G.O.A.T. - Notts County

Thomas Lawton was born in Bolton on the 6th of October 1919 and with his father leaving home when he was 18 months old he later spent his spare time playing football with his grandfather and his four uncles. He later explained in 'The Comlete Centre Forward', "We made goalposts with coats and jackets and we'd just play any time of the day." From the age of ten he played for his grandfather's team. "On Sunday mornings, after church, there was usually a game organised against a team from another part of Bolton with sidestakes... We would get a tanner a man if you were on the winning side... A tanner, you see, paid for their Saturday night out, a couple of pints and a packet of fags."

He started his football career at Burnley who offered him a job as an assistant secretary on the generous wage of £2.50 a week. His family was also given a rent free house close to the Burnley ground at Turf Moor. The phenomenal sharp-shooting ability of the strapping Lancastrian first became apparent during his schooldays, when he netted some 570 goals in three seasons. Everton bought him for £6,500 - a sensational fee in those days, especially for a 17 year old and he played alongside the great Dixie Dean who was nearing the end of his career. Everton saw him as a successor to Dixie Dean, then 30 years old and whose 60 goals for Everton in 1927-8 season still stands as a Football League record. Dean promised to help Tommy develop and Gordon Watson remembers, "Lawton and Dean used to work together under the main stand, Dean throwing up a large cased ball, stuffed with wet paper to make it as heavy as a medicine ball". Though a powerfully-built six-footer, he combined the physical strength expected of a big man with the nimbleness of a ballet dancer. His movement over the ground was graceful, seemingly languid at times, but that was an illusion. In fact, he was quick, often blindingly so, and he had a habit of pouncing with sudden venom to score goals seemingly out of nothing.

His control of the ball was commendable and the power of his shot was ferocious, but it was in the air that Tommy Lawton attained his full and glorious majesty. Indeed, shrewd contemporary judges assert that no more brilliant header of the ball ever lived. His muscular legs and abdomen enabled him to spring to prodigious heights, and he was blessed with a sense of timing that verged on the uncanny. Tommy had two good feet, a blistering turn of pace, and a head that could uniquely power the ball downwards from prodigious heights. The ball usually hit the goal line just inside the post before entering the net. During the war he worked as a training instructor attaining the position of Company Sergeant Major but when the fighting had come to an end so had his first marriage and he requested a transfer from Everton to help deal with separation from wife Rosaleen who he had married in 1941. Everton reluctantly agreed to the request and he moved to Chelsea for £11,500.

After joining Chelsea and breaking the club's scoring record with 26 goals, netting twice for Great Britain against the Rest of Europe in 1947, it was later that year that his relationship with his new employers ran into difficulties and the announcement that he was leaving precipitated a hectic chase for his services.

There followed one of the sporting shocks of the age when the spearhead of England's attack, aged only 28, was sold to Third Division Notts County, the oldest league club in the world, for a then-record fee of £20,000. The decision to join the Meadow Lane club was made mainly because of a man called Arthur Stollery who was County's manager at the time as the two were close friends. Stollery had been the physiotherapist at Stamford Bridge and when he was sacked Lawton is said to have agreed that he would play for whoever Stollery joined. His arrival immediately put 10,000 on the home gates and seldom has a man endeared himself to the Nottingham public as Tommy did. The arrival at Meadow Lane of possibly England's greatest centre-forward was one of the most sensational happenings in the history of soccer. Soaring attendances and bags of goals set the city on fire. Perhaps his style of play had something to do with it. Never one to shirk a challenge, the local paper often reported: 'Lawton was carried from the field with concussion.' Apparently Tommy hung in the air so long and climbed so high that his jaw often made contact with the head of the defender on his way down! Renowned for his skills at heading the ball, he delighted the Nottingham crowd and was rated by Stanley Matthews as England's greatest ever centre-forward. Tom Finney once said: 'I played with some terrific centre forwards but Tommy was the best.. Tommy was a Lancashire lad like myself with a lovely sense of humour. He helped in the dressing-room camaradie as much as anybody did." 

Tommy Lawton scored 90 goals in 151 league matches for Notts County before leaving for Brentford FC. In May 1957 he was appointed manager of Notts County. However, it was not a successful year and at the end of the 1957-58 season the club was relegated to the Third Division and Tommy resigned. He later worked as coach and chief scout for Notts County from October 1968 - until April 1970 and as then a publican in Lowdham. Remarkably, in a long and distinguished career, and considering the position he played in, he was never booked or sent off.

Tommy Lawton died in Nottingham on the 6th of November 1996.