Football Explained

Good touch for a big man

Good touch for a big manDespite suggestions in some quarters that the phrase was coined by Peter Crouch’s agent in 2001, the football historian Sir Reg Pickles – who, incidentally, was renowned as a good touch typist for a big-fingered man – notes in his chronicle of the English game, It’s Our Ball (and We Should Get to Decide Who Plays With It), that as far back as the middle ages the ‘big fellowe up toppe’ was a common sight in the village contests from which the sport originated.

However, by the Victorian era, profiling and segregation had become key features of the schooling system, with tall boys who were not identified as goalkeepers at an early age sent to training camps to become rugby union second rows, or the drivers of comically small cars. Only the most lithe, athletic and nimble lads were left to take up careers as footballers and the England national team was admired for its tactically advanced short-passing game.

Such was the disdain for beanpoles and their abilities that in poorer areas tall children were forced to act as makeshift goalposts, with a line of tape tied between them to serve as a crossbar. This purist attitude persisted until World War II, when players were required to fill positions vacated by those who had gone to the front, much like women working in factories and homosexuals running the postal service.

Harry Greville, the son of a schoolmaster Greville Greville, had been sent home from the trenches for repeatedly giving away the Allies’ position and joined Blackpool as a wing forward in 1942. At 5ft 7in Greville was freakishly tall for the time and his tiny team-mates soon discovered that he was adept at lifting them up to reach high balls into the box. Sadly, he was completely hopeless at heading.

Nevertheless, Greville had proved his worth and in several appearances he demonstrated an ability to pass and shoot that allegedly prompted Bert Millichip’s decision to retire. It was after controlling a bobbling ball into the box with his knee and then collapsing in a tangle of his own limbs (an own goal resulted from the confusion) that a reporter from the Times wrote of Greville as having “a surprisingly good touch for such a big, ungainly man”.

In modern parlance, the saying that Greville’s gangling frame inspired is almost irresistible to commentators, and is at its most potent when it can be used to describe one half of a ‘little and large’ partnership up front. The disparity of pairing a tall striker with a short one harks back to the more innocent era of discrimination, and is universally appealing in much the same way as Golliwog dolls and jokes about female officials.

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