Sadly the march of time has caught up with Norman Golding and another ex-QPR player of the 1959/61 era is no longer with us.
Norman Golding burst upon the Loftus Road scene during the early stages of the 1959/60 Division 3 season. He was one of several fresh faces installed into the first team squad under the new regime of Alec Stock.
His initial impact was eye catching indeed. Here was a young, sharp, dangerous goal scoring right-winger who gave opposing defenders plenty of problems.
I recall one midweek Division 3 league fixture at home to Coventry City on the 28thSeptember 1959, where he was absolutely outstanding. That night he seemed to run the show all by himself and scored both goals in a 2-1 victory for the R’s. The 16,000 plus crowd were in awe I can tell younone more so than myself!
However in subsequent months like some shooting star in the heavens, his brilliance faded and eventually his right-wing spot was taken over by Mark Lazarus. This was perhaps a classic case of what might have been. What a shame he could not maintain his early form. Was this due to burn out or injury problems? Who can say? In any event, following his departure from Rangers in 1961 he never played for a football league club again.
Another strange anomaly was that in all of the QPR FC match programmes of the period, he was always listed as ‘Norman Golding’ whereas in PFA and other records his name reads either ‘Jimmy’, ‘John’ or ‘William’ Golding. To this very day I have never understood that discrepancybut the name will be forever ‘Norman Golding’ to me.
Bernard Lambert (Kerrins)
(The above images have been taken from the 1960/61 Official Handbook and the caption reads as follows: ‘Phew, but this training is hot! When the kick-off looms near and players train to attain peak fitness, the sun invariably appears most frequent. Caught by our cameraman doing a little lone arm stretching, Jimmy Golding found it more comfortable to work minus his shirt. And, as he relaxed a little tired and perhaps, thirsty, Jimmy might well have been pining for a sparkling one of those things publicised on the advertisement board a little to his right in the bottom picture.’)
Norman/Jimmy Golding was born in Southwark on 23rdJanuary 1937. After a brief spell at Crystal Palace, he was signed up from Tonbridge in August 1959. He made his 1stteam debut the following month in the home game against York City on 14thSeptember.
The match finished goal-less, but he then went on to score 5 goals in the following 4 matches. However, he was to only score one more goal in his next 27 appearances for the R’s. He was transferred to Kettering Town in 1961.
When news broke that he had sadly passed away, I assumed that it was fairly recently. But when I contacted Ian Taylor at the Club he told me that he had been informed that he had in fact died some time last year. Apparently he had been in the pub trade and had run a Young’s pub in Putney for over 25 years.
Rest in Peace.
Steve Russell
(My thanks to Gordon Macey and Ian Taylor for their assistance)
According to a Margate FC site he worked for the Youngs brewery for over 35 years and had run the Duke’s Head pub in Putney.
Don’t know how the discrepancy in the name came about although the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ was first published in 1954 written of course by William Golding, maybe this would have been a popular nickname at the time for Jimmy???
Most famously in QPR history Brian Bedford’s first name is actually Noel, Brian being his middle name.
RIP Norman ‘Jimmy’ Golding
Many thanks for posting this up, Kerrins and Steve. He was before my time but it is always interesting to have an insight about past players from someone who was ‘there’. It is inexplicable sometimes the way early promise just evaporates, as demonstrated by Norman Golding’s brief career at Rangers. I wonder if he was distracted by the off the field stuff, though, and if this might account for his failing to fulfil his obvious potential at Rangers? I think that Norman might have been a bit of a lad in his time at Rangers. He got a tug by the law for being spotted driving the wrong way down a street in the early hours of the morning in London’s West End, whilst in the process of manoeuvring the car to give 4 young ladies a lift. He told the police that he was on his way home to Croydon, but that didn’t wash with them and he ended up going to court and getting fined. I can’t remember what the exact charge was. I think I copied out the item verbatim. It happened, I think, in his second season at Rangers and Norman was moved on soon after this.
Moreno and John thanks very much for posting up all that extra info.
Y’know in my childhood I thought he was the “coming man” but alas it was not to be.
Many thanks for this, Steve. Always sad to learn of the passing of a Rangers man.
As far as I know, his full name was Norman James William Golding which may explain the various versions.
RIP