Peter Harris - The Obituaries

1. Brian Glanville’s Guardian Obituary

TOP SCORER DURING POMPEY’S GLORY DAYS

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Portsmouth were such a power in football, few made a greater contribution to that ebullient team than Peter Harris, who has died aged 77. An outside right, in the classical tradition, he was fast, well balanced and elusive. Portsmouth won the championship in the 1948-49 and 1949-50 seasons, and were favoured to do the 1949 league and cup double, only to be beaten in the Highbury semi-final by second division Leicester City.

Under the shrewd managership of the club's former chief scout Bob Jackson, Pompey surpassed themselves in the 1948-49 season, winning the title five points ahead of Manchester United, with all five forwards achieving double figures in goals. Of these Harris, with 17, was joint equal top with the big, powerful Duggie Reid.

The following season, with Portsmouth champions again, Harris played in 40 of the 42 matches, scoring 16 goals, one fewer than the top scorer, Ike Clarke. Pompey this time would win the title only on goal average, at the expense of Wolves.

Born in Portsmouth - close to the Fratton Park ground - Harris was adept at cutting in to score. Portsmouth made profitable use of its two wingers. Harris played on the right, standing 5ft 7ins and weighing only 10 stone 2lbs. Jack Froggatt, the muscular, blond left winger, stood 5ft 8ins, but weighed over 12 stones.

Harris would be capped only twice over almost a five-year period for England, and on each occasion, the game ended disastrously for the national team, though Harris himself was hardly to blame. In 1949, an early season match at Everton's Goodison Park ground against the Republic of Ireland saw England defeated 2-0, though they fielded a somewhat experimental team. It was the first defeat by a team from outside Great Britain, though that distinction would subsequently be given to the 1953 Hungarian side at Wembley.

It was against these same Hungarians, in May 1954, that Harris was surprisingly recalled to an England side which lost 7-1. He never won another cap.

Portsmouth and Harris would not win the League again, but remained strong contenders, finishing fourth in the 1951-52 season, and third in the 1954-55 season.

Perhaps Pompey had been living above their means, for in 1959 they, and Harris, fell into the second division after a season in which they gave away 112 goals and ended nine points adrift. None the less, in an era when the maximum wage imposed a rough equality, Portsmouth and their locally nurtured players had their place in the sun.

In 1960 Harris was forced to retire with tuberculosis. He convalesced in Hayling Island, and then managed a restaurant complex. Later he ran the Portsmouth former championship XI for charity and worked with handicapped children. Last year an auction of his mementoes raised £14,000.

He is survived by his wife Sylvia: they had no children.

• Peter Harris, footballer, born 19 December 1925; died January 5 200

 2.Ivan Ponting’s Independent Obituary

The durable, diamond-bright brilliance of the right-winger Peter Harris offered persuasive contradiction to glib descriptions of the Portsmouth side which lifted back-to-back Football League championships midway through the 20th century as "the team without a star". Though denied more than fleeting moments in the international limelight by the incomparable talents of Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, the placid, modest Harris was a massive achiever for his only club.

A cursory examination of his statistics reveals him to be Pompey's record scorer, having netted 208 times in more than 500 senior outings during a 15-year career. Those are remarkable figures for any flankman, but they barely begin to do justice to his overall impact in a beautifully co-ordinated team which was damned all too frequently by faint praise.

Harris was a monument to flair, loyalty and dedication, but what commanded the attention most insistently was his searing pace. He was particularly devastating in sudden bursts of acceleration, a natural gift, but one which he honed meticulously by his prodigious application to training.

After seeming to dawdle harmlessly near the touchline, Harris would erupt explosively, his characteristic high-velocity scurry capable of embarrassing the classiest of opponents. Indeed, few men were better equipped to combat speed merchants than the celebrated Manchester United and England left-back Roger Byrne, who lost his life in the Munich air disaster of 1958, but even he was the subject of serial chasings by the Fratton Park flyer.

Of course, Harris would not have flourished so productively by sprinting power alone. He possessed immense guile, as evidenced by the subtle feints and dummies with which he tormented defenders, his ball control was immaculate, and he was a reliable purveyor of tantalising crosses. Crucially, too, he was a fine finisher, packing a shot both powerful and accurate.

Born a short bus ride from the Portsmouth headquarters, Harris trained as a carpenter and played his early football for a local club, Gosport Borough, before being signed by the colourful Fratton Park boss Jack Tinn towards the end of the Second World War. The slim teenager, who favoured long, baggy shorts in the style of his hero, the great Arsenal schemer Alex James, got off to an impressive start in unofficial wartime competition, then made his senior début in a 3-1 home victory over Blackburn Rovers in August 1946.

During the following campaign, he established a regular place under the quietly inspirational leadership of the new manager Bob Jackson, then emerged as a key component of the Pompey combination which romped away with the 1948/49 title, outstripping the runners-up Manchester United by an emphatic five-point margin.

Harris's 17 goals made him joint leading scorer with Duggie "Thunderboots" Reid, the pair being supplied with ammunition by fellow members of an underrated team whose plentiful ability was buttressed by extraordinary degrees of comradeship and co-ordination. Outstanding among them were the wing-halves Jimmy Scoular and Jimmy Dickinson, left-winger Jack Froggatt, inside-forward Len Phillips, and Reg Flewin, centre-half and a skipper of imposing authority.

At one point in the spring, Portsmouth had a genuine chance of becoming the first club in the 20th century to lift the League and FA Cup double. Harris had set their Wembley sights with a hat-trick in the 7-0 third-round thrashing of Stockport County, but after reaching the semi-finals they fell rather tamely to Leicester City, then toiling in the lower reaches of the Second Division.

Pundits who trumpeted the causes of more fashionable clubs from London and the North predicted that Pompey would falter in 1949/50, but they confounded the doubters by retaining their First Division crown, this time pipping Wolverhampton Wanderers by two-fifths of a goal (at that time a difficult goal-average system was used to split teams on equal points, rather than goal-difference).

Thereafter Portsmouth remained an effective side for several seasons, though they became more unpredictable and gradually the title-winning line-up was dismantled as the 1950s progressed. Harris, however, remained on prime form throughout that decade and, had he not shared nationality with Matthews and Finney, surely must have received more than his international two caps.

Sadly, both his England appearances coincided with dreadful team displays. At Goodison Park in 1949, England were defeated for the first time on home soil by a foreign country, and in Budapest in 1954, given the task of avenging the previous year's Wembley humiliation by "The Magnificent Magyars", they were annihilated 7-1 by Hungary.

On the domestic scene, Harris enjoyed his most fruitful scoring term in 1952/53, striking 23 goals, and in 1958/59 he became the first winger to net five times in a top-division game when he dominated the 5-2 triumph over Aston Villa. By then, though, Portsmouth had deteriorated horribly and at season's end they were nine points adrift of their nearest rivals, being relegated for the first time since the war. However, the 34-year-old Harris featured only briefly in the Second Division, succumbing to tuberculosis in November 1959 and never playing again.

On recovery after six months in a sanatorium, he turned down several offers to remain in the game and managed a restaurant complex in Hayling Island, as well as engaging in local charity work.