Richard Joseph Barker, born 23 November 1939, Loughborough, England.
PART ONE
Ritchie Barker´s first senior football came not inside the professional game but with Morris Sports of Loughborough during the 1959–60 season, when works teams and local sides still provided a serious proving ground for players who had been missed by Football League scouts. Burton Albion took him to Eton Park in 1960, although that first spell did not immediately produce the breakthrough either he or the club wanted, and after two seasons he moved on to Loughborough United for 1962–63 before briefly joining Matlock Town in 1963.
It would have been easy for Barker to remain on that circuit, scoring a few goals here and there while earning his living away from football, but Burton brought him back later in 1963 and the second chance changed everything, because he returned as a stronger, more determined centre-forward and quickly established himself in a side capable of giving him the service he required. He was not an elaborate player and did not waste time decorating a move when a direct route towards goal was available, but he could hold his position, compete in the air and finish with either speed or force, which made him particularly valuable in the hard, physical football of the Southern League.
The partnership Barker formed with Stan Round became one of the most productive in Burton Albion’s history, and with Jamaican winger Lindy Delapenha supplying crosses and bringing experience gained at Portsmouth, Middlesbrough and Mansfield Town, the Brewers possessed an attack that could trouble opponents in several different ways. Round was himself a remarkable scorer, eventually finishing with 149 goals for Burton, but Barker went ten better and established a club record of 159 goals in 270 appearances across his two spells, a return of well over one goal every two games and a figure that remains untouched.
Barker and Round were at their most dangerous when Burton moved the ball quickly into attacking areas, because one forward could occupy the centre-halves while the other attacked the space, and Barker’s strength in the air meant that Delapenha’s delivery was rarely wasted. The goals came in league and cup football and they came with such regularity that Barker ceased to look like a man who had failed to settle during his first two seasons at Eton Park, while the Southern League Cup triumph of 1963–64 gave him a medal as well as personal recognition. By then he was no longer merely a useful local forward but a scorer whose figures demanded attention, even if that attention arrived later than it might have done for a player who had entered the professional system as a teenager.
There was also an unexpected trip abroad during the summer of 1965, when Barker played for Primo Hamilton in the Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League, a competition that drew British and European footballers into a short Canadian campaign and offered them a very different setting from the muddy, enclosed grounds of English non-league football. It was not a long stay, and it has become little more than a footnote beside the hundreds of outings and goals he accumulated at home, but it revealed something that became increasingly clear as the years passed: Barker was willing to leave familiar surroundings if football offered him an interesting opening.
Barker returned to Burton and continued scoring, while Football League clubs watched and wondered whether a forward nearing his late twenties could reproduce his non-league form at a higher standard, and the man who eventually decided that he could was Brian Clough, newly appointed at Derby County in 1967 and beginning the enormous rebuilding job that would transform the club. Barker became Clough’s first signing at the Baseball Ground, which gave him a small but permanent place in Derby history before he had kicked a ball, but sentiment played no part in the deal because Clough needed goals, competition and hungry players, and Barker’s record offered all three.
PART TWO
Ritchie Barker´s Derby debut came against Huddersfield Town at the Baseball Ground on October 21, 1967, and he marked it in the best way possible by scoring the only goal in a 1–0 Second Division victory before a crowd of 23,950. It arrived in the 44th minute and gave Clough’s new side a valuable win, but it also answered the immediate question of whether Barker could score in League football, because he had taken his opportunity before the argument had properly begun. He followed it with another goal in a 2–2 home draw against Birmingham City on November 4, and although Derby’s first season under Clough was uneven as new players arrived and an old squad was reshaped, Barker made a worthwhile contribution.
Barker appeared 27 times in the league and scored ten goals, while another two goals in four League Cup matches took his total to 12 from 31 appearances in all competitions during the 1967–68 season. The forward line contained Kevin Hector and John O’Hare, with Alan Hinton providing pace and delivery from the left, and Barker therefore had to compete in an attack that Clough and Peter Taylor continued to refine, but a dozen goals represented a sound return from a man who had begun the season at Burton and who was adjusting to full-time football after years outside the League.
Derby moved forward rapidly in 1968–69, winning the Second Division championship and beginning the rise that would eventually carry them to the title of England, but Barker’s own place became less secure as Clough settled upon the combinations he trusted most. He made 11 league appearances and scored twice, while three League Cup outings took his seasonal total to 14 games without adding another goal, and his last Derby appearance came in December 1968. The bare numbers can make that second season look like a failure, yet Barker had done what he had been bought to do during the difficult opening campaign, and his final Derby record of 14 goals from 45 appearances in all competitions was respectable for a player recruited from non-league football at 27. More importantly for Barker, Jimmy Sirrel offered him regular football at Notts County, and the move across the East Midlands placed him with a manager who was rebuilding a struggling club from the bottom division.
