George Eastham
March 5, 1972
Photographs by Terry O’Neill ©Iconic Licensing
Published in When Saturday Comes 224, October 2005

By the early Seventies Terry O’Neill was a well known photographer of music and film celebrities. From shooting at Heathrow as Britain’s Sixties popstars exploded, he went to the US himself and developed his iconic style of portrait photography. He partly attributes his success and access to Hollywood’s most famous to having an accent similar to Michael Caine’s.

In the UK he became one of the tabloids’ photographers of choice just as the fashionable footballers of the day began to drift from the sports to the lifestyle pages. He shot the self-styled “clan”, the west London footballing clique centred around Malcolm Allison, Terry Venables, Rodney Marsh and Alan Hudson. Not a scene you would associate with one of the more senior football figures of the period, George Eastham.

Despite being in England’s 1966 World Cup squad, Eastham was a modest figure, admitting once that he knew within the first five minutes whether he was going to have a good game or not. The most emphatic role he had performed was his part in the abolition of the maximum wage. When he had tried to move from Newcastle to Arsenal in 1959 the club refused, under the old “retain and transfer” system. A year later, with the help of Jimmy Hill and the PFA, he took the club to court and won. Now players had the right to decide their own destiny and it was time for market forces to rule. The maximum wage was abolished in 1961.

But Eastham was destined to be remembered for something else, too. In 1972 Stoke had survived an 11-game run to the League Cup final including a twice-replayed, twolegged semi against West Ham. They played Chelsea in the final and before the game Terry O’Neill met Eastham, who jokingly said that if Stoke won he should take the cup to bed for a photoshoot. Not only did Stoke unexpectedly see off Chelsea 2-1 but the 35-year-old Eastham scored the winner. He was held to his promise and a hotel room was swiftly set up for this shot. Eastham keeps a straight face, though Mrs Eastham seems slightly less comfortable with the idea. It’s doubtful they were bothered. A famous TV commentary of the goal had spluttered “The old man has done it!” and if he was happy to do this shoot then it’s doubtful he took offence to that either.

Doug Cheeseman
Football Photography Writing

See more of Terry O’Neill’s work