A CAMPING trip to the Isle of Wight soon after the Second World War gave a Jersey teenager his first glimpse of English league football… but it never occurred to him that he would become a professional player himself.
Ray De Gruchy was 16 when he went on the school trip and successfully lobbied to be allowed to travel across the Solent to watch Portsmouth play at Fratton Park.
‘If someone had said to me that I would end up playing there, I would have laughed at them,’ he said. But that was what happened, and the story of how it did made for a fascinating chat with one of the first Jerseymen, now a sprightly 90 years old, to play pro football in England.
Much of Ray’s childhood footballing memories were of kickabouts during the war. ‘We couldn’t play at Springfield as the Germans used it for storing cars, so we played on the street with a tennis ball, and later with a bundle of rags after we ran out of tennis balls,’ he said.
After leaving school aged 16, Ray played regularly for Beeches Old Boys in his late teens and early 20s.
Beeches played in the Marquis Division, as the Island’s first division was then known, with fixtures on Thursday afternoons to coincide with the weekly half-day closure of shops and many businesses.
Claiming both the league title and the Jeremie Cup during this period helped Ray attract the attention of the Muratti selectors, even if his selection in 1953 brought mixed feelings.
‘Everyone who played football wanted to play in the Muratti, but if I hadn’t been desperate to get a cap I’d have told them to stick it because so many players from Wanderers were picked – there was real favouritism,’ he said.
It was a victorious trip to Guernsey, and Ray claimed the first Caesarean goal in a 2-0 win he recalls well.
‘It never stopped raining that day,’ he said. ‘My brother John [known as ‘Tot’] crossed the ball and I could have headed it, but I thought I wasn’t going to head the ball, it was so wet it weighed a ton, so I jumped up and chested it in.’
Impressive Muratti and Jeremie performances led to interest from a Guernsey-based scout, who introduced Ray to Nottingham Forest manager Billy Walker.
The 21-year-old made the move to England in July 1953 with his young wife Joyce [née Le Cornu] at the start of six seasons as a professional, earning £9 a week.
‘I hadn’t signed anything before I got there, as I wanted to see what the standard was like, and I thought I was as good as some of these blokes,’ he said.
But Ray was denied any first-team appearances by a stubborn manager and played entirely in the reserves until he was signed by Grimsby Town in summer 1954.
The 1954/55 season was a difficult one for the Mariners, whose ranking at the bottom of Division 3 North led to the ignominy of having to apply – successfully – for re-election to the Football League.
But the following season Grimsby became the first team to move from re-election to champions, sealing the title with a 2-0 win over Southport at Blundell Park in front of more than 23,000 fans.
Ray, who had successfully converted from inside forward to left-back, was a key part of the title charge, playing in 45 of the 46 league matches.
Cuttings make reference to ‘the chunky Channel Islander’ and describe Ray as ‘hefty’. This comes as a surprise when meeting the wiry six-footer many decades later – he now weighs just over 11 stone, compared with his playing weight of 13st 4lb.
‘Put it this way – I wasn’t very stylish,’ he said. ‘There was no such thing as a wing-back in those days, but effectively that’s what we had at Grimsby, with two attacking full-backs looking to link with our wingers.’
Ray’s four years with Grimsby, which included his return visit to Fratton Park for a 3-1 FA Cup defeat to Pompey in January 1956, came to an end in 1958 when he was transferred for a fee of £1,500 to Chesterfield.
After an injury-affected season, Ray and Joyce came back to Jersey during the 1959 off-season, during which time they decided to make a permanent return.
‘My mother-in-law told me people were making £40 a week from tourism, and the most I’d earned from football was £15,’ he said. ‘We’d saved a couple of thousand pounds, which was enough to buy a guesthouse.
‘I went back to Chesterfield to clear our house and then went to the club to tell them I was leaving. They asked me to wait for the manager to come in, but I had a 10.30 train back to London and a flight from Croydon to Jersey, so I just had to walk out.’
Ray’s football career came to an abrupt halt once he was back in Jersey, working as an electrician while Joyce ran the guesthouse in St Mark’s Road. Local rules in place at the time barred professionals from playing football at any level, or indeed from any training or coaching involvement.
The policy was revised 12 months later, with pros still barred from the first division and Muratti but permitted to play in weekend leagues, resulting in Ray joining St Ouen’s, for whom he played until 1964 when the family – featuring two daughters by this point – moved to Perth in Western Australia.
Ray’s football boots didn’t see much game-time during his time in Australia.
‘There were a couple of friendlies and I remember an Australia v England game which we won by 20-odd goals,’ he said. ‘We’d said we would play them at Aussie Rules the following week, but when it came to it we came up with an excuse that we had to work!’
The family, by this time enlarged to three daughters and an adopted son, answered the call of Jersey once again, returning to the Island in 1968.
Since retiring in the 1980s, Ray has played bowls and enjoyed regular trips to France. Joyce died 15 years ago, but there are 11 grandchildren to keep him on his toes, and he keeps up with some former team-mates from back in the day.
