For a few weeks in late summer, 20 years ago this year, English football had a new goalscoring hero. Ritchie Humphreys announced himself on the opening day of the 1996 season, on the same afternoon that a midfielder a couple of years older was serving notice of his own talent with a remarkable goal from the halfway line against Wimbledon. This one was, inevitably, scored from a lesser distance than David Beckham’s, but it was still a thing of beauty, a splendid, thumping volley from the edge of the area to help Sheffield Wednesday win a home game against Aston Villa.
Three days later they visited Leeds, whose Sheffield-born manager Howard Wilkinson had moved to Elland Road from Hillsborough eight years earlier and was, as it turned out, a few weeks away from losing his job. Wednesday won 2-0, with Humphreys opening the scoring. He played the first hour of a 2-1 win at Newcastle that Saturday, before scoring the winner against Leicester in their following game.
And what a winner it was. Humphreys was 10 yards outside his penalty area when a Leicester attack broke down, and after a clearance was headed into the centre circle by Andy Booth he sprinted forwards to reach the ball first and set off down the centre of the pitch. To his left David Hirst made a series of runs, distracting one defender and leaving Julian Watts to deal with Humphreys. He did this unconvincingly, beguiled as the young Yorkshireman carried the ball forwards with successive touches of his left foot, jinking one way then the other, before from 20 yards clipping the ball over Kasey Keller and into the net. It was a moment of individual skill, vision and audacity, one that ranked alongside any of the several unforgettable goals – Eric Cantona’s chip against Sunderland, Beckham’s against Wimbledon, Trevor Sinclair’s 20-yard overhead kick for QPR – scored that season (though for some reason, despite winning September’s goal of the month award, it failed to make the BBC’s goal of the season shortlist).
Like a Dutch master
“I actually played in midfield that night, which is maybe why I ran the ball from inside my own half,” Humphreys says. “If you watch it now, Hirsty’s asking for the ball the whole time, and normally a young player will just give it to the senior pro, but this time I just kept going. When I got near the goal I decided to try the chip. That’s the youthfulness, that’s just playing without any fear. You’re not thinking about missing the chance and hearing the groans from the crowd. Obviously it worked out for me that night.”
Humphreys had won his place in Wednesday’s lineup after Hirst and Mark Bright had been injured in pre-season. “I had some problems,” remembers David Pleat, Wednesday’s manager. “Hirst had his injury issues and was overweight and Bright had seen better days, if I’m honest. Humphreys was a decent footballer. He had good control, he was good with his back to goal – broad-shouldered, strong for his age, so he could look after the ball. He didn’t worry about coming up against the more physical opponents and the one thing that held him back, and what stopped him from being a top centre forward, was his pace. If he’d been quicker it would have given him half a chance. We took him on a pre-season tour of Holland and he scored a wonderful goal that Van Basten would have been proud of, and then of course we started off like a bomb.”
That pre-season strike came against Utrecht, which as it happens was Van Basten’s first club. A story that did the rounds after his breakthrough suggested Johan Cruyff had witnessed this game and declared Humphreys the heir to Van Basten himself, though the truth was a little more prosaic. “It was a bit of a run from the halfway line and I scored with my right foot, which was a real rarity,” Humphreys says. “It was their open day and Van Basten had been invited back. I’m presuming a journalist said, ‘What about that Wednesday No9?’ and he politely said, ‘Oh yeah, he’s got a good future.’ I don’t think he said, ‘He’s the next Van Basten.’ Somehow it ended up with Cruyff saying I was the new Van Basten. At Hartlepool we played West Ham in the League Cup, I can’t remember the year [it was 2009], and I got asked this question about Cruyff said this and Van Basten said that. I told them exactly what I thought happened, and they didn’t print that. They printed what they wanted. It’ll be there forever now.”
A career built on dedication
The day his finest goal of all floated into the net at Hillsborough was Monday 2 September 1996, and after winning each of their four games Wednesday held a three-point cushion at the top of the league. The free-scoring Humphreys, then 18 years old, and his club could each look ahead to a future of spectacular potential. It hasn’t worked out the way either of them might have imagined.
Until that moment Sheffield had been one of the great cities of English football, but their clubs have since endured an extended decline. It took two more games, both defeats, for Wednesday to be knocked off the top of the table, and they have not been back since. As in two of the previous four seasons they ended that one seventh, with a star-studded squad that included Des Walker, Chris Waddle, Benito Carbone and Regi Blinker, but they have not bothered the top half of the top flight again. In 108 years between the foundation of the Football League in 1892 and 2000 there were only 13 in which Sheffield was not represented in the English top flight, and 42 in which Wednesday and United were both there. In 16 years since 2000, when Wednesday were relegated, the city has been out of the top division for 15 and the Owls have not been back at all.
