78 Saturday June 11 2022 | the times
Register
wasn’t kosher, but it worked,” he
recalled. “And it led me on to all sorts of
things.”
In fact, it opened his ears to “amazing
ranges of sound”, which as one of the
country’s leading flautists he spent aBilly Bingham was one of the best-
known and best-loved figures in the
footballing history of Northern Ireland.
He played for the province on 56 occa-
sions, including the 1958 World Cup
quarter-final in Sweden, and later
became its most successful manager,
taking the team to the World Cup finals
in Spain in 1982, where he mastermind-
ed a memorable victory over the host
nation, and Mexico in 1986.
At club level, he played for Luton
Town in the 1959 FA Cup final and won
a league championship with Everton in
1963, as well as making over 200
appearances for Sunderland. He later
returned to Goodison Park as manager.
An adventurous, goalscoring right
winger, he worked hard to develop his
strength and control, while crowds also
loved his bravery as he challenged big
full backs, shrugging off the knocks that
he inevitably took. He recalled once
“nutmegging Jackie [Charlton] at Elland
Road” while playing for Luton — Charl-
ton was furious. “He came straight
across after that passage of play broke
down and said, ‘You try that stunt again,
little man, and I’ll knock your effing
teeth down your throat’... Afterwards,
however, Jackie shook my hand and
said, ‘Well played, kid’.”
Bingham became a shrewd and tacti-
cally astute manager whose gift for
organising a team came into its own
with Northern Ireland, who usually
had to perform as more than the sum of
their parts against more powerful foot-
balling nations. Yet his natural charm
and a streak of Irish romanticism also
helped him to inspire individuals.
“I doubt anyone will ever emulate his
achievements,” said Gerry Armstrong,
who scored the only goal against Spain
in 1982. “Bingy had the Midas touch,
something special which brought the
best out of the players.”
William Laurence Bingham was
born in 1931 and grew up in the Protes-
tant Bloomfield area of east Belfast. His
father, also William, was a shipyard
worker and his mother, Emma (née
Ogle), was a factory spinner.
Football was his main pastime and in
1945 he was selected for Northern Ire-
land schoolboys, scoring twice against
the Republic of Ireland. A scholarship
boy who was forced to take a shipyard
apprenticeship instead, he signed for
Glentoran in 1947, making his first-
team debut in March 1949. The follow-
ing year he was selected for the Irish
League team to play the Scottish
League and then the Football League,
learning shortly afterwards that he had
been sold to Sunderland for £8,000.
Stellar displays for the reserves soon
earned him his first division debut. Rok-
er Park took to the speed, skill and brav-
ery of “Little Billy”, and at the end of the
season he made a memorable full inter-
national debut, against France. The 2-2
draw that one Irish newspaper hailed as
“Bingham’s Match” launched a run of
43 consecutive appearances in the
green shirt over ten years.
He stayed at Sunderland for seven
years. His best season was 1954-55,
when he scored ten goals in 42 games
for a team that finished fourth and got
to the FA Cup semi-final. After that,
though, Sunderland’s fortunes
William Bennett
Flautist and fixture of concert halls known as
much for his quirkiness as for his concertos
As a boy William Bennett built his own
guitar. It was far from perfect: the strips
of wood didn’t quite fit when glued
together and he spent more time tuning
the instrument than playing it. Yet he
was fascinated by the sound. “My guitarObituaries
Bennett testing out
a neighbour’s penny
farthing. Below, the
cover of a recording
of his concert with
Clifford BensonBilly Bingham
Astute football manager who led Northern Ireland to the 1982 and 1986
World Cup finals, including a famous victory against Spain in Valencia
before returning to take the Northern
Ireland job full-time in 1980. Success
followed almost immediately, as an
Irish team won the Home International
Championship for the first time in 66
years, then qualified for the 1982 World
Cup finals in Spain from a group that
included Portugal and Sweden.
Organised, hardworking and spirited
in the image of their manager, the team
also boasted players such as Pat Jen-
nings (whom Bingham considered “the
greatest keeper I ever worked with. He
had a great pair of hands, like two Lur-
gan spades”), Martin O’Neill and Nor-
man Whiteside. Yet they were still out-
siders; Whiteside was just 17, the young-
est player to appear in a World Cup.
