Born and raised in Acton, West London, Robin Friday was scouted, but not retained, by four professional clubs during his teenage years. In his teens - around the time he started dabbling with drugs - he spent time in the youth teams of Crystal Palace, Queens Park Rangers and Chelsea, but none would take a chance on the young non-conformist. He left school at 15 and worked as a plasterer, van driver and window cleaner before his misdemeanours - thefts, mainly - led to a 14 month spell in Feltham Borstal. His dad Alf's assessment: "He didn't care." Having appeared for local semi-professional sides in the Isthmian League, he joined Charlie Hurley's Reading team in 1974. Reading were in the old Third Division at the time when Robin joined them from non-league Hayes. His impact was immediate and within a few months, after turning in a handful of eye-catching displays, he was given a professional contract by the Royals. Fast, strong and skillful, he was also physical and intelligent with a strong will to win. In short, he was a defender's nightmare. Supporters loved him - instantly. But there were issues. He had quickly become a key player, as he helped Reading to win promotion to he Third Division during the 1975-76 season. According to his pal Syd Simmons, he obeyed Hurley's order not to drink 48 hours before a game. Instead, he took LSD and stayed up half the night listening to heavy metal music. The club's response was to move him into a flat above their elderly former groundsman. It didn't work. If anything, Friday only partied harder. On the way back from one match, when the team bus made a temporary stop, Friday scaled a cemetery wall and stole some stone angels from a grave, intending to next to the sleeping club chairman. Hurley told him: "You must never ever desecrate a graveyard". Another time, he walked into a hotel bar with a live swan under his arm after finding it outside. Towards the end of the 194/75 season, he celebrated a last-minute winner against Rochdale by kissing a policeman behind the goal. Why? "He looked so cold and fed up standing there that I decided to cheer him up a bit," he said. However as his drug habit intensified, so his form began to dip in the first half of the 1976-77 season, leading Reading to sell him to Second Division side Cardiff City around the New Year.
He was an extraordinarily talented player. However, the downside to this was his capacity for self-destruction. People in the know from the time believe his talent was such that he could've been one of the greatest English footballers of all time. However, his professional career only lasted four years and with two clubs - Reading and Cardiff City. This was largely because he was practically unmanageable. His antics left the Reading manager Charlie Hurley pulling his hair out. This left Robin showing off his extravagant talents in the mud pits of the lower leagues rather than the grand stage. He scored 46 goals in 121 games for Royals, a very handy record.
If you believe Royals fans of a certain age, there were about 40,000 people at Elm Park for the game against Tranmere Rovers in 1974. That night, there was an astonishing goal, and an absolutely top class quip to add to the magic. Author Paolo Hewitt described it in The Guardian in 2009. He wrote: "Friday, by now the town’s hero, is about 35 yards from the Rovers goal when the ball hurtles towards him. Somehow he controls it on his chest and then hits the ball with his right foot - before turning. The velocity of the ball is so powerful that within two seconds it is nestling in the top right-hand corner of the Rovers net. For a few seconds there is absolute silence in the stadium as everyone – players, staff and fans – tries to understand what has just happened." The referee was the famous Welshman Clive Thomas, who was just as stunned as everyone else. In an interview, Thomas said: "I’ll never forget it. If it hadn’t gone into the top corner of the net it would have broken the goalpost. Even up against the likes of PelĂ© and Cruyff, that rates as the best goal I have ever seen." After Reading’s epic 5-0 win, Thomas said to Friday he had never seen a better goal. The Royals legend replied: "Really? You should come down here more often, I do that every week."
His professional football career lasted just four years, but boy, did he make an impression. Once described as 'the complete centre forward, he combined the
sublime with the ridiculous, scoring wonder goals, while grabbing his
markers' testicles or kissing them on the lips. Away from the pitch, his life was a whirlwind of womanising, drink and drug abuse. A 1997 book written about Friday by former NME journalist Paolo Hewitt
and ex-Oasis bassist Paul McGuigan is titled, 'The Greatest Footballer
You Never Saw'.
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