From the bleak adversity of war sprang the most unexpected of opportunities for one pioneering footballer.
As Europe was emerging from the devastation of the Second World War, Charles ‘Norman’ Adcock became the first British player to earn a professional contract in Italian football. Nearly eighty years on, he remains one of the most prolific British forwards ever to have played in the country.
The courageous steps taken by Adcock – in a country bearing the deep scars of conflict – paved the way for the likes of Hitchens, Hateley, Platt and Abraham in the decades that followed.
But you’ve probably never heard of Adcock. Perhaps because the remarkable subtext to the story of England’s first professional footballer in Italy is that he never played a professional match in England.
Growing up in Boston, Lincolnshire in the 1930s, Adcock forged a reputation as a talented young sportsman. His exploits with the Boston Boys Football Club saw him invited to play as a guest for the Boston Borough Police team.
But it was on the rinks of West Skirbeck Bowls Club where he truly excelled. At 16, he defeated a raft of more experienced rivals to lift the prestigious Woodthorpe Cup. A superlative-laden article in the local press pronounced him as the finest young bowling talent in the country.
Just three years later, the onset of the Second World War forced Adcock to leave behind the tranquil lawns of Boston and his job in the construction trade to join the Royal Corps of Signals. He served under General Montgomery in Africa and Europe, spending three-and-a-half years away from home.
At the end of hostilities, Allied troops remained in mainland Europe to help shape a new future for the continent. With the terrors of war giving way to a newfound atmosphere of hope, Adcock was presented with the opportunity to play football for the Central Mediterranean Forces Combined Services team, taking on other military units in exhibition matches across Europe.
The standard of these games was high and the spectator count typically ran into the tens of thousands. Adcock lined up alongside established professionals such as Arsenal’s Welsh international Bryn Jones, Willie Thornton of Rangers, Frank Squires of Swansea and Brentford’s George Wilkins (father of Ray). Although he was yet to make his professional bow for Preston North End, Sir Tom Finney was also a member of that side.
Adcock gained an enviable reputation in army circles and his clinical performances whilst stationed in Italy attracted the interest of Serie B Padova. They offered him a two-year contract with a signing-on fee of £700 and a monthly wage of £44. In the context of average monthly wages of £24 in Britain, The Boston Guardian described it as a “magnificent” financial offer.
However, Adcock was torn. He had long dreamt of becoming a professional footballer, but also yearned for home. Adcock took his time to decide, returning to Lincolnshire and stepping out as an amateur for Boston United reserves whilst pondering the offer. Eventually, Adcock accepted Padova’s generous offer and began his new life in the Veneto.
Playing alongside Italian World Cup winner Gino Colausi, he quickly adapted to a faster and more physical style of play, thriving in front of the “small but rowdy” Italian crowds. He made an immediate impression, scoring 9 goals in 28 appearances in Italy’s regionalised second division. However, Padova were beaten to the solitary promotion berth by a formidable Lucchese side.
Adcock was certainly enjoying post-war life in Italy; whilst the UK remained under rationing, he was free to go out and buy whatever he wanted. In an interview with The Lincolnshire Standard after his first season in Italy, he described how he would be recognised in the street and invited into bars and restaurants for a glass of wine. Brimming with admiration for his combative style, Italian journalists referred to him as a puro sangue inglese (an English thoroughbred).
Notwithstanding, Adcock wasn’t enamoured with every facet of his new life; lamenting what he saw as the poor standard of refereeing. Off the pitch, he confessed that he missed his traditional Sunday roast dinners and playing bowls on Skirbeck Quarter.
The following season, Adcock’s Padova were dominant, winning Serie B (central region) at a canter. Under the instruction of World Cup winner Pietro Serantoni, Adcock formed a formidable strike partnership with Giancarlo Vitali. They notched 17 goals apiece across the course of the season. Understandably, Adcock was beginning to attract interest from Serie A clubs, including the mighty AC Milan.
Milan were hatching a plan for the 1948/49 season that would see Adcock spearhead an attacking trident featuring Irishman Paddy Sloan and Icelandic star Albert Gudmundsson (great grandfather of the current Genoa player with the same name). The Rossoneri asked Adcock to name his price and the deal appeared to have been done; that was until Padova formally complained about Milan’s illegal approach.
Writing in the Guardian, British journalist Brian Glanville revealed that a subsequent inquiry by the Italian League ratified the transfer, but ordered that Adcock should remain in Padova for another season. Adcock’s first exposure to the rigours of Serie A would therefore be with the newly-promoted Biancoscudati, rather than the Rossoneri.
