Last Saturday, the official PNE matchday programme caught up with one of North End's most prolific goalscoring legends, Tommy Thompson, to conduct a review of the life and times of the man who netted a record 34 goals in a top flight season for the Club exactly 50 years ago.

Our conversation with the striking sensation at his Preston home yielded far more than we had room for within the pages of the official matchday programme, so here are a few more recollections of Tommy's playing days in his own words.

Tommy on why he came to Deepdale...

"At the time (the summer of 1955), I just wanted a move from Aston Villa. I'd had five years, and I'd had enough - I felt it was time to move. Of course, in those days you didn't have agents, so if you were put on the transfer list like I was when I asked to move, you just waited for somebody to come in for you.

"I don't know how many teams were interested in me at the time, but Preston came in for me when I was just heading back towards Durham anyway to see me family, so I stopped off in Preston, had an interview with the chairman Nat Buck, had a look round the ground and one or two houses as well, and I decided I liked Preston.

"It was also a bit nearer for getting back to Durham as well, so that I was it - I just signed for Preston there and then on the day!

"You never knew in those days how much you were being transferred for, so there was no money involved as far as I was concerned - all you got was a £10 signing on fee, that was it! We eventually saw four or five houses, and decided we liked the one on Regent Drive, which was next door to Tom Finney, who I knew from having played with him previously a couple of times.

"It was a Club house, which was important because you couldn't afford to buy anything on the wages we were on at the time.

"The only way clubs could get people to come - especially if they had a wife or a family - was if they offered a house, so I think in those days Preston owned about 20 houses! It was important to my wife and I because my eldest daughter was just a few months old, and my second daughter was then born in Preston.

"My wife and I have been here in the town since I first signed in 1955, and the best part of our lives has been in Preston. I've almost felt as though I'm part of Tom's extended family in that time, because I've come to know all his family really well. A lot of the other players from that time who came to Preston seem to have settled here as well because it's not too big a place and it's fairly quiet - a nice place to be."

Tommy on playing for North End...

"Things were very enjoyable on the pitch. In my first season at Preston, things started off like a house on fire and we won four of our first five games, but by Christmas we were struggling. It came down to the Easter period, and in those days you used to play three games over the weekend.

"We played at Tottenham on the Good Friday, Chelsea on the Saturday and then Tottenham back at home on Easter Monday morning. Luckily we won the two away games and drew at home, so the five points there kept us up that season. Thankfully things seemed to go well for me that season, and it carried on that way.

"After that we had three or four good years, finishing second and third, but the team was getting older and others left - in my view we were in a good position as a Club and should have gone out and bought some better players, but the manager at the time thought he could bring some players on the cheap, and though they had some success getting to the FA Cup Final in 1964, things fell away after that.

"We brought some good young players in at that time, but I think we could have brought some new faces in at that time, and then brought the younger lads through a bit later.

"My last season was in 1960/61 when we got relegated, and I remember the game being a lot tougher then that it is now. We used to play with what they called the 'Tomlinson T ball', which was meant to be the roundest ball you could get at the time, but it became very difficult to play with in certain conditions.

"There was one game that season against Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup when the conditions were really tough. The pitch had been all cut up before we then had a frost, so it looked bad all week, but then there was a light covering of snow on top which made the conditions look a lot better than they really were, and we played the game.

"The thing is, we knew what was underneath, so we didn't play all that well as we ended up settling for a draw, and had to wait for the better conditions at their ground in the replay before we managed to settle the tie.

"I'd been struggling with a knee injury at the time, and I've had them both replaced since! That tie effectively turned out to be my last game for North End.

"I think it's a shame that I suffered that injury that season, because without wanting to sound big headed, I think I'd been in reasonably good form that season, and I don't think we'd have got relegated if I'd been fit enough to score a few more goals.

"Still, that was the card that we were dealt, even though in my case the card turned out to be a P45!"

Tommy on life after North End...

"I still carried on living in Preston, and moved on to Stoke who were putting an experienced team together. Stanley Matthews came along, and he was still living in Blackpool, so he used to pick me up on the corner of Plungington Road each day when we had to go to training, and we'd maybe stay over for a few nights at a time when it was pre-season.

"It wasn't too difficult a journey though, because even in those days on the old roads it didn't take much more than an hour to get there.

"The place where Stanley used to pick me up was the ironmongery that I owned as my other job outside football - I was also trained as a joiner. I had my base there in what is now the Suzuki place, West End Garage. In fact, they were the ones that bought me out!"



Tommy on seeing the world through the game...

"Playing football gave me a chance to see the world, and I'm very thankful for it.

"When I was with North End we went out to South Africa for a tour, which was a really good trip. We were without the likes of Sir Tom Finney and Tommy Docherty who were on international duty, but we still had a very good side.

