Ray Pointer

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Ray Pointer
Personnel
Surname Raymond Pointer
birthday October 10, 1936
place of birth Cramlington ,  England
date of death January 26, 2016
Place of death Blackpool ,  England
position Center Forward
Juniors
Years station
Cramlington Welfare
Dudley Welfare
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1957-1965 Burnley FC 223 (118)
1965 Bury FC 19 0(17)
1965-1967 Coventry City 26 0(13)
1967-1972 Portsmouth FC 152 0(31)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1959-1960 England U-23 5 00(3)
1961 England 3 00(2)
1 Only league games are given.

Raymond "Ray" Pointer (born October 10, 1936 in Cramlington , † January 26, 2016 in Blackpool ) was an English football player . As a center forward, he belonged to 1960 champion team of Burnley and left the club as a post-war record goalscorer. Because of his blonde hair and the numerous goals he was given the nickname "Blond Bombshell".

Athletic career

Pointer grew up in the north-east of England and as a footballer he initially worked as a winger . Thanks to his goal danger in the youth field, however, he was quickly retrained to the center-forward position. Inquiries from prominent clubs were not lacking, with Sunderland AFC initially expressing interest, but then finding it too small for the offensive center. Another trial session at Blackpool FC was just as unsuccessful before signing a professional contract with first division rivals Burnley FC in August 1957 . Five days before his 21st birthday he made his debut against Luton Town for his new club and by the end of the 1957/58 season he had fought for a regular place. In the season 1958/59 Pointer swung to the best goalscorer of Burnley FC and he meanwhile scored eleven goals in nine consecutive games. When Burnley won the English championship in 1960 , he never missed a single game and with nineteen goals scored only one less than teammate John Connelly . His nickname was "Blond Bombshell", which referred to his blond hair and the action-packed style of play, as well as his risk of goals.

By the turn of the decade he had also made it into the English selection team and on his debut in May 1959 for the U-23 he scored a “double” to 3-0 against Italy's youngsters in Milan. In September 1961 he made his debut for the senior team against Luxembourg (4-1) and scored here too. In his third and last appearance against Portugal , he contributed with a 2-0 win that the "Three Lions" qualified for the 1962 World Cup in Chile , for which he was not nominated. In the club he was partly responsible for the fact that in the 1961/62 season almost the double of the English championship and FA Cup would have been achieved before "only" the runner-up in the league and a final defeat in the cup against Tottenham Hotspur jumped out in the club with 26 competitive game goals . In the following period Pointer had passed his zenith and he was injured in April 1963 in the encounter against Nottingham Forest . He was transferred to the right half-forward position in favor of newcomer Andy Lochhead and “deported” in August 1965 after the club's record for the post-war period of 133 goals in 270 competitive games at the second division club Bury for 8,000 pounds.

At Gigg Lane , Pointer immediately demonstrated his scoring ability and after 17 goals in 19 league games, he moved on to second division rivals Coventry City , who was coached by Jimmy Hill at the time, in December of the same year . In January 1967, he joined shortly before Coventry's promotion to the excellence which is also in the Second Division active Portsmouth on. There he spent another six years as a player, while at the same time he switched to the coaching profession and supervised the youth teams in Portsmouth. In 1973 he followed his ex-trainer from Burnley Harry Potts to Blackpool FC , where he was also responsible for the offspring. With engagements as the youth coach of his ex-clubs in Burnley and Bury then ended his time in professional football, while he remained active in the amateur field with over 50. He died in a Blackpool nursing home at the age of 79.

Title / Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "England - U-23 International Results - Details" (RSSSF)
  2. ^ "Ray Pointer" (Clarets Mad)
  3. ↑ Hayes, Dean P .: England! England! The Complete Who's Who of Players since 1946 . Sutton Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-7509-3234-1 , pp. 143 .
personal data
SURNAME Pointer, Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pointer, Raymond
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Cramlington , England
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 2016
Place of death Blackpool , England