At the end of the 1953/54 season, Walsall Football Club finished bottom of the Third Division South and applied for re-election to the Football League for a third successive year. Five months later, manager Frank Buckley offered 20-year-old Tony Richards a four week trial.

This is the story of how Richards and his team-mates changed Walsall from a music hall joke into a team challenging for a place in the top tier of English football. In three seasons the club went from playing a Fourth Division league match in front of 2,366 people at Gateshead to facing Liverpool in front of an Anfield crowd of 42,229 in the Second Division.

Including testimony from Walsall players Keith Ball, Ray Wiggin, Trevor Foster, Stan Bennett and Nick Atthey, Walsall’s Greatest is a detailed account of the Saddlers’ Glory Years and the impact of the man voted by the club’s supporters as Walsall’s greatest ever player.

(Publisher: ToneRedDays. April 2022. Paperback: 255 pages)

Buy the book here: https://www.walsallfcstore.co.uk/product/walsalls-greatest-tony-richards/