As for Humphreys, England’s great goalscoring hope did not have the career anyone might have expected. For a start, for all the gifts we glimpsed at its inception and though he has played in 648 (and counting) league games he was last seen in the top flight in 1999, and has made only seven appearances in the second tier. More surprising than that, over the years he has played more often in defence than attack. Now 38, he has been chairman of the PFA since 2013, coaches at Chesterfield and remains available for selection for first-team duties.
The traits that have led to this longevity were obvious from the start. Waddle remembers that at Wednesday “I looked at him and thought, ‘You’re all right, your attitude will take you a hell of a long way.’ He was a great kid to work with. He just took it all in, the praise and the criticism, and would work even harder the next day.”
Pleat remembers Humphreys as “a quiet boy. What he’s achieved is a great credit to his dedication and honesty.” That Wednesday team contained a mix of “what I call fading stars” – John Sheridan (“a marvellous passer but never very quick”), Waddle (“very popular with the fans, but obviously he’d lost his ability to burst”) and Walker (“contrary”) – but Pleat credits their success to a nucleus of less decorated players, including Humphreys, Peter Atherton, Graham Hyde, Guy Whittingham and Lee Briscoe. “These boys, I can’t explain it, they’d won nothing but they wanted to win something.”
“People ask about the players I’ve played with, the Di Canios and Waddles. For a football fan and lover of the game, to play with these players early in my career, that was an amazing upbringing. It taught me about the game,” says Humphreys. “It was a bit strict back then, as a YTS player, the jobs you had to do. That taught me a lot about life, it turned a young lad into a young man. If I didn’t work hard and sacrifice a lot of things, I probably wouldn’t have got that opportunity in the first place.”
Having scored his first three league goals in the space of four games, Humphreys had to wait nearly three years to double his tally. “After I left [in November 1997] Ron Atkinson came in and went and spent all their money, which Ron was good at doing, and Ritchie eventually became displaced and was allowed to leave,” remembers Pleat. When Humphreys left Wednesday in 2001 he had a total of four league goals. “I’ve scored a couple of good ones since then, a couple of runs that were similar to the Leicester goal but without a chip at the end, and a couple of volleys,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever caught one as sweet as I did that one against Villa, though. That was as perfect as you’ll ever get. I would say I’ve probably not scored many scruffy tap-ins. A lot of my goals have been OK, they’ve been quite good goals, but that’s not good enough if you’re looking for your striker to get you 25 a season.”
He joined Hartlepool in 2001, scoring five goals in his first season. The following year he played in midfield and got 11, his most prolific season (he has averaged one goal every 13.8 league games). “Since then I’ve been a kind of jack of all trades, master of none,” he says. “I think what it’s done is helped my longevity, understanding and being able to play in a few positions, and being left-footed has always helped me. You have to become reliable as well, and obviously going past 700 professional games you’ve got a lot of knowhow. At Hartlepool my time was split between left-back and left wing but I played every position except right full-back and goalkeeper.”
Bona fide legend
He may not always have played in the same position, but at least he always played: by the time Humphreys left Pools in 2013 he was their all-time greatest appearance-maker. He was named player of the season three times and at the awards evening in 2008 he swept the board, being named players’ and supporters’ player of the year, player of the decade and player of the century. “Those goals gave me a great start to my career,” he says. “I couldn’t sustain the goalscoring, or playing to a standard required of a Premier League or even a Championship player. That’s not doing myself down. I don’t take anything for granted. But would I have been happy back then if I’d have been offered the career I’ve had? Yeah. I probably wouldn’t have believed it. To play more than 600 league games, to represent my country at Under-21 level – yeah, more than happy. I know it’s not the norm, so to play beyond 35 years as well, when the average lifespan in football is so short, I feel unbelievably privileged and lucky to have played for so long at this level.”
And now, 20 years after he was the young pup picking up tips from the likes of Waddle and Sheridan, Humphreys is helping the next generation to come through. “It’s a real privilege to be there at the start of someone’s journey, to give them the right information not just about tactics and technical ability but about being a professional footballer and what it takes, not just at the football club but away from it, how you eat and sleep and recover and do everything you can to give yourself the best chance,” he says. “Because it’s not always the best players who stay in the game, it’s the desire and the attitude to listen and learn and implement the things the coaches tell them. I certainly think for myself, having the right attitude has had a lot to do with where I’ve managed to get in my career.”
Pleat still speaks of Humphreys with almost paternal warmth. “I was so pleased the PFA selected him to be their man,” he says. “He’s an absolute perfect example. It proves you don’t have to be a star to be respected by your peers as a top-class professional and a credit to the game.”
For many he shone only briefly, visible for little longer than it took for his delicate chip to soar over Keller and settle in the back of the Leicester net 20 years ago. For others, whose focus runs a little further down the football pyramid, he is a bona fide legend. Either way, Humphreys was a star alright.
