Also, at the time sports stars earned nothing like the frequently astronomical sums they do nowadays. For example, until the early 1960s there was a maximum wage, in football, of £20 a week. That equates to about twice the average wage (!) or, very roughly, £50,000 per annum nowadays.

As a result footballers were notorious for being taken to the cleaners in dodgy business deals "on the side" to try to earn a bit more money.

In my distinctly modest home town the captain of the Scottish football team in the 1950s lived in straitened circumstances - I know the house he lived in and he didn't even own it (it was a council house, just like hundreds of others there). He had the most appalling health problems and, I think, "existed" rather than "lived" was more accurate for the last couple of decades of his life ...

I also remember reading an Arnold Bennett novel where one of the protagonists was a footballer. He did the sums and railed against the club director as he earned £5 a week but each game brought in £375. The directors were probably clearing £250 a week, which was a colossal sum in 1913 (when the novel was set).