Anthony Herbert Kay (born 13 May 1937) is an English former
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...
who became notorious after being banned from the professional game for life following the
British betting scandal of 1964
The British betting scandal of 1964 was a scandal in English association football in which ten professional players were gaoled for offences arising from match fixing.
History
Former Scottish youth international and Swindon Town F. C., Swindon T ...
.
Kay played for
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield Wednesday Football Club is a professional association football club based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The team competes in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. Formed in 1867 as an offshoot of ...
before becoming Britain's most expensive footballer when he was
transfer
Transfer may refer to:
Arts and media
* ''Transfer'' (2010 film), a German science-fiction movie directed by Damir Lukacevic and starring Zana Marjanović
* ''Transfer'' (1966 film), a short film
* ''Transfer'' (journal), in management studies
...
red to
Everton for £60,000 in 1962. Kay was
capped
In sport, a cap is a player's appearance in a game at international level. The term dates from the practice in the United Kingdom of awarding a cap to every player in an international match of rugby football and association football. In the ea ...
once for
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, scoring against Switzerland in an 8–1 victory in 1963.
Playing career
Kay was born in
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...
. A left-sided wing-half, he started his career with hometown club
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield Wednesday Football Club is a professional association football club based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The team competes in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. Formed in 1867 as an offshoot of ...
. He transferred to
Everton in December 1962, signed by his former manager
Harry Catterick
Harry Catterick (26 November 1919 – 9 March 1985) was an English football player and manager. As a player Catterick played for Everton and Crewe Alexandra, in a career that was interrupted by World War II, but he is most notable as a manager. ...
, and soon became the team
captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
. Everton were a work in progress under the ownership of the
Littlewoods
Littlewoods was a retail and football betting company founded in Liverpool, England, by John Moores in 1923. By the 1980s, it had grown to become the largest private company in Europe, but subsequently declined in the face of increased com ...
owner
Sir John Moores
Sir John Moores (25 January 1896 – 25 September 1993) was an English businessman, telegraphist, football club owner, politician and philanthropist, most famous for the founding of the now defunct Littlewoods retail and football pools compa ...
and had earned the tag "The Mersey Millionaires". Kay was an important part of Catterick's evolving Everton side and the following May they were crowned League Champions for the first time since 1938–39 season. He also played as they won the
1963 FA Charity Shield
The 1963 FA Charity Shield was the 41st FA Charity Shield, an annual football match held between the winners of the previous season's Football League and FA Cup competitions. The match was contested by Everton who had won the 1962–63 Footba ...
.
Conviction for fraud
In 1964, the ''
Sunday People
The ''Sunday People'' is a British tabloid Sunday newspaper. It was founded as ''The People'' on 16 October 1881.
At one point owned by Odhams Press, The ''People'' was acquired along with Odhams by the Mirror Group in 1961, along with the ' ...
'' newspaper broke the story that Kay, along with fellow Sheffield Wednesday players
David Layne
David "Bronco" Layne (born Sheffield, 29 July 1939) is an English former footballer most famous for playing for Sheffield Wednesday and his involvement in the British betting scandal of 1964.
Playing career Rotherham United
Layne started his ...
and
Peter Swan, through the instigation of former Everton player
Jimmy Gauld, had bet on their side to lose a match in December 1962 against
Ipswich Town
Ipswich Town Football Club is a professional association football club based in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. They play in League One, the third tier of the English football league system.
The club was founded in 1878 but did not turn profession ...
.
The three were convicted of
conspiracy to defraud Conspiracy to defraud is an offence under the common law of England and Wales and Northern Ireland.
England and Wales
The standard definition of a conspiracy to defraud was provided by Lord Dilhorne in '' Scott v Metropolitan Police Commissioner'' ...
, Kay on the basis of a
taped
''Taped'' is a 2012 Dutch thriller film directed by Diederik van Rooijen.
The film won the Best Feature Film award at the 2012 Stony Brook Film Festival. Susan Visser was also nominated for the Golden Calf for Best Actress for her role in the ...
conversation, one of the first times such
evidence
Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field.
In epistemology, evidenc ...
was admitted in an English court.
[ Kay was fined £150 and sentenced to four months ]imprisonment
Imprisonment is the restraint of a person's liberty, for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is "false imprisonment". Imprisonment does not necessari ...
.[ On his release, after serving ten weeks, he was banned from football for life by ]the Football Association
The Football Association (also known as The FA) is the Sports governing body, governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Bailiwick of Guernsey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the ...
though the ban was rescinded seven years later. Kay claims subsequently to have been summoned to London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
to explain the use of taped evidence to the Kray twins
Ronald Kray (24 October 193317 March 1995) and Reginald Kray (24 October 19331 October 2000) were identical twin brothers, gangsters and convicted criminals. They were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in the East End of London, Engl ...
.[
]
Post-football life
Kay was 28 years old when released from prison. He never returned to the professional game, but did play some amateur football. He spent twelve years in Spain avoiding arrest
An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questi ...
for selling a counterfeit
To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...
diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
.[ On his return to the UK Kay was fined £400 and in later years he worked as a ]groundsman
Groundskeeping is the activity of tending an area of land for aesthetic or functional purposes, typically in an institutional setting. It includes mowing grass, trimming hedges, pulling weeds, planting flowers, etc. The U.S. Department of Labor e ...
in south east London.
Upon retirement, Kay returned to the North West to settle back on Merseyside. A few months short of 40 years since his transfer from Sheffield Wednesday in 1962, Tony Kay was once again present on the pitch at Goodison Park
Goodison Park is a football stadium in the Walton area of Liverpool, England. It has been the home stadium of Premier League club Everton F.C. since its completion in 1892. Located in a residential area 2 miles (3 km) north of Liverpool ...
among a group of 100 Everton Legends, as the club celebrated a record 100 seasons of top flight football at the start of the 2002–03 campaign. He received a standing ovation from the crowd.[
]
Portrayals
Tony Kay is portrayed by Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs (born 6 June 1963) is an English actor.
Isaac's film roles include Col. Tavington in '' The Patriot'' (2000), Michael D. Steele in '' Black Hawk Down'' (2001), Lucius Malfoy in the ''Harry Potter'' film series (2002–2011), C ...
in the 1997 TV film '' The Fix'', directed by Paul Greengrass
Paul Greengrass (born 13 August 1955) is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter and former journalist. He specialises in dramatisations of historic events and is known for his signature use of hand-held cameras.
His early film ' ...
, which tells the story of the scandal which ended his career. The story was also dramatised in the November 2009 BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
play ''The Tony Kay Scandal'' by Michael McLean, which included excerpts from a 2009 interview with Kay.
References
External links
Triumph and despair
Kay's own account of the match fixing incident, ''The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'', 4 July 2004
Sheffield Wednesday playing record
Discussion of Kay's Everton career on Toffeeweb.com
Bibliography
*
, ''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' 22 July 2006, p. 102, Broadbent, R.
* "http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/everton-fc/everton-fc-news/2009/03/20/big-dunc-joins-everton-hall-of-fame-100252-23192360/
* Everton: Player By Player by Ivan Ponting (first published by Guinness Publishing, 1992)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kay, Tony
1937 births
Living people
English footballers
England international footballers
England under-23 international footballers
Everton F.C. players
Sheffield Wednesday F.C. players
English criminals
Sportspeople involved in betting scandals
Footballers from Sheffield
Association football wing halves
English Football League players
English Football League representative players
Sportspeople convicted of crimes