupying four different positions in the first five matches, before settling at right half and missing only one match all season.[4] He was used less in 1947–48, but re-established himself in the side the following season, missing only one match as Hull won the Third Division North title and reached the quarter-final of the FA Cup, in which they lost 1–0 to Manchester United.[4] He began as a regular in the Second Division, but gradually dropped out of contention, and in November 1950, he joined another second-tier club, Bury, for a £13,000 fee.[4][2]

He was ever-present for his first two years with Bury,[5] and then missed a few weeks with injury, but at the start of the 1953–54 season, found his place under threat from Don May and Tommy Daniel and was transfer-listed at his own request.[6] He did not leave, and came back into the side halfway through the season, but appeared only once in 1954–55.[4] Interest from Liverpool came to nothing, despite the nominal fee asked,[7] and Greenhalgh left both Bury and the Football League in 1955 to spend a season with Wigan Athletic of the Lancashire Combination.[2] In July 1956, Greenhalgh joined Third Division South club Gillingham as player-coach,[8] and continued in post for two-and-a-half years, although he played only reserve-team football after his first season.[4]

Greenhalgh was appointed trainer-coach of Second Division club Lincoln City in January 1959,[9] and took up the same role with Newcastle United in June 1962. Under manager Joe Harvey, Greenhalgh contributed to the team's Second Division title in 1965 and their first season back in the top flight, before becoming manager of Darlington in July 1966, after Lol Morgan, who had quit after leading the team to their first promotion for forty years.[3][10] Greenhalgh failed to keep the team in the Third Division, and controversially released appearance record-holder Ron Greener on a free transfer[11] – the men became friends in later life, and according to Greener, interviewed in 2000, "He was an awful bloody manager, made a right mess of it and now he'll admit as much".[12] At the end of February 1968, with the team bottom of the Fourth Division, Greenhalgh left "by mutual agreement".[13]

It would be his only managerial appointment. His daughter said later that "he loved playing and someone once wrote that he developed into a well-respected coach during the later stages of his football career", but that "being a manager was sat behind a desk in those days."[3] Within days, he was offered and accepted the post of chief coach at Middlesbrough.[14][15] He remained on the club's staff until 1979, and joined Sunderland as chief scout on 1 January 1980.[16] In 1990, he was attached to the coaching staff of the Dutch Football Association,[17] and later that year he was used by Port Vale manager John Rudge as a scout in the north-east of England.[18]

Greenhalgh was married to Flo; they had two children, Linda and James.[19] Towards the end of his life he was a resident of a care home in Darlington, where he died on 31 August 2013 at the age of 90.[19]

Career statistics[edit]

Playing[edit]

Appearances and goals by club, season and competition[4]
Club Season League FA Cup Total
Division Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals
Hull City 1946–47 Third Division North 41 1 5 0 46 1
1947–48 Third Division North 27 0 4 0 31 0
1948–49 Third Division North 41 3 7 1 48 4
1949–50 Second Division 32 1 3 1 35 2
1950–51 Second Division 7 0 — 7 0
Total 148 5 19 2 167 7
Bury 1950–51 Second Division 24 1 1 0 25 1
1951–52 Second Division 42 0 1 0 43 0
1952–53 Second Division 34 0 0 0 34 0
1953–54 Second Division 21 0 1 0 22 0
1954–55 Second Division 1 0 0 0 1 0
Total 122 1 3 0 125 1
Wigan Athletic 1955–56 Lancashire Combination
Gillingham 1956–57 Third Division South 16 1 1 0 17 1
Career total 186 7 23 2 309 9

Managerial[edit]

Managerial record by team and tenure[20]
Team From To Record
P W D L Win %
Darlington July 1966 28 February 1968[13] 90 25 26 39 027.8

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Jimmy Greenhalgh". Barry Hugman's Footballers. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d "342 Jimmy Greenhalgh". On Cloud Seven. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  3. ^ a b c "Tributes paid to former Darlington manager Jimmy Greenhalgh". The Northern Echo. Darlington. 3 September 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "Player search: Greenhalgh, JR (Jimmy)". English National Football Archive. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  5. ^ "Bits and Bobs". Football Post. Nottingham. 15 November 1952. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com. At Gigg Lane, where Lincoln City were this afternoon's visitors, Bury were without Greenhalgh, who thus missed a match for the first time since joining the Shakers in 1950 from Hull City.
  6. ^ Howe, Arnold (14 August 1953). "They want a move themselves". Daily Mirror. London. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ "Ranger's Notes on Sport. Anfield inquiry". Liverpool Echo. 20 January 1955. p. 7 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ "On this day". Gillingham F.C. 25 August 2012. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  9. ^ "Untitled". Grantham Journal. 9 January 1959. p. 10.
  10. ^ "Lol – a true legend in Darlington FC's history". The Northern Echo. Darlington. 21 September 2001. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  11. ^ Wetherill, Simon (23 March 2020). "Memory match — Doncaster 1967". Darlington F.C. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  12. ^ "Why the grass was always Greener down at Feethams". The Northern Echo. Darlington. 1 December 2000. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  13. ^ a b "Greenhalgh leaves Darlington". Coventry Evening Telegraph. 28 February 1968. back page – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ^ "No decision yet". Birmingham Post. 9 March 1968. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ^ "Greenhalgh move". Birmingham Post. 13 March 1968. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ Hetherington, Paul (13 December 1979). "Roker hit by double setback". Evening Chronicle. Newcastle. p. 30 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ^ "Rudge rules out a change of style". Evening Sentinel Sports Final. Stoke-on-Trent. 1 September 1990. p. 8 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ^ Oliver, Alan (20 December 1990). "Hotting up". Evening Chronicle. Newcastle. p. 30 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ^ a b "Death notices and obituaries: Jimmy Greenhalgh". The Northern Echo. Darlington. 4 September 2013. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  20. ^ Tweddle (2000), pp. 63–64.

Sources[edit]

External links[edit]

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