Midlands football stars who had the WRITE stuff

MIDLAND TV LEGEND LIFTS THE LID ON 6 DECADES OF SPORTING ENCOUNTERS

- GARY NEWBON

LIVERPOOL'S goalscoring superstar Mo Salah has become only the second player to win the coveted Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year for the third time.

Ninety per cent of the votes by the FWA members including mine went to Salah, who attended the awards dinner at the Landmark Hotel in London on Thursday to pick up the award he also won in 2018 (his first season at Liverpool) and then again in 2022.

Arsenal's Thierry Henry, another great goalscorer, was the other player to win this award three times in 2003, 2004 and 2006.

This award by the FWA is the original footballer of the year award which began in 1948 when Stanley Matthews won it when he played for Blackpool.

Only seven winners were with Midlands clubs when they were voted Footballer of the Year two from Wolverhampton Wanderers, two from Stoke City, and one each from Derby County, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City.

The captain of Wolves and England Billy Wright was the 1952 Footballer of the Year. He spent his entire career with the club (21 years) and became the world's first player to play 100 times for his country.

Billy played 105 times (captaining England for 90) from 1946 to 1959. When I worked for him at ATV, when he was Head of Sport and Outside Broadcasts, he presented me with two of those caps for my twin boys when they were born in 1977.

Billy was an absolute gentleman. He was never booked during his career. He won the top old first division title three times with Wolves and the FA Cup in 1949.