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Peter Doherty
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2002 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of Football's Greatest Heroes, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Peter Doherty was the most valuable footballer of his day, a stylish inside-forward who won the championship title and the FA Cup with different clubs during a career that straddled the Second World War.
Billy Wright once nicknamed Doherty ‘Peter the Great', describing the Northern Ireland international as ‘one of outstanding inside-forwards in the world'.
‘I've had five clubs during my career,' Doherty said. ‘Four of them senior English clubs, and the sum total of fees paid on my transfer is greater than that paid for any other first-class player.'
When Manchester City finished top of the First Division in 1936-37, the team scored 107 goals – with almost one third of them coming from the boot or head of Doherty.
Almost a decade later, he orchestrated the Derby County attack in the first post-war FA Cup Final. Working in partnership with Raich Carter, Doherty scored one of the goals as Derby ran out 4-1 winners against Charlton Athletic at Wembley.
‘Of all the opponents I faced,' Joe Mercer, the England wing-half said, ‘I particularly remember Doherty, who was unplayable on his day. He was built like a greyhound, very fast and elusive but with stamina, too. He had a Rolls-Royce engine in him.'
At international level, Doherty won 16 caps for Northern Ireland . At the end of the match against England at Goodison Park in 1947 jubilant supporters carried him from the field after his last-minute header earned a 2-2 draw.
It was the first time the Irish had avoided defeat in 13 meetings with England . ‘Peter pulled the strings for them that day,' Wright said.
Off the field, Doherty was a revolutionary, railing against the rules governing football's labour market and the training and coaching regimes at most clubs.
‘Altogether too much emphasis is placed on lapping [the pitch],' Doherty wrote scathingly in 1947. ‘Ball practice should figure prominently and often in all training schemes.'
Instead of endless laps, Doherty suggested volley-ball, ‘to promote jumping, timing and judgement'; basket-ball, ‘to encourage split-second decision-making and finding space; and walking-football, ‘to build up calf muscles'.
It was revolutionary stuff at the time. ‘Most training at clubs is a slow form of torture,' he wrote. ‘We need more variation.'
His anger over working conditions was long-standing. In 1933 Blackpool sold Doherty against his will. ‘My personal feelings counted for next to nothing in the transaction,' he wrote later. ‘I might as well have been a bale of merchandise.'
Then, at the outbreak of the Second World War and the consequent cancellation of League fixtures, the clubs ripped up the players' contracts. ‘Without a scrap of consideration or sentiment, our means of livelihood were simply jettisoned,' he said.
After leaving the Baseball Ground, Doherty played for Huddersfield Town and then Doncaster Rovers as player-manager. A pioneer in the role in 1949, he led them to promotion to the Second Division.
Nine years later, as Northern Ireland manager, Doherty guided the underdogs to the quarter-finals of the 1958 World Cup in Sweden .
As a scout later in life, he recommended Kevin Keegan, then an unknown at Scunthorpe United, to Liverpool . Bill Shankly, who played against him for Preston , acted on the advice. ‘Peter was a tremendous player himself,' Shankly said, ‘and he could spot talent, too.'