The Last Goal of the Durham Wonderboy: A tale of 50s football, Oldham Athletic and dementia

By Steven Chaytor

Kenny Chaytor was a young footballer possessed of prodigious and natural talent. His manager at Oldham Athletic, the legendary George Hardwick, predicted he would play for England before he was twenty. His football journey, from the County Durham coalfields to the Lancashire cotton mills and back, charts the exhilarating highs and excruciating lows of a player in the 1950s. A time of soccer ‘serfdom’ before freedom of contract, before the game was awash with money and when players were restricted to a maximum wage. Known as ‘The Durham Wonderboy’, Kenny Chaytor experienced encounters with stars of stage and screen, sporting greats and political heavyweights. But football and life don’t always go to plan. His final encounter was with dementia. ‘The last goal of The Durham Wonderboy’ also charts his dementia journey, its links with his footballing past and how he was drawn back into the football family through support from the Professional Footballers’ Association. In the end, dementia will not be denied. It may slowly and inexorably diminish the man, but it will never diminish our memory of the man or the life he lived. 

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