Meadow Lane had known grander times, not least when Tommy Lawton and Jackie Sewell helped Notts County win the Third Division South championship in 1949–50, but successive relegations in 1958 and 1959 had pushed the club into Division Four and they remained there for much of the following decade. Sirrel was attempting to rebuild them through organisation, discipline and sensible recruitment rather than extravagant promises, and Barker fitted that policy when he arrived in December 1968. He played 25 league matches and scored five goals during the remainder of 1968–69, numbers that reflected the time required to understand a struggling side and establish connections with unfamiliar team-mates, but neither the manager nor the forward had joined merely to keep the club above the re-election places. Sirrel wanted a team that could withstand the physical grind of the Fourth Division and then use its attacking players to settle close contests, and Barker’s strength, persistence and willingness to absorb rough treatment gave County a dependable centre around which they could build.
The improvement became clear during the 1969–70 campaign, when Barker produced the best Football League scoring season of his playing days and Notts County began to look like a side capable of escaping the basement division. The marksman bagged 19 goals in 44 league appearances, added another in the League Cup and finished with 20 from 46 matches in all competitions, while his physical presence and dependable finishing supplied the point of an increasingly organised team.
Sirrel was building with patience and common sense, making Notts difficult to beat before allowing their attacking players to decide matches, and Barker suited that approach because he could endure the attention of Fourth Division defenders without disappearing from the contest. County did not win promotion that season, but the platform had been laid, and in 1970–71 they turned steady progress into a championship campaign. Barker played 37 league matches and scored 13 goals, with four more appearances in the FA Cup and one in the League Cup taking him to 42 games in all competitions, and although his total was lower than the previous year, those goals now carried the extra value of helping a side that had become the strongest in its division.
Notts County won the Fourth Division title in 1970–71 with 69 points, finishing nine points clear of second-placed Bournemouth & Boscombe Athletic, ten points ahead of Oldham Athletic in third place, and as much as 13 points more than York City in fourth spot. The Nottingham outfit lost only five of their 46 league matches, and Barker himself could at last call himself a Football League champion. It was a satisfying reward for a player who had been operating in the Southern League only four years earlier, but promotion also altered the make-up of the team and Barker gradually lost his place during the early months of the 1971–72 season.
Barker made six Third Division appearances without finding the back of the net and played twice in the League Cup, bringing his Notts County totals to 112 league appearances and 37 league goals, or 121 appearances and 38 goals when the cups were included. Peterborough United then offered him the chance to return to the Fourth Division and play regularly, and he accepted, bringing the same uncomplicated approach to London Road that had served him at Eton Park, Baseball Ground and Meadow Lane. He managed to notch up nine goals in 36 league appearances for Peterborough and added two in four FA Cup ties, finishing the campaign with 11 goals from 40 matches in all competitions, but at 32 he knew the moment had arrived to move from leading the line to helping others understand the game.
Barker’s Football League playing record stood at 58 goals from 186 league appearances, while his cup matches lifted his total for Derby, Notts County and Peterborough to 63 goals in 206 competitive games, and those figures sat beside the remarkable 159 goals he had scored for Burton Albion. He moved quickly into coaching and found a natural home at Shrewsbury Town, where Alan Durban was putting together a progressive side at Gay Meadow and valued Barker’s clear manner and knowledge of forwards.
PART THREE
Barker worked alongside Durban through the middle of the 1970s, learning how training sessions, recruitment and man-management fitted together over a long season, and when Durban left to take charge of Stoke City in February 1978, Shrewsbury promoted Barker to manager. His first match in charge came during a Third Division campaign in which the club were already making progress, and over the next nine months his team played 33 matches, winning 14, drawing 13 and losing only six. That was a strong record, but Barker did not remain long enough to complete the 1978–79 season, because Wolverhampton Wanderers wanted him as assistant to John Barnwell and the opportunity to work in the First Division proved too attractive to refuse.
Moving to Molineux in November 1978 placed Barker inside a major club with ambitious players, large crowds and the expectation that Wolves should compete for trophies, and he became an important part of Barnwell’s staff as the side recovered from an uncertain period. The outstanding reward came in the 1979–80 League Cup, when Wolves reached Wembley and faced holders Nottingham Forest, who had won the competition in each of the previous two seasons and were also reigning European champions.
Barker’s work was largely carried out away from public view, preparing players and supporting Barnwell, but he shared in the triumph when Andy Gray took advantage of a misunderstanding between Peter Shilton and David Needham to score the only goal of the final on March 15, 1980. Wolves’ 1–0 victory gave Barker his first major honour as a coach and strengthened his reputation within the game, while the experience of working with leading First Division footballers prepared him for another chance in management. That opportunity arrived in the summer of 1981 when Durban left Stoke City for Sunderland and recommended his former Shrewsbury colleague as the man to replace him at the Victoria Ground.
