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Ray Crawford (footballer)

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This article is about the footballer. For other people, see Ray Crawford (disambiguation).

Ray Crawford
Crawford (left) and former team-mate Ted Phillips at Portman Road
Personal information
Full name Raymond Crawford
Date of birth (1936-07-13) 13 July 1936 (age 88)[1]
Place of birth Portsmouth, England
Position(s) Striker
Youth career
1954–1957 Portsmouth
Senior career*
Years Team Apps (Gls)
1957–1958 Portsmouth 19 (9)
1958–1963 Ipswich Town 197 (143)
1963–1965 Wolverhampton Wanderers 57 (39)
1965–1966 West Bromwich Albion 14 (6)
1966–1969 Ipswich Town 123 (61)
1969 Charlton Athletic 21 (7)
1969–1970 Kettering Town
1970–1971 Colchester United 45 (24)
1971 Durban City 6 (1)
Total 482 (290)
International career
1956 Malaya[2] 1 (0)
1961–1962 England 2 (1)
Managerial career
Fareham Town
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Raymond Crawford (born 13 July 1936) is an English former international footballer, who played as a striker in a career that saw him score over 300 goals at club level.

Club career

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Crawford began his career as a trainee at his home town club Portsmouth. He made his league debut on 24 August 1957 in a goalless draw with Burnley. He managed 19 appearances for the club at senior level before joining second flight Ipswich Town in August 1958.

A prolific striker, he helped Ipswich to win back-to-back titles, the Second Division in 1960–61 and the First Division in 1961–62. In the latter season, he was joint leading scorer in Division One – alongside Derek Kevan of West Bromwich Albion – with 33 goals.[3] During this time, he won the first of his two England caps, becoming the first Ipswich Town player to be capped for England.

He was sold to Wolves in September 1963 where he scored 41 goals in 61 appearances (in total), before moving to rivals West Brom in January 1965, shortly before Wolves dropped out of the top flight. He failed to establish himself though at The Hawthorns and rejoined Ipswich in March 1965, where he played another three full seasons, lifting his tally for the club to 259 goals in all competitions.

He joined Charlton in March 1969, but soon dropped into the non-league with Kettering Town. He signed for Colchester United in June 1970 for £3,000 and in his only season with the club, scored 24 goals from 45 appearances. Most notably, he scored two goals for Colchester United in a giant-killing 3–2 victory against Leeds United in the fifth round of the FA Cup in 1971.

Crawford left English football after this season, heading to Durban City in South Africa, leaving an exceptional scoring rate in the Football League of 289 goals in 476 games. In his only season in South Africa, he won the cup and finished runner-up in the league.

He became youth-team coach at Brighton in 1972 but left after Brian Clough became manager the following year. He then worked as youth team Manager and assistant Manager to Jimmy Dickinson at his former side Portsmouth until 1979 and later managed non-league Fareham Town and Winchester City for a short while before retiring from the game in 1984, and becoming a merchandising representative. He is now retired but still plays a big active role within the community of Portsmouth, appearing at a lot of charity events and is a popular figure at Fratton Park every home game.

In 2007, he published his autobiography entitled "Curse of the Jungle Boy".[4] The book explain how Crawford was known to all as 'Jungle Boy' because of his army service in Malaya. He had his own Jungle Boy chant used a lot by the fans.

Crawford now works as a summariser on Express FM commentaries on Portsmouth matches and occasionally on Radio Suffolk on Ipswich Town games. He is known for his loud cheers and shouts and became an instant hit on Express FM. The former frontman also provides a weekly column for the Yellow Advertiser online newspaper discussing the fortunes of Colchester United FC.

International career

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Crawford's international career was surprisingly brief, but had three caps with two different countries. He made his international debut with Malaya national team in 1956.[5][6] He played at left-wing for Malaya in their 4–2 win over Singapore on 1 April 1956 in the annual Sportsman's Trophy match.[7] He was also named among the 17 players which travelled to represent Malaya in the Asian Cup qualifiers away in Cambodia and South Vietnam in April–May 1956, and not in the starting XI in either of the two qualifiers (Govindarajoo was the starting left-wing).[8][9] After that, he played for England national team against Northern Ireland on 22 November 1961 and played in their next fixture, versus Austria on 4 April 1962, where he opened the scoring in a 3–1 win.[10]

He also played for the Football League representative team.

Honours

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Ipswich Town[11][12]

Individual

Records

Notes

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  1. ^ From 1888 to 1992 the Football League First Division was the top tier of English football. It was superseded by the Premier League in 1992.
  2. ^ 2004 as Football League Championship

References

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  1. ^ Ray Crawford | Eurosport
  2. ^ "Players Appearing for Two or More Countries". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  3. ^ "English League Leading Goalscorers 1889–2007". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. 14 June 2007. Retrieved 14 October 2007.
  4. ^ Mark Metcalf & Tony Matthews (30 August 2012). The Golden Boot: Football's Top Scorers. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 81. ISBN 978-1-4456-1118-1.
  5. ^ "Ray Crawford Profile". England Football Online. Archived from the original on 17 January 2019. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  6. ^ "Players Appearing for Two or More Countries". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  7. ^ "England Players Appearing for Other National Sides in Official Matches". England Football Online. Archived from the original on 24 March 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
  8. ^ "Asian Cup 1956 - Squads" (PDF). Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 June 2017. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
  9. ^ "Asian Nations Cup 1956". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Archived from the original on 27 June 2017. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  10. ^ "Ray Crawford". Englandstats.com. Retrieved 16 January 2019. Edit this at Wikidata
  11. ^ "Tier One (Premier League) Honours". Coludaybyday.co.uk.
  12. ^ "Tier Two (Championship) Honours". Coludaybyday.co.uk.
  13. ^ "English League Leading Goalscorers". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Retrieved 31 October 2010.
  14. ^ "England - All-Time Topscorers". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation.
  15. ^ King, Elvin (10 August 2007). "Wark 'honoured' to be on Hall of Fame". Ipswich Star. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
  16. ^ "Colchester United — Appearances - 1970–71". Coludata.co.uk. Archived from the original on 20 April 2013. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
  17. ^ "Colchester United Hall of Fame". Coludata.co.uk. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
  18. ^ "AN EVENING WITH RAY CRAWFORD". Ipswich Town FC. Co.UK. Archived from the original on 11 August 2020. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  19. ^ Hayes, Dean (2006). The Who's Who of Ipswich Town. Breedon Books. p. 45. ISBN 1-85983-515-5.
  20. ^ "AN EVENING WITH RAY CRAWFORD". Ipswich Town FC. Co.UK. Archived from the original on 11 August 2020. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
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