FREEMAN’S SIGNING
June 5, 1915,
The Liverpool Football Echo
Did Nothing Great But Scored
Anecdote As Antidote To War-Wore Readers
Last week we talked of some signings in which I was interested. For but a short time let us talk of the best signing that ever I had a hand in. Everton at a certain period in their history showed signs of A.D. Players such as Settle, Sandy Young, McDermott, and Co were beginning to come to the end of their tether, I had an idea that Bert Freeman would be capable of picking up a lot of good football points from such as Settle and McDermott and that Everton by signing him would do a sensible stroke of business. He would learn more football trickery in five games with Settle and Young or Settle and Tommy McDermott than he would gain in five years with Woolwich Arsenal.
Freeman was essentially a goal-getter. I never claimed for him that he was otherwise -then Everton wanted a goal getter, and I so rammed home in my “Notebook” the need for Everton to get Freeman’s signature till the matter became as obnoxious to me as it did to my readers. Correspondents wrote and suggested that the club might give him a run,
but nothing was done for a long time. Freeman was watched and he scored four goals, but I believe the report concerning him was something to this effect; “He scored three goals but he did nothing great!” After weeks of waiting Everton had a shot at his transfer. Aston Villa asked about £300 if I remember correctly. They had Hampson at his best then, and they were not keen on getting rid of their local produce. However, while Everton were debating about a sum of £50, Woolwich Arsenal stepped in, paid the money, got their choice, and Freeman started scoring goals for them. He was rushed off to Nottingham the next day,
and set out on goal-getting. This was in January, mark you. Yet he finished at the head of his clubs scorers list by April. When he came with Woolwich to Anfield I went to see him in the old Anfield road dressing room –what a hole it was, and how different our dressing rooms are nowadays –and I expressed regret that he had not been signed by Everton, where I told him I through he would have fared well. Bert replied that he, too was sorry as he would have liked Everton.

Voice of The Critics
After my booming of Freeman, and recommending him to a local club, it was only natural that the local public and the local critics should take a deep interest in his appearance at Anfield. Generally speaking the folk didn’t fancy him –they laughed at his darts forward and his funny little steps. The critics in certain quarters “went” for me in a mild way and showed plainly enough that they would not have signed him if the matter had rested with them. Later Woolwich fell on evil days, and Freeman was transferred. Note this; if he had been signed when the idea was first published he would have gained much in the way of training and experience and class football. Woolwich had done Freeman no great good. If he didn’t score regularly he was “no good” “Tim” Coleman came to Liverpool at about the same time and I watched the new-comers very closely –and kept an eye on the critics too. The “Official” programme gave it out one day that with Freeman at centre Everton cannot hope to success or combination”? That’s a fair sample of some of the critical comments passed upon this much-booned player, I knew Freeman’s ability and his solo goal scoring method, and I knew too that a few of those thrilling runs would make the critics from tail. They did so in short time.
And what was their next move? Mainly this; they suddenly found that Coleman made all Freeman’s goals for him? I bow to no one in appreciation to one in appreciation of “Tim Coleman’s skill in putting a ball forward. I tell you candidly, however, that the talk of Coleman virtually providing Freeman with a record of records, in scoring 38 goals in one season was a lot of tarradiddle. In later years Burn Campbell used to attribute to Jack Taylor much to the credit of the record put up by the centre forward. Here again, I yield to no one in my estimation of Jack Taylor’s help. But to laden Freeman’s goals with assistance from the inside partner and centre half back, and say that he got most of his goals through their agency is not accordingly to fact.

