Juggling Practice According to QPR’s Legendary No.10, Rodney Marsh

In 1970, Anglo Confectionary Ltd issued 48 cards in a series titled: ‘Learn the Game’. No. 46 in this set dealt with ‘Juggling Practice’and featured Rangers’legendary No.10 Rodney Marsh: The instructions on the card read as follows:

‘Juggling Practice is most necessary to improve ball control. Try to keep the ball up by using head, chest, thighs and feet. Watch how Rodney Marsh of QPR scoops his foot under the ball, lifts it over his head or his shoulders and passes it accurately to his team-mate positioned behind him and waiting for it’.

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This reminded me of something that Rodney wrote on the subject in his 60’s autobiography, ‘Shooting to the Top’:

‘We did have a back yard, small but not quite as small as the front garden and this was another place in which I used to kick a ball about. I wanted to make the ball do everything, even to speak if possible, and my father, of course, showed me a lot of tricks. He would use match-boxes, coins, anything, to flip up and down; all tricks with which Ferenc Puskas, the great Hungarian, impressed everyone when he came to England in 1953. I cannot begin to tell you how much he impressed me.

Like my dad, I would practise with anything, oranges, coins, even Bakewell tarts. I would throw a tart in the air, catch it with a foot and then flick it up again and catch it in my mouth. My concentration was excellent, because I happened to like tarts.’

Great story and what a privilege it was to have seen him perform his magic for the R’s.

Steve Russell

One thought on “Juggling Practice According to QPR’s Legendary No.10, Rodney Marsh

  1. For me, it was his trademark. He mesmerised defenders with the ball. Other players could only look on. It certainly wasn’t his work rate that made him into the mercurial Sir Rodney Marsh. He just lit the place up…..happy days’.

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