sam bartram...right man, wrong time??
By Roger Wash
Sam Bartram was a Charlton legend. Born in South Shields in 1914, he turned out in goal for many local clubs before being invited to Charlton in 1934 at the age of 20.
He soon made the number one spot his own and oversaw the Addicks' rise from Division Three (South) to runners-up in the top flight in consecutive seasons in the mid-1930s.
By the time he hung up his gloves in 1956 he had racked up over 800 appearances for Charlton in all competitions, and was widely regarded as the best un-capped goalkeeper in the country.
Sam immediately moved into management with York City, a club he had guested for during the War. Overseeing promotion to Division Three (now League One) in 1959, Sam saw his side suffer immediate relegation so it was a rather strange decision when he was asked by the Luton board to take over at Kenilworth Road in the summer of 1960, although he was at least third choice with former coach Jack Crompton being one of those to turn down approaches.
Sam inherited an ageing side that had just suffered relegation from the top flight under previous manager, and former skipper, Syd Owen. One of his first jobs was to oversee the transfer of winger Billy Bingham to Everton for £10,000 plus full-back John Bramwell and forward Alec Ashworth.
Although Luton supporters were hoping for a return to the top flight at the first attempt, the side became a byword for inconsistency. Big home wins over the likes of Middlesbrough, Southampton and Charlton were countered by heavy defeats to Rotherham, Sunderland and Bristol Rovers. By the end of the 1960-61 season the Town sat in a respectable mid-table position but using 33 players, in the days before substitutes, over the campaign told its own story.
Gradually Sam got rid of more of the ‘old guard’ from the 1959 Cup final era but with severe financial restraints at the club, the quality of the replacements prevented the side from making a concerted effort at cementing a top two place.
So it was more of the same in 1961-62 with the Town hitting third spot in early December after six games without defeat, only to then suffer four defeats on the spin without scoring. The season ended in another mid-table position but with the lack of proper funding, it surely represented a success rather than a failure.
The Board thought they could do better and decided that Sam was not ‘fulfilling his duties in the manner hoped’ and duly sacked him. Confident in his own abilities and working without a contract, the official line of ‘leaving by mutual consent’ was a bitter blow for Sam and he quietly seethed for a couple of weeks before hitting back at the injustice.
Below: Sam Bartram in training with youngster Les Ker.
Sam had been providing an occasional humorous weekly column for the Sunday People recalling his time in the game, and so he had the perfect vehicle to provide an expose of his time at Kenilworth Road and how he had been treated badly.
Over four weeks, Sam’s Sunday People back page ‘kiss and tell’ story became the talk of football. He started off by saying ‘I shall never again attempt to manage any club. For I know now, as I was warned when I first went into management six years ago, that the small-time local businessmen who became directors seldom want experts to advise them, seldom want managers or team builders. All they appear to need are stooges, can carriers and yes-men.’
Warming to his task, Sam went for the jugular. ‘As Luton’s manager, I was caught between the devil and the deep-blue sea. I believed, sincerely, I owed it to the club’s supporters to play what I thought was the best possible team and to buy or find players if I thought it was necessary to do so. But this is how frustrating a manager’s life can be. He is bound to clash in the end with directors who think they know more about the game than he does and are forever pushing their favourite players forward.’
By the second and third columns Sam was giving it both barrels and was naming names. Chairman Percy Mitchell in particular was not painted in a good light, but the players did not escape Sam’s wrath. ‘The much better paid Second Division men of Luton – most of them anyway – seemed to have the greatest difficulty in reaching the ground by ten o’clock of a morning to begin training. Then, in spite of all the efforts of myself and my coaches so many of them would merely jog-trot through the exercises at their own set speed and in their own set ways. Training for them was a nuisance, a bore.’ Sam then went on to accuse them of being ‘the greatest clock-watchers I have ever known’ as knocking-off time of mid-day approached.
Reading this, it would appear that Sam was weak, but on the contrary, any fines dished out were diluted by the directors, especially if the player in question was one of their favourites’.
After four weeks the rants were exhausted and Sam took up a role with the Sunday People as a match reporter, never to return to football management. Living in Harpenden, naturally Kenilworth Road was a regular haunt but initially he was banned from the press box and so became a paying customer, watched the game, before slipping out quietly at the end to find a phone box to file his report.
The ban was eventually lifted and Sam became a regular at Luton games right until the time of his death in 1981.
Below: Sam Bartram in his playing days, watching a Gordon Turner shot pass him by.
Below: Bartram with Malcolm Macdonald and David Pleat in 1980, a year before his death.