Barker officially took charge of Stoke on June 1, 1981, and began with a result that encouraged everyone around the club, as Arsenal were beaten 1–0 at the Victoria Ground on the opening Saturday of the 1981–82 First Division season. Lee Chapman scored the goal, and for one afternoon it appeared that Durban’s departure might be absorbed without serious damage, but the weeks that followed were far more demanding because Stoke lacked the depth and consistency to keep clear of trouble.
Barker was learning the pressures of top-flight management while trying to reshape a squad that had finished 11th under Durban, and although there were useful victories along the way, the team spent too much of the season looking over its shoulder. Stoke eventually finished 18th, two positions above the relegation places, with their survival secured but little room left for comfort, and Barker understood that changes were required. He acted by bringing in players of proven ability and strong character, including George Berry, Mickey Thomas and Sammy McIlroy, while the emergence of the quick and exciting Mark Chamberlain gave Stoke an attacking talent capable of lifting both the side and the crowd.
The 1982–83 season was the high point of Barker’s time at Stoke, because his new players fitted into a side that could pass with purpose, attack at speed and produce the sort of lively football the Victoria Ground crowd appreciated. McIlroy brought intelligence and control, Thomas offered energy and invention, Berry supplied strength at the back and Chamberlain ran at defenders with a freedom that soon earned him England recognition, while Stoke climbed away from the relegation struggle and finished 13th in the First Division.
It was not a spectacular final position, but the football was better, the mood had changed and Barker appeared to have established a basis from which the Staffordshire club could advance. Yet he made a costly alteration during the summer of 1983, choosing a more direct style and asking the team to move the ball forward earlier and more often, even though the players he had assembled seemed better suited to the passing approach of the previous campaign. The change did not convince the squad or the supporters, results declined and the atmosphere hardened, and once confidence disappeared the direct football looked less like a deliberate plan than a sign of a side struggling for answers.
PART FOUR
Stoke City dismissed Ritchie Barker on December 9, 1983, after 102 matches in charge across the standard managerial record, of which 31 had been won, 23 drawn and 48 lost, and his departure ended a spell containing real promise as well as a tactical decision he later had ample reason to reconsider. He spent almost a year outside management before returning to Notts County on November 5, 1984, but Meadow Lane had changed drastically since his promotion-winning playing days. The Magpies had been relegated from the First Division in 1983–84 and were already in severe danger of dropping again, while confidence was low and the old stability associated with Jimmy Sirrel had disappeared.
Barker inherited a difficult position and could not reverse it, winning five and drawing six of his 27 matches before leaving on April 19, 1985, with a second successive relegation closing in. It was a bruising return to a club where he had once enjoyed some of his happiest afternoons, but the setback did not make him retreat into familiar surroundings, because his next jobs took him beyond England and demanded that he work with new languages, customs and footballing expectations.
His first overseas managerial post came with Ethnikos Piraeus in Greece during 1985–86, and from there he moved to one of Africa’s biggest clubs, Zamalek of Cairo, where pressure arrived in a form very different from anything he had encountered at Shrewsbury, Stoke or Notts County. Zamalek were expected to win at home and compete across the continent, and Barker led them through the 1986 African Cup of Champions Clubs, the competition now known as the CAF Champions League.
They reached the final against Africa Sports of the Ivory Coast, lost the away leg 2–0 and then won the return in Cairo by the same score on November 28, forcing a penalty shoot-out in which Zamalek prevailed 4–2. For an English coach whose first managerial appointment had come in the Third Division, winning Africa’s leading club competition was an extraordinary achievement, but it was also consistent with the willingness he had shown since his short Canadian spell in 1965, because Barker had never believed that useful football knowledge stopped at the English border. The African title became his greatest honour as a manager and gave him a distinction held by very few Englishmen.
After returning home, Barker continued to work as an assistant, coach, scout and adviser rather than chasing the attention attached to the manager’s chair, serving at Luton Town before joining Ron Atkinson’s staff at Sheffield Wednesday in 1989. Wednesday won the League Cup in 1991 by beating Manchester United 1–0 at Wembley through John Sheridan’s goal, and Barker again contributed from behind the scenes, while the Hillsborough club later reached both domestic cup finals in 1993.
He also worked as a director of football after David Pleat’s appointment, and during the later 1990s he became chief scout at West Bromwich Albion. When Ray Harford left The Hawthorns for Queens Park Rangers in December 1997, he briefly stepped in as caretaker manager, handling a single match before the club completed its next appointment, and it was a fittingly practical response from a man who had filled almost every footballing role available. He subsequently helped Paul Bracewell, one of his former Stoke players, at Halifax Town, passing on his experience without needing a grand title, and his working life in the game gradually came to a close.