The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of West Ham's crazy Goalkeepers

Forget the ‘Adrian or Hart debate’ and look back on these characters from the past.

- Brian Williams

There was a time when securing the services of England’s No 1 ensured a serious upgrade in a club’s goalkeeping department. Alarmingly, that doesn’t appear to be the case with Joe Hart.

Don’t get me wrong – Hart isn’t responsible for all of West Ham’s ills. I think, on balance, he is actually a marginally better keeper than Adrian. But, increasingly, it appears that he isn’t the answer to our defensive problems.

For me, goalkeepers define West Ham. Phil Parkes was brilliant, and so were we (most of the time); Allen McKnight was awful, and so were we (all of the time); Bobby Ferguson never quite lived up to expectations, and neither did we (although, to be fair, I suppose you could say that about West Ham at just about any time).

When I first started supporting West Ham, the man in the green jersey was Jim Standen, who was not only a very decent keeper but also an extremely useful county cricketer for Worcestershire.

It seems unthinkable now that a footballer with a top-flight club could spend the summer months bowling seam up for a living, but things were different in the Sixties – not least the amount of money professional sportsmen were paid.

More famously, of course, Geoff Hurst was on the books of Essex CCC, but only turned out once for the first team. Standen played first class cricket for 11 seasons, heading his county’s bowling averages in the year Worcestershire won the championship. That was sandwiched between winning performances in the FA Cup final and the Cup Winners’ Cup final. Well played, sir.

They say you have to be mad to want to play in goal. If that’s the case, there have been approximately 30 suitable cases for treatment who’ve started a first team match for West Ham since Standen’s day – a mixture of good, bad, indifferent and – in the case of Colin Mackleworth – a total mystery to me.