Welcome everybody to episode 40 of the Football United vs Soccer City podcast. As always I would like to sincerely thank all the interviewees, listeners and the soccer public of the Illawarra/Australia who download this podcast. Additionally I would like to say thank you to the people who contribute, comment and reminisce on the social media pages.
This episode’s interviewee John Bingham was born in 1949 in Ilkeston in the United Kingdom and started playing football with friends in his street at the age of 4. The spark that drove him to play football professionally was supporting and watching Nottingham Forrest as a boy and seeing the best players in the World at the City Ground.
John Bingham played football at primary school and high school. In high school he was chosen in the local representative team and during one of these representative games a scout from Charlton Athletic saw John play and asked him to go down to London for a trial. Charlton Athletic then offered him an apprentice professional contract at the age of 15 and this is where his professional career started.
In this first few years of his professional football career in England, John’s talent gave him the opportunity to trial for the England Youth team and after several trials, John at 18 years of age was selected for his country and played friendlies against Birmingham City, Sunderland and 2 internationals against France. Additionally at this point in time he moved to Manchester City, one of the biggest clubs in England at the time. And he was signed by one of Manchester City’s greatest managers Joe Mercer. After a surreal experience training amongst internationals and playing in the reserves team for two years John moved on.
John then played for Oldham Athletic, Mansfield Town, Chester and Stockport County. In 1973 Jim Kelly, who had played and coached in Australia with South Coast United, asked John if he wanted to sign a 15 month contract with Safeway United in Australia. John then came out to Australia in June 1973.
John then played for Safeway United, Balgownie, Wollongong City and Fairy Meadow. He then went on to be a successful player-coach at Berkeley, Shellharbour Workers and Wollongong Macedonia.
At the end of 1986 John’s personal life had changed, which meant that John now had different life goals and coaching had dropped off his radar and in 1987 John stayed in the game by playing with Warilla Wanderers. He then went onto play with Fairy Meadow Italia, had a second coaching stint with Wollongong Macedonia and played with Corrimal Rangers.
John saw out his footballing days playing church league down in Kiama as a striker. John was tremendous to interview and I respect him for giving up his time and going through his footballing journey. I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing John and I hope you enjoy listening to this episode!
