Boulton's respect for game he loves

COLIN Boulton of Derby County stands astride the Himalayan peaks of Football League champions, the only uncapped goalkeeper to have been a permanent fixture throughout two triumphant campaigns.

- Peter Jackson

Winning the title against the odds in 1972 under 'Old Big Ead' and regaining it against still greater odds three seasons later ABC, (After Brian Clough), required negotiating a perilous route through 84 matches.

Boulton, alone among Derby's champion squads, played every minute of every one.

And now, some half a century later with his 79th birthday around the corner; he stands out for reasons which have nothing to do with his inheriting the family tradition for survival set by his father during the Second World War. Don Boulton joined the Navy at 16 the day before war broke out and was serving on HMS Galatea in December 1941 when U-boat 557 torpedoed the cruiser off the Egyptian coast with the loss of almost 500 lives.

"Dad was blown into the Mediterranean by the blast," says Boulton, junior. "He held onto a fender from the ship for eight hours before being rescued. He found his way back to Plymouth and went back to sea for the rest of the war on HMS Bermuda."

A policeman for the rest of his working life, Don Boulton died last month at the age of 101, the last of the few who survived the Galatea disaster. His son was back in Cheltenham last Tuesday leading the family tributes to 'a true gentleman' at a celebration of his father's long life.

Boulton, junior, stands out because he moves to the beat of a different footballing drum and has done so since he finished moving to the one which earned him a place in Derby County's greatest XI of all-time.

The goalie revered by generations of Rams' supporters saves all his passion these days for rugby union but there's a great deal more to his conversion than that simple statement. "I haven't attended a football professional rugby players. They have pushed their fitness, speed and strength to unbelievable levels.