"The crowds that came to see us were huge. Everyone knew about the name of Preston North End, and it was a big attraction for people to come and see us. We played plenty of games, as you used to do in those kind of tours, and I think we only lost a couple of games, if that.

"The one downside was an incident on the journey back. I've never been a big fan of flying, but we were on the penultimate leg of our journey back to London by plane, and we were coming into land at Rome airport quite early in the morning where we were due to refuel.

"As we looked out of the window while we were descending, we could see a number of Italian air force planes over on the other side of the airport. I said to Jimmy Baxter who was sitting next to me 'only one more stop, Jimmy' - and it could have been our last stop!

"Suddenly, the plane then pulled out of its descent, and swooped back up into the air and ended up having to circle the airport for a while - it turned out that one of the air force jets was taking off as we were coming into land on the same runway, and the pilot had to quickly pull out to make sure we didn't collide in mid air!

"Earlier in my career, when I was about 18 or 19 and playing at Newcastle, I used to work on a building site during the day as a joiner, and travel up for training on Tuesday and Thursday nights, which would take about an hour.

"One night I got there and the boss said - 'come and see me in my office'. My initial thought was 'oh no, what have I done now?'! Anyhow, instead I was told that I was on the tour to America and Canada, which was unbelievable, because I'd never been away from home in my life before! To go on a ship like the Queen Mary seemed remarkable, and though I only played in two of the ten or eleven matches, it seemed like a holiday to me!

"After about five days at sea we docked in New York, then went up to Montreal, stopping off to play different teams along the way. We sailed from Montreal to Liverpool on the way back, but we hit a big storm in the middle of the Atlantic.

"Apparently we nearly went over - that was a frightening experience. I knew we weren't allowed up on deck because it was pretty bad, but it wasn't until I was at Villa a few years later than I bumped into one of the Newcastle directors at a meeting on the south coast, and he told me 'you realise we nearly rolled over, Tommy' - I wasn't aware it had been that bad.

"It wouldn't have been a good way to go - in the middle of the Atlantic - and I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. Instead of taking the scheduled four days, the trip took about a week because it was so rough!

Tommy on football then and now...

"The game itself hasn't changed - you've still got to put the ball in the back of the net to win games - but everything else about it has. Around this area, we had about six or more local derbies each season, with the Manchester clubs, the Evertons, Liverpools and clubs like Blackpool and Bolton who were all first division teams.

"Players were just coming back from their National Service, like Tom Finney, and I think there was more discipline there amongst the players, something that seems to be lacking now. I suppose I was lucky - I didn't have to do my National Service. I should have gone like all my mates at work where I was serving my apprenticeship, but for some reason I never got called up.

"All the players had to have other jobs. Tom was famously a plumber and I was a joiner. People laugh about it now and ask why you had other jobs if you were a footballer, but you had to make ends meet.

"You can do now if you're a player, obviously, but when I was serving my apprenticeship and playing for Newcastle at the age of 17, they were paying me £3 a week, a fiver if I played in the second team, and £7 if I played in the first team. The top money you could make was £12 per week.

"The game has changed a lot in the sense that when we went to games, there were just the 11 players, the trainer and the reserve. Because he wasn't playing, the reserve was just there to help the trainer put the kit out and that sort of thing, whereas now you've got at least 16 players going to away games and all the staff that go with them - it's all expense.

"The money involved is just phenomenal. I wouldn't like to be a manager these days because I think the tail wags the dog, so to say, and I think it's a shame really. It's foreign to older people like me.

"The way the players play has also changed in some regards. I don't think you'd get players like Tom Finney or Stanley Matthews any more, because their natural instinct would have been trained out of them. There are certain things about football that you can't just put down on paper like you can with an interview!



"It's nice to see players with natural ability, but I don't think we're breeding players like that in this country these days. The best players you tend to see come from abroad, where they've not necessarily had an easy upbringing. They've had it tough and rough, and they're used to playing barefoot on rocky or sandy surfaces, so when they come to play on nice grass pitches it's much easier for them!

"In terms of discipline, I'd also like to see the sin bin brought in, which has worked really well in rugby league and rugby union. There's no use fining players because there's so much money involved now, but you can send them to a sin bin where they're not playing, and that way they're more likely to learn.

"Beyond that, if it didn't do the trick, I'd also like to think teams could start to get points taken off, because that would really make them think, rather them fining them £30,000 or £40,000 which they won't even notice. They've got to do that before the game gets out of hand, because it's starting to go that way now."

Tommy on that amazing goalscoring record in 1957/58...

"I don't think, really, that the record will be beaten. It would take an awful lot of good luck and a fair bit of fortune for that to happen, and though I'd love to see Preston back at the top of that division, sadly I can't really see happening, because clubs like that can't really compete at the very top level in the modern game.

"Football is a funny game, and you have to have a bit of luck - plus a fair bit of talent, of course! I just hope I'm around to see it if it does happen!"