Wilf Billington

Welcome to Episode 23 of the Football United vs Soccer City podcast. Apologies for the infrequency of the podcasts at times but as I have stated previously when I record the interviews I will try and upload them as quickly as possible. The football season slows me down somewhat but I will always endeavour to upload an interview every couple of weeks or so.

On another note, I was fortunate enough to be approached by Football Nation Radio or FNR a couple of weeks ago. I have now been lucky enough for this podcast to be broadcast on their station on Monday nights at 7pm. Thanks to David at FNR and the rest of the FNR team who have given this podcast a go. Hopefully it goes well as one of the objectives of this podcast was to document people’s history and share our rich soccer/football history in the region.

You never know where your interviews will end up and in this episode it was no different. This episode's interviewee had remarkable football career which started in Blackburn England. In his teens, which was in the 1940s, he played with his school St Albans and the Bangor Boys Club. It was here he started playing in representative teams as part of the National Association of Boys’ Clubs, culminating in his selection for the England Boys’ Clubs team. In the late 1940s and most of the 1950s Wilf Billington played professionally with Rochdale, Blackburn, Workington and Oxford. He then came out to Australia and played for Balgownie, South Coast United and had a very brief stint with Melbourne Hellas.

Wilf is in his late eighties now but still has a very good memory. He recalls different bits and pieces about his professional career including being managed by Bill Shankly while at Workington. There is some material that comes out of left field such as the new movie about the Manchester City German goalkeeper, the Suez Canal, skiing in Cyprus (Mount Troodos) and the Beatles tour in Australia. A big thanks and respect to Wilf for doing the interview and his son Sean who organised this interview. Thanks to all the listeners of this podcast and the supporters of the social media pages it is greatly appreciated. Please note there is some slight profanity in this interview, not enough to warrant an explicit rating but for people who need this information I have supplied it. So once again please enjoy this interview.

Music by Luke Nolan