Sharp Strikers?

[Dutch Uncle]

Anti-stat Warning: Although this post contains some numbers it is based on opinion, rumour and provocation  

Like everyone else I am ecstatic about the signing of Billy, and I am particularly chuffed he has chosen us for footballing reasons over money. This in itself shows great honesty and depth of character, and will endear him to us all to the extent he is nearly a legend already.  So since a flood of threads on ‘’is Billy the best Rovers striker ever’’ can be expected before too long, I thought I would get in early and give some of my own opinions.

First of all we have to agree that we can only talk about what strikers did at Rovers and for how long. In saying who is the best striker to play for Rovers it is tempting to come up with names like Tony Woodcock and Brian Deane who both went on to be England strikers, but they were not that level while at Rovers, and were not here for long.

So in IMHO King Billy (hope we don’t offend any Catholics here    ) has to compete with 3 main players:

King Alick: All would say he is simply the best player ever to play for Rovers. I am not old enough to have seen the sensational teenager of the 1950’s who has been compared with Rooney – or rather Rooney is compared not always favourably with Alick. However I did see the older more rounded version in the 1960’s who was the country’s top scorer in 1964-5. That Alick had truly incomparable all-round skill and vision, but lacked real pace. However he was around long enough to score 139 goals for Rovers.

Peter Kitchen: A wonderful natural finisher who scored comfortably more than 20 a season for 3 seasons in a row in the 1970’s (including one classic at Newport regularly immortalised by BobG) and who  stayed around long enough to score 105 goals and gain cult status before going on to a higher level

Tom Keetley: No-one on here is old enough to comment on what kind of player he was – most likely an ‘’old-fashioned centre-forward”. However 186 goals in 6 years whatever the standard of Division 3 football in the 1920’s cannot be ignored, and his Rovers scoring record will probably never be broken.

I would suggest that if Billy can repeat last season’s form and score 20 goals (which has never been achieved by a Rovers player before at tier 2 throughout all our long history) he will have surpassed all but those three. If that doesn’t sound like much then look at the names of some of the strikers I would be saying he would already have surpassed:

Paul Barnes
Greg Blundell
Colin Booth
Colin Cramb
Mike Elwiss
Paul Heffernan
Mike Jeffrey
Graeme Jones
Ian Nimmo
Brendan O Callaghan
Laurie Sheffield

And before my time names like Peter Doherty, Clarrie Jordan (club record of 44 goals in a season), Kit Lawlor, Ray Harrison and Bert Tindill (133 club goals including 101 in 9 seasons in the old Division 2). In particular Peter Doherty must have been a world class player - widely touted as the second best player ever to come out of Northern Ireland after George Best -  but by the time he came to Doncaster he was presumably past his best.

Compared with the top three, Billy does not have Alick’s supreme skill, but is quicker and works far harder. IMHO he is not far short of Kitch’s predatory finishing but as a positive is able to play the lone striker role, and as said before who knows how to compare with Tom Keetley.  To be equal with or surpass the top three IMHO Billy probably needs to extend last season’s form for at least another two or three seasons, and if this should lead to a best ever Rovers league position, a playoffs campaign or even better then he will certainly have earned his own legendary status. The only time I can think a ‘’signing’’ generated  similar sheer joy, excitement and expectation was when Alick returned after 7 years away through injury and emigration.

I am sure there are other opinions and other strikers I have left off the lists above.  

[BillyStubbsTears]

Thought provoking as ever Dutch.

Raises the eternal issue of relative vs absolute player quality.

My take is that the game is constantly getting techincally and athletically better and that players today are incomparably better than ones from previous generations. You see schoolkids now doing Cruyff turns. Player stat data indicates that the expected level of physical activity now is significantly higher than it was just a decade ago (Wayne Rooney runs 11-13km per game - Alan Shearer used to average 7km 12 years ago). So, in my opinion, the best strikers that we have ever had by an absolute assessment are the best ones of the last few years - Heffernan and Sharp. It's a contentious argument, but I'm confident that if we had a time machine to have a top form Jeffrey brought to the present day, he wouldn't be remotely close to our first team. He might have been an astonishing physical and technical specimen by the standards of the day, but the bar has been raised so much higher now that his attributes are commonplace.

Relatively of course, relative to the standards of the day, Jeffrey stands head and shoulders above any other striker we have ever had. If we ever get a player better than him relative to the standards of today, it would be jaw-dropping!

At the risk of being even more contentious than above, I take some issue with putting Kitchen on quite such a pedestal, even on a relative ranking. He played almost his entire career for us at the lowest level. He played in a side that frequently prioritised attack over any semblance of disciplined defence. And still his strike rate was lower than that of either Heffernan or Sharp for us, at one or two tiers higher, palying in teams that prioritise tight, controlled, discipliend play.

For me, Heffernan and Sharp are both the best strikers that we have ever had in absolute terms, and the two immediately below Jeffrey in relative terms.

[Dutch Uncle]

Many thanks for your reply BST - right on the money when I was beginning to think there would be no takers    

As you point out there are really two questions in who is best in absolute terms and who is best relative to their day.  In absolute terms I fully agree with your analysis - I was basically tending towards the other question

Even then there is a distinction between who was best (absolute terms or relative to their day) and who contributed most to the club as a striker, and again I was tending to the latter

Also you can see I put the names outside my ''big three'' in alphabetical order to avoid ranking. IMHO Heffs is clearly the best of the rest (can't really comment on Doherty/Tindill etc). The Kitch versus Heffs debate for me rests on the question above of quality versus contribution to the club with a differing answer in each case.

Two names I now realise I missed out are Alan Warboys and Colin Douglas - the latter in particular would win no competition based on best quality striker, but is right up there in contribution to club stakes. Interesting both of the above spent significant parts of their careers (i.e. latter stages) as defenders for the club.

Also isn't it great that your rock solid analysis a year ago (which I fully agreed with) that letting Heffs go and loaning in Billy was a poor choice and a lose-lose situation since the better Billy did the less likely we were to sign him. The SOD/ROK factor, Billy's ''down-to-earth, stay close to roots, want to play not sit on the bench, money isn't everything'' character, JR's charisma and the KM2's generosity have changed all the normal accepted laws of the professional football universe

Heisenberg rules - maybe

P.S. Ever read Goedel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter?