Hull City goalscoring legend Chris Chilton is celebrating his 70th birthday. Here, Philip Buckingham hears about his great friendship with Ken Wagstaff and how he missed out on playing top-flight football in his prime.
EVEN 42 years after their prolific partnership was finally disbanded at Boothferry Park, Chris Chilton and Ken Wagstaff remain the closest of friends.
Hull City's greatest attacking union may have been responsible for a combined total of 419 goals but the first meeting of the pair in 1964 offered no sign of the harmony that would lie in store.
With the self-assured Wagstaff signed from Mansfield Town and installed as a new partner for Chilton, City's former number nine recalls a fractious start to their relationship.
"I lived off North Road at the entrance to Boothferry Park and I saw Waggy arrive on the day he signed," explained Chilton, who celebrates his 70th birthday this week.
"I didn't know who he was but it was the following day I was introduced.
"I went over to him and told him I'd seen him the day before and he just snapped 'Yeah.' I thought who's this character? He's a bit rude.
"Anyway, we played at home soon after and things didn't improve much.
"A ball came up to me and I held the centre half off to play a ball into Waggy.
"It could have been no more than two yards in front of him but he let it run out for a throw-in.
"He turned to the crowd and held his hands out as if to say 'Dear oh dear, what was that?'
"I walked across to him and said 'If you do that again, I'll use your head as a doorstop.' I wasn't about to let him be the big I am with me.
"But from that day on and that lecture, it was clear he could play and we struck it off."
Wagstaff's debut, a 3-1 win at home to Exeter, saw him on the score-sheet alongside the already established name of Chilton.
It was the start of a beautiful partnership.
With Wagstaff's instinct complementing Chilton's creativity, they became the scourge of defences up and down the land.
Only the Tigers' inability to clinch promotion to the top flight denied them chances together at the highest level.
Chilton added: "If you combined the best attributes of us both, you'd have probably the perfect centre-forward.
"Mentally, physically, skill and know-how, together we could offer it all.
"He was a greedy player in the sense he always wanted to score. But as he grew up he got better and better. Waggy was a special player."City's price tag of 'two George Bests' ended my Leeds deal hope
CHRIS Chilton owns a scrapbook of cuttings from the Hull Daily Mail and its departed sister publication, the Sportsmail.
In it are the happy memories of 11 years with the Tigers but one page always has the power to evoke sorrow for the club's record goalscorer.
The headline claims of former chairman Harold Needler that Chilton would only be sold for "two George Bests" are a reminder of both how highly he was regarded at Boothferry Park, but also of how he was denied the chance of playing Division One football in his prime.
Although a £92,000 move to Coventry City gave Chilton a top-flight debut in 1971, it was a blocked move to Leeds United four years earlier that really stung.
"Leeds came very close," he explained. "I can remember a reporter getting in touch with me saying Don Revie was interested around the time they were becoming a real force.
"My name had cropped up in a board meeting and they were waiting on whether Cliff Britton would accept the offer. There was talk of Mick Jones too, who was a similar player, but I felt I was more mobile.
"It went on through the week and then it got to the Saturday morning when I walked up to the local shop for the newspaper. It was then I read the headline 'Leeds sign Jones'.
"Well I'm not kidding, I was sobbing walking back down the street. I've still got the clippings from the Green Mail with Needler saying he'd want two George Bests to let me go.
"You can't help but think 'what if?' Who knows what would have happened? Hull City were probably wanting a little bit too much but then I was the local boy they wanted to keep at home.
"On that occasion I was really upset. It knocked the stuffing out of me and I might as well not have bothered playing for the next half a dozen games."
Chilton's collapsed move to Elland Road came perhaps at the peak of his powers. A return of 122 goals in the previous five seasons had helped transform the Tigers into top-flight contenders in their own right.
That historic first promotion never arrived in Chilton's time but 26 goals during a fifth-placed finish in 1970-71 under Terry Neill eventually won him a move to the top flight, as well as a tour of Australia with a Football Association XI.
Even a move to Coventry City left room for regret, though. Had Chilton opted for Dave Sexton's Chelsea in August 1971, the other club interested, he could have fulfilled his other ambition of playing at Wembley when the Blues went on to reach the 1972 League Cup final.
"It had been a lifelong ambition of mine to play in the First Division and at Wembley too," he said. "At least I managed one of them.
"Before I joined Coventry there was interest from Aston Villa, Tottenham and Chelsea too. By the time Coventry did come around, I was probably past my peak. Then the injury came along and that was that."
