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Cliff Bastin
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2009 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of The Football Hall of Fame, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
When this inductee turned up at Highbury for the first time, at the age of 17, he was famously refused entry. The doorman, it later transpired, thought that he was a young autograph-hunter. Back then, in the late 1920s, it was, indeed, rare for a teenager to play at the highest level. Yet, within a year or so, the player nicknamed ‘Boy’ by the newspapers had became the youngest ever FA Cup winner, and international recognition soon followed for Cliff Bastin.
Switched initially from inside-forward to outside-left by Herbert Chapman, the Arsenal manager, Bastin emerged as the best goalscoring winger in the game during the Gunners’ golden era in the 1930s. ‘Herbert gave his wingers an entirely new concept of their functions,’ wrote Bob Wall, the then Arsenal secretary, recalling the tactics honed by Chapman. ‘He told them: “Don’t go down the line. As soon as you receive the ball, I want you to try to beat your full-back, preferably on the inside, and go for goal. If you get checked, lay it off and let somebody else have a go”.’
It was a tactical innovation that changed the face of attacking play in the decade following the abolition of the offside law in 1925. A dead-ball specialist, Bastin was equally dangerous in the air at the far post - another rare trait for a winger at the time. ‘Cliff was a single-minded young fellow,’ Wall added. ‘He believed in his ability to tease and torment defences and to score goals.’
That conviction helped Bastin register 178 goals in almost four hundred games for the Gunners, establishing a club-goalscoring aggregate record that stood for more than half a century. Those goals helped Bastin collect five League championship and two FA Cup medals. At his best, he scored 33 goals in a single season - another record for the top-flight.
In 1936, The Times paid this glowing tribute: ‘Bastin was the genius of the England forward line, indeed the team. He managed both to be a force in defence and to be up in every attack that was launched, and to look the most probable scorer.’ Tom Whittaker, the Arsenal trainer, said of Bastin: ‘Coupled with his sincerity and his loyalty to all his bosses, he had a trait few of us are blessed with – that is, he had an ice-cold temperament.’
A £2,000 signing from Exeter City, for whom he made only 17 appearances, Bastin’s versatility and capacity for hard work as a footballer allowed him to fill in at inside forward and wing-half when required. ‘The complete footballer,’ The Times added. ‘He covers an immense amount of ground . . . Such was his physical fitness and his sense of anticipation that he was always where he needed to be when there was a demand for his services.’
Frank Swift, the Manchester City and England goalkeeper, rated Bastin ‘one of the hardest shots in football’, a useful attribute for the Gunners’ regular penalty taker. Swift knew beforehand exactly where Bastin would put the ball: the iron stanchion at the back of the net to the keeper’s right. It made little difference, however, such was the force and accuracy of Bastin’s shooting. That ability to time the striking of a ball was celebrated by one football writer who likened Bastin to Wally Hammond, the great England batsman of the day. In one match report, the newspaper man described how one shot ‘came off Bastin’s boot like a cricket ball comes off Hammond’s bat when he is driving through the covers’.
Such was his fame, Bastin, along with several other Arsenal players, appeared in minor roles in two British movies during the 1930s. A breakfast cereal company also employed him as a spokesman, while youngsters were encouraged to join ‘Cliff Bastin’s Football Club’. Having once himself been mistaken for an autography-hunter, the signature of Cliff Bastin came to be highly valued by fans and advertising men alike.