Draws in their first two group games
left Bingham’s men needing a good re-
sult against the host nation, but Arm-
strong punished a goalkeeping error
early in the second half to put them
ahead, and they held out despite the
heat, a poor referee and the dismissal of
Mal Donaghy, to reach the second
group phase, where the talented France
side finally halted their progress 4-1.
Bingham, by now having been
appointed MBE for services to football,
took Ireland to the finals again in
Mexico in 1986, but an ageing side
could not repeat their previous success
and went out in the first round, never to
return. He retired in 1993 after the fail-
ure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup,
holding the record for the longest-serv-
ing British international manager.
Still he continued to be involved in
the game, scouting in Northern Ireland
for Burnley into his seventies. His abil-
ity to motivate never left players such as
Whiteside, who recalled in interview
last year with The Belfast Telegraph:
“When we left team meetings I couldn’t
wait to put my green jersey on, and I
had goosebumps and those hairs on the
back of your neck standing up.”
Bingham was married twice, first to
Eunice Oliver in the 1980s. They
divorced and he went on to marry
Rebecca Van Strang in 1986, with Arm-
strong as his best man. He and Rebecca
divorced in 2011. Two children from his
first marriage survive him: David, a
writer, and Sharon, a former teacher.
Bingham lived in Southport, where
his home overlooked the Irish Sea and
golf course at Royal Birkdale. He was a
collector of antique books, including
many on the history and antagonisms
of Ireland. According to a 1993 profile in
The Times he prided himself on one
paramount achievement: his refusal to
pander to sectarianism. O’Neill, when
Bingham appointed him captain, was
the first Catholic to have the honour
bestowed on him during the Troubles.
“My teams were always a thorough mix
of the two tribes,” Bingham said. Two of
the greatest players he ever fielded, Pat
Jennings and George Best, were a Cath-
olic and a Protestant sharing a room
under his management.
In a tribute, Armstrong said: “Who
can forget the wonderful memories
that Billy has left us with?”Billy Bingham MBE, football manager,
was born on August 5, 1931. He died of
complications from dementia on June 9,
2022, aged 90Billy Bingham in 1985 with Northern
Ireland’s goalkeeper Pat Jenningsdeclined, and Bingham fell out with
Alan Brown, who oversaw relegation in- Bingham, though, had other
things on his mind that summer.
Northern Ireland had qualified for the
finals of the 1958 World Cup, eliminat-
ing Italy on the way. Peter Doherty, the
inspirational manager, had developed a
club spirit among an excellent group of
players, including Jimmy McIlroy,
Peter McParland and Danny Blanch-
flower, making few changes and work-
ing incessantly on set plays. (Bingham’s
experience under Doherty influenced
his own approach as a manager — “If
you’ve been up the mountain, you can
tell people how to climb it.”)
The Irish won their opening group
game against Czechoslovakia, but lost
to Argentina and drew with West Ger-
many. That meant a play-off against the
Czechs for a quarter-final place, which
they won, only to go out, exhausted and
injury-hit, 4-0 to France in their fourth
game in nine days.
Bingham’s next playing challenge
was at Luton Town, where he scored in
every round of the FA Cup in 1959 bar
the final, which Luton lost 2-1 to Not-
tingham Forest. Luton were relegated
the following season but Everton res-
cued Bingham in exchange for £15,000
and two players. He played 23 games in
the 1962/63 season as the League
Championship returned to Goodison
Park for the first time since before the
war. He dropped down to the Third
Division with Port Vale in 1963, a
broken leg in 1965 ending his playing
days at 33, after 419 Football League
games and a remarkable 102 goals.
Bingham started his management
career with Southport, whom he led to
promotion to the Third Division, then
Plymouth Argyle, Linfield and a first
brief, part-time spell in charge of
Northern Ireland. After 12 games in
charge of Greece in the early 1970s, he
returned to Everton in 1973. He inherit-
ed a team in decline, but although he
guided the Toffees to fourth place in
1975, a mid-table finish in 1976 and a run
of eight winless games after a promis-
ing start the next season saw him
sacked in January 1977.
He regrouped at PAOK Salonika in
Greece and then Mansfield TownBingham prided himself
on a steadfast refusal to
pander to sectarianism