The Other Side of the Goal
Further you’ll note that Freeman has rarely been given credit for being one of the most unselfish players that ever toed a ball. He was always anxious to give the pass direct across the goal of he had become boxed in, and time and again he had refused to take a fair chance of goaling so that a better-placed man could make “sicker” (or should it be “sikkar” or nicer?) Not a word passed their lips about the fact that Freeman often used to score after taking up a pass in the middle of the field. Fancy a pass (of ordinary character) made in the centre of the field, being made a hook upon which to hang a Freeman goal. A half-truth had got them down. Coleman was canny enough to know that Freeman wanted the forward pass, that he could not head a ball “for nuts” as the junior would say, and that he simply loathed taking a ball at an acute angle. Coleman was an old soldier you know, and he fed Freeman with the passes he liked. I’ll tell you something more important. Coleman used to do a deal of pin-pricking. He found Freeman wanted shaking up now and again and had spells of inactively when nothing but a taste of Coleman would make him “gee-up.”
Coleman has told me more than once that “Bert was like a heavy horse, he lolled of to sleep if you didn’t keep slicking pins in him” Even to this day Freeman seems to me to have his lax moments but it must not be forgotten that when he gets up steam he puts plenty of push into work and is capable of taking and giving a chance when he is on the run. When he was in his first experiences with Everton, I reckon he was one of the fastest dashers I had seem. This fact recalls the troubled time caused to me through declaring that over a short distance, say forty yards Harry Makepeace was one of the stiffest I had known. The matter was much denied and much debated, but I hold that even now Makepeace in football toggery can give most of the youngsters a start and a beating over a short course.

Fell From Grace
Great was the scene when Freeman broke Sam Raybould’s record and I shall not forget it in a hurry. But a crowd which had been well fed in the goal line cried for plenty of goals the next season. They did not realize that by making a record Freeman was making a rod for his old back. His fame fed to his being marked in more than one sense of the term.
I stood up for him hard and fast now, for he was asked to do too much and his reasonably good goal crop was not bad enough to be sacfied at. The matter cut another way if Freeman was being watched by more than one man whenever he put down his feet where were his co-forwards, and how was it they were not succeeding in splashing; it was not granted that Coleman and some others were showing still further signs of age. No, Freeman was the marked man. By the next season the crowd began to bark at him. Everton’s crowd had a record that does not do them proud in this respect. Freeman in one game (Lancashire Cup) injured his shoulder badly, and was out for some time. This was a novelty for him, for he was always ready and anxious to play despite his mauling. Further,
no one ever saw him retaliate; he was one of the cleanest players the game had known. When he recovered from his injury he showed slowness in coming back up his former style. He is a speedy flesh-maker I fancy and that statement reminds me that it was after a trip of England that he had a stale time on the field. All though his football life Freeman has had these black patches –some footballers get them once in a lifetime. Freeman had spells at Woolwich, Everton and Burnley aline showed patience and reaped the benefit of their wise refusal to transfer a man who hail in the tick of the clock lost his form. Former Everton “guardians” have told him that they could not keep Freeman at Everton because the crowd had got at him. He had been tried at outside left and shaped fairly well- he nearly always turned to the extreme left if his solo runs were likely to be baulked. However the plan of playing him in away matches was not tried and therefore the crowd’s bark was as hard as its bite, me effect being that Everton decided to transfer Freeman and Mountford at a paltry price.

Re-Enter Freeman
I well recall the day that Freeman and his pal left Exchange Station. I was coming out of the station and strange to say, bumped into them. Asked where they were going the reply was Burnley. I was astonished –so were the players. They had neither of them ever gamed a benefit and Freeman in particular had three seasons in senior service to his name.
However, Burnley proved a good change to the players named, and Burnley to this day declare that they are ready and “bursting today if there are any more such transfer going about. Mainly through the signing of Boyle, Taylor and Freeman Burnley got into the leading places of the League and Cup. Time came when Freeman’s successes were cut short. He didn’t score. Burnley simply waited on him. They knew he would come again, and wished him well. He came. While Everton were getting knocked out at Glossop in the first round of the Cup Freeman was helping his club to start their famous walk to the “Sportsman’s Final” in 1914.
Burnley won the Cup, Freeman scoring the only goal of the game against Liverpool. Four memories of that final stand out with exceeding strength. First King George was present. Next a shot from Nicholl would have scored in the first half of the game and not Taylor’s head blocked the way –it was sheer good luck that Taylor’s protected the goal, but like Merutio wound, I sufficed. Next Freeman’s goal and finally a meeting with Freeman and his father at night. Maurice Parry, who was present at the final had high praise for the goalkeeper. He told me that the way Freeman snapped the ball and rammed it home proved to be a top-notcher. Only a clever man dare have taken the chance, as Freeman did he said. At night in a crowded street an accidental meeting with Bert, who was “arming” his aged father. It was a line, homely sight and a lasting pleasure to me. I shall always look with delight and some pride upon my association with Freeman.
He’s a gentleman and a capable footballer, and I only regret that Everton did not sign him earlier in his life and keep him later in his life. Bee.