Serie A provided a stern test for Adcock, but he gave a strong account of himself in only his third season as a professional. At 5’9’’ and a shade under 12 stone, it was Adcock’s mentality rather than his physicality that distinguished him. He scored on his top flight debut against Genoa and notched a goal against the legendary Grande Torino team just a few months before they would tragically perish at Superga.
A bout of ‘flu at the end of winter curtailed his season, but he scored a total of 7 goals, helping Padova to a comfortable mid-table finish. The plaudits continued to flow; La Stampa described the dangerous Adcock as “a fine, intelligent centre forward”.
However, when the time finally arrived for Adcock to join Milan, life had moved along.
After a succession of near-misses, the Rossoneri had grown increasingly desperate to recapture the Scudetto for the first time since the war. The summer of 1949 saw a change in strategy and heavy investment in a trio of amateur Swedish players. GreNoLi – Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm to be more precise – had dazzled the Olympic football tournament the previous summer and had given Milan a glimpse of the future.
It was a moment in time that changed the landscape of Italian football. The trio ultimately delivered that elusive scudetto for Milan, prompting other clubs to follow their lead in the Scandinavian market. Meanwhile, unwanted by Milan and unaffordable to Padova, Adcock had been left to pick up the pieces.
Despite Padova’s laudable consolidation in Serie A, the club rang the changes that summer, replacing coach Pietro Serantoni with up-and-coming Hungarian tactician Bela Guttmann. Adcock was rescued from his transfer list limbo in August 1949 by another coach with a burgeoning reputation.
Serie A Triestina were led by Nereo Rocco; then at an early stage of his coaching career, but already an arch-proponent of the Catenaccio playing style. His teams were known for their high work rate, physical strength and ability to counter-attack at pace. The bustle and fire of Adcock’s play seemed an ideal fit for Rocco’s developing system.
Adcock’s record of 4 goals in 17 appearances represented a commendable return in a Triestina team whose first instinct was to defend. “We got on well, with many laughs,” Adcock later recalled of working with Nereo Rocco, “If I satisfied him, I hadn’t done so bad!”.
Summer 1950 saw Rocco unexpectedly depart Triestina following a disagreement with the club hierarchy. He switched to Treviso, an ambitious club in Serie B, and decided to take Adcock with him. This marked the last call on Adcock’s journey in professional football in Italy, scoring a solitary goal in 9 appearances. His final game for Treviso came in May 1951 when the trail of his Italian adventure runs cold.
After a mysterious hiatus of 18 months, Adcock next re-surfaced on trial at Peterborough United, then a non-league club seeking election to the Football League. He had been recommended by none other than Paddy Sloan, who was now winding down his career in England. Adcock would finally line-up alongside Sloan, but it would be at London Road rather than San Siro.
At the ripe age of 30, Adcock’s first steps in English football were further delayed by problems obtaining international clearance. The Daily Mirror recount a comical tail of Peterborough United officials frantically searching the town for an Italian speaker to decipher a cablegram received from the Italian FA.
Adcock’s time at United was short and unremarkable, his footballing descent proving as rapid as his rise had been. The reasons for this are not clear, but his limited appearances during his final campaign in Italy, the ‘missing’ 18 months and his subsequent failure to establish himself in non-league football perhaps suggest that injury may have contributed to his decline.
Upon retirement from football, Adcock began a new career working on the railways and returned to his first love, lawn bowls. His footballing achievements remained largely unrecognised back home, the only hint of his celebrity came when he was asked to be guest of honour at the opening of a fish and chip shop on the street where he grew up in 1954.
Adcock frequently returned to Padova, where he continued to receive a hero’s welcome decades later. “I’m more popular now than when I was playing. I’m treated like royalty,” Adcock told journalist Brian Glanville.
“There is not another country in the world where, after 50 years, they would remember you with such affection, and still ask for your autographs. I’m speechless at times. With the Veneto public, they will not let me pay for anything. It’s the same every time I go. When I complain they say ‘friendship means more to us than anything.’ There is no answer to that.”
Adcock passed away in his native Boston on 9th December 1998.
Charles ‘Norman’ Adcock; unheralded trailblazer and goalscorer. The first Englishman to play professionally in Italy who, remarkably, never played a professional match in England.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you might also appreciate the story of Frank Rawcliffe – a Football League journeyman who made an impression in Serie B with Alessandria.
Calcio England 