Football's first superstar who worked at the same pit as my grandad... and puts the PFA to shame

A connection back to home forged an interest for me in Billy Meredith, a footballer whose name is now unknown to most yet who was a force of nature in his day, rising from a North Wales pit village to become a household name at the time of the sport's first commercial explosion.

Meredith mined the same Black Park Colliery, at Chirk, where my grandfather later worked, and it was with a firebrand's belief in the rights of working people – be they footballers or colliery workers – that he became football's first superstar; the match-winner for both Manchester United and Manchester City when each landed the first of their many trophies. 

He fought for a fair player wage and the right to transfer between clubs, taking on a powerful Edwardian Establishment determined to limit the money workers took from a game the aristocracy had invented.

It had been a struggle to really get to the core of this man, whose face dominated billboards the length and breadth of the land in the early 1900s, until the National Football Museum, knowing of my interest, got in touch to say they had taken possession of what they were calling the 'Billy Meredith scrapbook.'

This large, brown, untitled book didn't immediately scream significance, when I arrived last week to view it at the museum's brilliant Preston archive, within Deepdale. Yet it was a treasure trove - page after page of newspaper clippings, glued in by Meredith, we have to presume, and providing a snapshot of his passions and preoccupations.

The book chronicles his greatest performances and the rivals he most admired, though it is his wish for players' rights – his passionate belief they were entitled to as much as the other creative artists of the day - which shouts out from its pages and down through the decades. Countless cuttings chart the fight which Meredith led to form a players' union.

'Enthusiastic meeting in Manchester' is the headline on a report of the meeting, convened by Meredith at the city's Imperial Hotel, to 'establish a football union not only for the men who have made themselves a name but also the less professional.' Another such meeting 'lasted from 3.15 until 5.30. Meredith was in the chair.' Meredith was 'the individualist and yet the cooperator,' stated another report he had kept.

His fight to form what remains the Professional Footballers' Association was hard won. The FA resisted and the game was on the brink of strike action before Meredith's immense national popularity – and the support of team-mates – saw him win out.

He was, by all accounts, a complicated individual. He could be thin-skinned and temperamental. He struggled with modernity, averse to driving the family car, according to his daughter, Winifred, whose memories of her father are preserved on taped interviews which the archivists also located for me.

But it is not difficult to imagine what a central role Meredith would have wanted to play in the biggest contemporary issue for the players' union – the fight for greater help for former players struggling with dementia. And what he would have had to say about the union's track record in providing it.

The picture has improved. There is a pot of money now, which is finding its way to the right places. But since I asked here, a month ago, how current PFA chief executive Maheta Molango, could possibly justify taking a new non-executive directorship role at Sampdoria, on top of his £650,000 annual salary, whilst ex-pros are struggling, half a dozen or more families whose fathers and husbands are living with dementia were in touch to say they long for a PFA leadership which will actively lead, proselytize and campaign on this issue.

Molango isn't the only PFA union leader who sees no conflict of interest in being a football management boss. Ebru Koksal, a PFA non-executive director, is working as an advisor to Mercury/13, an investment fund buying women's football clubs.

Ex-players' families have been left to do the campaigning and for a sense of what it entails, I recommend the new book 'No Brainer' by Mike Amos, which traces that struggle through the case of the late Bill Gates, formerly of Middlesbrough, whose wife Judith leads the campaign group Head Safe Football, which she co-founded. I will write more about that book here.

Meredith did not enjoy the riches which should have come with his fame. He died in relative poverty in April 1958, two months after the Munich air crash, with Manchester United and the nation still in a state of grief. The obituaries were sparse. Fewer than 100 attended his funeral. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Manchester's Southern Cemetery which seemed lost until it was relocated in 2001 and the players' union he had established undertook to pay for a headstone. 'Fondest memories of Meredith, Billy, Manchester City – United – Wales' is the stone's plain message, telling only a fraction of his story.

'Football was not a real job, in the way that the pit was a job,' Meredith reflected in later life. 'But the wealthy, sitting on their velvet cushions, were taking from it while we, the entertainers, were giving.' The scrapbook attests to what a crusading spirit – a desire to provide a voice for those lacking one - looks and sounds like. 

Crash makes every away fan shudder 

The 17 South Shields supporters who climbed aboard a minibus to Tamworth on Saturday would have been full of the joyous weekend football ritual known to thousands of us. 

Their team, just inside the National League North play-offs, faced the league leaders, though wins at Chester, Buxton and Gloucester fuelled them for another one of the long road trips that every geographically remote club knows so well. 

They were heading back home, at 7pm, no doubt mulling over the 3-2 defeat, when a collision in West Yorkshire sent their minibus barrelling over on the A1. Some of them were thrown or made their way out of the vehicle, flagging down passing motorists for help to lift the bus up, enabling others to walk free. 

The images of the wreckage give so many who make football pilgrimages like that cause to shudder. 

A win at home to Southport on Saturday would see South Shields into a play-off spot they will hopefully secure, though for that band of 17, away days will never be quite the same.

Drama at my grandson's match

Revenge was sweet on Saturday for the junior team which my grandson's side recently defeated 10-0. 

They won the return 3-2 – their first victory of the season - in a thrilling game full of goalkeeping heroics and knee-slide celebrations which left one of our team with the desolation of missing a penalty he'd attempted to dink. 

He knelt on the pitch, head in hands, and still looked woebegone at the end. There was, of course, that natural temptation to say, 'never mind, just put your foot through it next time,' but my mortified grandson would never have invited me back.