Gary Sprake
 |
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Gareth Sprake | ||
| Position(s) | Goalkeeper | ||
| Team information | |||
Current team | retired | ||
Garethbox Tit Sprake (born April 3 1945 in Swansea, Wales) was a goalkeeper for Leeds United and Birmingham City, who also won 37 caps for Wales.
Sprake became known during his career as a goalkeeper who was brilliant, but occasionally prone to appalling mistakes; however, he spent more than a decade as the number 1 keeper at Leeds during a period when they dominated the domestic game, and won enough honours to suggest he was a better keeper than given credit for (though critics claim Leeds could have won more with a less error-prone stopper).
Sprake joined Leeds as an apprentice, and made a last-minute debut in 1962 when the regular goalkeeper went down with a stomach complaint on the day of a game at Southampton. The call to Sprake (who was still in Leeds) was so late that the club paid for a charter aircraft to fly him to the match, and the kick-off was delayed to allow the 16 year old chance to get to the ground, change and warm up.
Over the next two seasons Sprake became a regular as Leeds won the Second Division in 1964, and then challenged for the League championship title and FA Cup double the following year. Sprake only missed one game in both competitions that season, but Leeds ended with nothing - missing the League title on goal difference to Manchester United, and losing the FA Cup final to Liverpool.
The first of Sprake's two notorious errors came in 1967 when Leeds played Liverpool in a League game at Anfield. Sprake was holding the ball and was set to throw it to the Leeds left back Terry Cooper, only to curtail his throw when he spotted Liverpool winger Ian Callaghan running towards the area he planned to throw the ball. Unfortunately the curtailing action was not quite smooth enough to maintain a hold on the ball, which slipped out of Sprake's hands behind him and ended up in the net. The known wit of the Liverpool supporters on the Kop came to the fore after the initial cheers for a goal, when they started singing Careless Hands, a hit in the charts at the time for Des O'Connor.
However, in the same season Sprake kept a clean sheet as Leeds beat Arsenal in the League Cup final, and he performed heroics behind an overworked defence as Leeds won the Fairs Cup - the club's first European honour. In 1969, Sprake was again a regular as Leeds won the League championship.
In 1970, Sprake and Leeds chased a treble of the League, the FA Cup and the European Cup, but ended up with nothing. The League title went to Everton on the last day of the season, and Leeds went out of the European Cup in the semi-finals to Celtic. The FA Cup Final provided the stage for the second of Sprake's most memorable errors.
In the FA Cup final, Leeds were playing Chelsea and took an early lead through Jack Charlton. Chelsea chased an equaliser, but when attacking midfield player Peter Houseman hit a left foot shot shortly before the break, it seemed tame and directionless enough for Sprake to gather it safely.
Unfortunately, Sprake crouched down to catch the ball as it bounced, and somehow it slipped through his grasp and rolled into the net. There is no doubt that the Wembley surface was poor for football that day, with the stadium hosting the Horse of the Year show days earlier and having much of the grass turned into hard turf lumps as a result, not to mention the presence of a vast covering of sand. That said, any high-calibre goalkeeper should not have let the ball slip through his grasp, and certainly Charlton's livid reaction let Sprake know that was the way he felt too.
In the second half, Mick Jones put Leeds ahead with just six minutes to go, but Chelsea again managed to equalise with a goal. Leeds manager Don Revie dropped Sprake for the replay, but his replacement - David Harvey - was powerless to prevent Chelsea winning 2-1.
Along with the incident at Anfield, Sprake has become best known for his Wembley error ahead of the seasons of loyal and effective service he gave the club.
Sprake was still the first choice keeper for Leeds in the following two seasons, but was replaced by Harvey at the tail of both, including the 1972 FA Cup Final. Sprake watched from the sidelines as Leeds defeated Arsenal 1-0 in 1972 with a goal from Allan Clarke and a superb performance by Harvey at the other end. In the same year, Sprake publicly criticised Revie for his treatment of him, and so his relationship with his manager, team-mates and the Leeds supporters soured. He only played once in the 1973 season, missed two more Cup finals, and eventually left for Birmingham City for £100,000 in order to play first team football and regain his place in the Welsh team. Sprake played 504 times for Leeds, keeping more than 200 clean sheets, yet is best remembered for two errors and one argument.
A back injury brought Sprake's career to a premature end at the age of 30, which resulted in a near fatal blood clot in his back. He subsequently kept his profile low, returning to his native Wales. His comments to the Daily Mirror about Revie regarding match-fixing stuck in the craw of his Leeds team-mates, all of whom were fiercely protective of their manager and the team's reputation. As such, Sprake has remained the only member of Revie's team who has been excluded completely by the club and those within it.
Sprake won 37 caps for Wales though his country never qualified for any major tournaments during his international career. His biography, Careless Hands: The Forgotten Truth of Gary Sprake (Tim Johnson & Stuart Sprake), was published in 2006 to critical acclaim.