Avid Palace fan Jeremy Nash shares with us his personal appreciation for former Palace player and manager Peter Taylor. We thank Jeremy for sharing this great story with us and you can follow him here on Twitter.
Peter Taylor was, and still is, my Palace hero.
He joined Palace from Southend United, which is where I lived, and he soon became the focal point of the team which first halted Palace’s slide down the divisions. It was evident that he was a big contributor to the most exciting team ever to play in England’s third tier.
The FA Cup run in 1976 was the highlight. Taylor’s performances on the wing were such that he forced his way into Don Revie’s England side, scoring on his debut against Wales as a Third Division player. He remains the only Palace player to have scored for England.
Just as exciting to me was that he opened a sports shop in Southend and although he wasn’t often there, it was still a magnet to me and my friends. It sold the essentials of our ten year old lives like plastic footballs and accessories for the popular game Subbuteo.
Taylor left Palace for Spurs after the 1975/76 season ended in disappointment. The total collapse of our league form caused us to miss out on promotion. I was gutted, but his shop remained. When I asked my parents for the new Admiral kit for my birthday, it was the obvious place from which to buy it.
Replica kits, especially those of Third Divison teams, were harder to come by in those days. But the staff promised my parents that they would do all they could to get one in time. However, come my birthday, no kit had arrived and I went to school very disappointed.
I returned home for lunch and the phone rang. Unusually my mum told me to answer it. On the other end was Peter Taylor himself who was calling me to apologise for not having my kit in time and to wish me a very happy birthday. The kit did turn up the following week and I wore it with pride for as long as it still fitted but that was secondary to getting that phone call.
Peter Taylor, a great Palace hero, who emerged at a time when we really needed one, and always to me, the nicest man in football.
