A NEW book about one of Barnsley’s most successful former players, Danny Blanchflower, reveals his great affection for the club but also disputes over using balls in training and telephone eavesdropping when he was set to leave.

The Reds were the first English club for Blanchflower who would go on to star for Tottenham Hotspur and his native Northern Ireland in the 1950s and 60s when he was considered one of the best players in the world.

‘Danny Blanchflower: A Glorious Life’ by Mike Donovan was published earlier this year and goes into detail on his spell at Oakwell.

He joined the Reds in 1949 from Belfast club Glentoran and stayed for two years, scoring two goals in 70 games.

He called the move ‘the most important step in my career’ and thanked manager Angus Seed for giving him a chance after other managers considered him too frail.

He said: “A football club is like a family in a town or a city and it represents the town and city because of that. Barnsley has great people.

“Nearer to reality than anybody else.

“And the town was full of characters and people with character who hadn’t got a great deal of money.

“I think adversity breeds the best type of character. There was a variety of people in Barnsley.

“The great idea of football is to get unity out of a variety of characters and produce it.

“There’s nothing more magical than that.”

Blanchflower also spoke glowingly of Reds team-mate Tommy Taylor who would play for Manchester United and England before dying in the 1958 Munich Air Disaster.

Blanchflower was a key player for the Reds but, by the second season, his relationship with Seed became difficult.

Danny had been away with Northern Ireland and was concerned he needed to improve his ball control to compete with better players so asked if he could train with the ball rather than the usual running sessions.

In the book, Blanchflower’s son Richard says: “They looked at him like he was mad.

“‘The way we see it,’ they said, ‘if you don’t train with a football you get hungrier for it at the weekend.’ And my dad’s reply was: ‘The way I see it, if I don’t see a football during the week, I won’t recognise what one looked like.’

“He always had an answer.”

Danny eventually handed in a transfer request over the matter which he later said he regretted – adding: ‘I was too young then to understand the difficulties and anxieties of a football manager … Not that such understanding would have changed my feelings. It was clearly a point of principle.”

The request was accepted and, with no one coming in for him immediately, he felt like an ‘outcast’. The book claims he attended night classes studying science at Barnsley Technical College and met a telephone exchange employee who had eavesdropped on calls to the club and said they involved enquires for Danny, which the Reds denied.

Eventually he was picked up in chairman Joe Richards’ Rolls Royce and taken to a meeting at a hotel in Derby with Aston Villa representatives.

He sat downstairs while the others spoke on the floor above and, when called up to see if he had any requests, he insisted his contract stated that he would train with a football which was agreed to with bemusement.

Danny recalled: “The players were almost slaves. The political power was with people like Joe Richards. He was a kind of dictator because in those days officials had much more control and power over the game. And I suppose they tried to do their best with it.”

Blanchflower joined Villa for £15,000 then, three years later, moved to Tottenham where he stayed for ten years and won the top flight, FA Cup, twice, and European Cup Winners’ Cup.

He was also nominated for the Ballon d’Or in 1957, 1958 – when he was named in the All-Star team for the World Cup – and 1961.

He would later manage Chelsea and Northern Ireland then died in 1993.