Johnny Brooks

Reading

Brooks' career began as a youth at Coley Old Boys, Mount Pleasant, Castle Street Institute and he also represented Reading & Berkshire schoolboys. An inside forward, he began his senior club career at hometown Third Division South club Reading. Brooks joined the Royals in February 1949 as an amateur and signed a professional contract two months later. While with Reading, Brooks served his national service at Aldershot and represented the Army football team. He made 46 league appearances and scored five goals over the course of a three-year spell and helped the club to third and second-place finishes in the 1950–51 and 1951–52 seasons respectively. Brooks departed Elm Park in February 1953 and was posthumously inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2018.

Tottenham Hotspur

After turning down moves to Newcastle United, Arsenal and West Ham United, Brooks joined First Division club Tottenham Hotspur in February 1953 for a £6,000 fee, with Dennis Uphill and Harry Robshaw moving to Reading. He later recalled that Tottenham had always been in his blood, after watching the 1949–50 Second Division and 1950–51 First Division championship triumphs on the terraces at White Hart Lane. After beginning his career with the club in the reserve team, Brooks made his first team debut in a 2–0 defeat to Stoke City on 6 April 1953, but it would prove to be his only appearance of the 1952–53 season. By the 1954–55 season, Brooks had broken through into the first team…

Brooks' goalscoring for Tottenham Hotspur won him a call up to the England squad for a British Home Championship match versus Wales on 14 November 1956. He scored the second goal in a 3–1 victory. He was called up again for a friendly versus Yugoslavia two weeks later and again got on the scoresheet in a 3–0 win. Brooks' third and final cap came in a 5–2 1958 World Cup qualification win over Denmark on 5 December 1956.

Brooks was one of the earliest British footballers to endorse hair products, advertising Max Factor shampoo during the 1950s. Brooks' son Shaun was also a professional footballer and played for Leyton Orient, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, was capped by England at schoolboy and youth level and managed Dorchester Town. After retiring from football, Brooks worked alongside friend and former teammate Tommy Harmer as a broker's messenger for Bank Hapoalim, until being made redundant at the age of 60. With the help of former teammate Micky Dulin, Brooks then became a park-keeper at Ridgeway Park in Chingford. Brooks retired and moved to Bournemouth in 1997. It was reported in 2014 that Brooks was suffering with vascular dementia and he died on 7 June 2016.

England

British Home Championship: 1956–57 Brentford

Football League Fourth Division: 1962–63 Crystal Palace

Football League Third Division second-place promotion: 1963–64 Stevenage Town

Southern League First Division promotion: 1966–67 Hitchin Centenary Cup: 1965-66, 1966-67 Individual

Reading Hall of Fame