Tony Field: From Halifax to New York

Few players took to the pitch alongside Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto and Tony Currie – Tony Field did, but it's safe to say one of those wasn't his biggest fan.

Matthew Bell

This is a picture of Brazilian great Pelé being chaired off the Giants Stadium field in East Rutherford, New Jersey, after his final appearance for New York Cosmos in October 1977. The game was an exhibition against his former club Santos; Pelé played a half for each team. He scored for Cosmos in the first half as they won 2-1.

I don’t know who the two players are who are carrying Pelé (the one with the beard and the one obscured by the policeman’s hat), but the player in the bottom left of the picture is Giorgio Chinaglia, the Swansea-born Italian who had a love-hate on-field relationship with Pelé in their time together at Cosmos.

The player at the bottom right of the picture is none other than former Sheffield United man Tony Field. Who’d have thought that when he started his career at hometown club Halifax Town —progressing via Southport, Barrow and Blackburn Rovers —Field would in later life play for the same side as true world-class stars such as Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto?

Blades’ manager Ken Furphy signed Field for Sheffield United from Blackburn for £76,666 in March 1974: Furphy knew Field well from their time together at Ewood Park. Field was prominent during United’s almost-but-not-quite-successful 1974/75 season and ended up scoring 15 goals in 75 (+5 sub) appearances, before leaving for the States in early 1976, joining a veritable flock of United players who, as the Blades hit hard times, sought big bucks across the Atlantic in the burgeoning NASL in the late 1970s.

Others were Keith Eddy and Terry Garbett (also New York Cosmos), Peter Anderson (Tampa Bay Rowdies), Jeff Bourne (Atlanta Chiefs), Cliff Calvert and Colin Franks (Toronto Blizzards), Eddie Colquhoun (Detroit Express), Jim Brown (Washington Diplomats), Chico Hamilton (Minnesota Kicks) and Alan Woodward (Tulsa Roughnecks). It was Ken Furphy who signed Field, Garbett and Eddy for Cosmos in his only season there as manager (1976). Garbett and Eddy had played for Furphy at both Watford and Sheffield United.

A right-footed left-winger or striker, Field was small in stature but possessed nifty footwork. His running style was a sort of rolling gait with hunched shoulders that took him across the ground in deceptively quick fashion. He was most famous at United for a game against Ipswich Town in August 1974 when he scored twice in a 3-1 win. His second goal was a weaving dribble from the halfway line that took him beyond player after player before flashing an angled shot into the kop net: