Famous Players – The 1960’s

Roy Sproson

Iconic player of the 60’s

Roy Sproson’s playing career spanned 3 decades and totalled well over 800 games. More significantly this remarkable feat by a remarkable player was achieved entirely at one club – Port Vale.

Roy was part of the 1954 promotion winning side and also played for and captained two other promotion winning teams in 1958-59 and 1969-70. He was also a member of the Vale side which won the Football Supporters’ Clubs’ Trophy in 1961, and was voted as Gillette ‘Sportsman of the Year’ in 1970.

He finished his playing career in 1972 with the distinction of never having been sent off and only being booked twice. He moved into coaching at Vale Park before taking over as manager in 1974 but was eventually sacked in 1977. Roy’s sacking was an inglorious way to end a career which had been so devoted to a single cause, and perhaps the saddest statistic of all is that he never set foot inside Vale Park again.

Roy died in 1997 aged 66. He was posthumously inducted into the Stoke-on-Trent Sporting Hall of Fame in 2011.