Page 6 - Deal Round Up My/June/July 2020

Then came the George Eastham legal case involving restraint of trade and unpaid wages to a
footballer. Eastham, who was born in Blackpool, had signed for Newcastle United in 1956 on a
rolling one year contract but during his time there he fell out with the club. He disputed whether
the house they had supplied was habitable and complained the unsatisfactory secondary job
that the club had arranged for him was not good enough. At the time maximum wage rules
forbade clubs from paying the market rate, he was also very annoyed at the club’s attempts
to stop him playing for the England U/23 team.
With his contract due to expire soon, in 1959, Eastham refused to
sign a new one and requested a transfer to Arsenal. Unfortunately
for Eastham Newcastle refused to let him go. The Football
Association’s draconian “retain and transfer” system allowed the
club to prevent him from moving. The rules allowed clubs to retain
players as long as they were offered terms that were “reasonable”,
effectively tying a player to one club until it agreed to release him
while refusing to pay them if they had requested a transfer.
Eastham later recounted on the issue; “Our contract could bind us George at the High Court
to a club for life. Most people called it the “slavery contract”. We with PFA Secretary
had virtually no rights at all. It was often the case that the guy on Cliff Lloyd.
the terrace not only earned more than us — though there’s nothing wrong with that — he had
more freedom of movement than us. People in business or teaching were able to hand in their
notice and move on. We weren’t. That was wrong.” (Interesting the reference to ‘slavery’. 50
years later Ronaldo called it ‘modern day slavery’).
As he was unable to leave Eastham decided to go on strike at the end of the 1959-60 season
and moved south to work for an old family friend, Ernie Clay (who incidentally later became the
Chairman of Fulham FC), selling cork in Guildford, Surrey. Finally in October 1960 Newcastle

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