Goal scorers of a rare pedigree

Roger Palmer

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A quarter of a century after Athletic’s League Cup final appearance, we profile the top 25 players to have worn the famous shirt since.


ANDY RITCHIE


IT WASN’T by choice that Andy Ritchie split his long and glorious stay with Athletic with a brief stay at Scarborough.

It was down to manager Graeme Sharp, who in May 1995 handed ‘Stitch’ a free transfer. The treatment of their idol didn’t go down well with supporters.

“I always felt he had too much say in the dressing room and around town,” Sharp later wrote in his autobiography.

There was plenty to shout about though. The man who in 1998 was voted the club’s best-ever player — polling twice as many votes as nearest challenger Roger Palmer — scored 107 goals in a total of 282 appearances for Athletic, one of an illustrious few to top the 100 mark.

Ritchie’s first club was Manchester United and after signing professional terms in 1977, he moved on to Brighton and then Leeds in 1983.

It took a tribunal-fixed fee of £50,000 for Joe Royle to fetch him to Boundary Park and the rest is club history.

In 1987-88 Ritchie scred 20 goals in 38 games to finish joint-top scorer with Palmer. In 1990 his goal in stoppage time earned a priceless 2-2 draw at Southampton in the quarter-finals of the Littlewoods Cup in a season that saw him hit 28 goals - the pinnacle of his career.

Still, this series concerns the period after the Wembley final, and Ritchie still had a big part to play as the club claimed promotion to the top division for the first time in 68 years.

He scored 15 league goals that season, though his time in the top flight was limited by injury. At the end of the 1991-92 season things looked bleak: back surgery meant he was only given a 50-50 chance of playing again.

After losing to Sharp as a managerial replacement for Royle, Ritchie returned to hit his 100th goal for the club in a 3-1 win at Grimsby on December 27, 1994, and later became manager.

“It was definitely the best part of my career, and my best time in front of goal,” said Ritchie later, of his first stay with Athletic.


ROGER PALMER


STATISTICS alone cement Roger Palmer’s place in Athletic folklore.

The quiet man from Sale shattered the all-time scoring record at Boundary Park, ending up with a total of 159 goals in more than 500 appearances despite playing in midfield, seeing off the old mark of 120 held by Eric Gemmell.

A man regularly in double figures for the season — ghosting in behind defences, he would so often side-foot the ball home or shoot with a deceptive lack of backlift — Palmer broke the club record by scoring twice against Ipswich in a 4-1 home win on April 4, 1989.

Consistency and an ability to do the simple things in an accomplished way marked Palmer out - in addition to his nose for goal.

A £70,000 signing by Jimmy Frizzell from Manchester City and a former ball boy at United, Palmer was 22 when John Bond’s clear-out worked to Athletic’s advantage.

By 1990 he marked a decade of Oldham service, which he celebrated by taking 10 baskets of fruit to patients at the Royal Oldham Hospital.

“Roger is the most underestimated player at the club,” said Joe Royle in 1983. “He reads the game so well and does the simple things so effectively that he could walk into Liverpool’s team tomorrow and not feel out of place.”

Palmer helped Athletic to reach Wembley and in the following season was a leading light in the success story which culminated in the club winning the Second Division title.

Days after that, 15,700 fans turned out at the ground to celebrate his testimonial against Manchester City - the third-highest crowd of the season.

An elusive figure, Willie Donachie acted as chauffeur to non-driver Palmer for many years. Yet he never breathed a word to Donachie during his days at Boundary Park that he was about to get married.

Thankfully, he has in recent years been tracked down, appearing on the pitch at Athletic’s games to be greeted with huge enthusiasm by fans who grew to adore him.