Dick Edwards

Nottinghamshire has, this past week, mourned the loss of one its stalwarts in former footballer, Richard ‘Dick’ Edwards, who passed away on Monday 16 June, at the age of 82 years.

Edwards, who played at centre-half throughout the 1960s and 1970s, actually began with a trial at Nottingham Forest in the mid-fifties, when he was a young miner, before jumping across the River Trent and joining Notts County, with whom he would spend close to a decade.

At Meadow Lane, Edwards would make well over 200 appearances, and played for the club in 1960s in the old Third and Fourth Division’s, finishing fifth in Division Three in 1961, before the first of two spells at Mansfield Town.

The Stags, then under management of Tommy Cummings, paid £5,000 for the defenders’ services and, when Cummings left for Aston Villa a year later, Edwards went with him, this time for a handsome sum of £30,000, the Villains then playing in Division Two.

A move to then Division Three side, Torquay United, followed in the early 1970s, Edwards continuing to rack up the appearances, and make a name for himself as a sturdy, reliable defender.

Another season at Mansfield followed in 1973/74, overall going on to make 82 appearances in all competitions for the Stags, before wrapping up a near two decade playing career with Bath City, of the Southern League, with whom he made over 100 appearances.

It would be with the Somerset club that Edwards eventually finished his career, in 1976, before moving into the music world.

In an interview with Birmingham Live in 2018, Edwards said of his career that: “After working down the mines everything was good, it was like being on your holidays.

“The biggest club I ever played for was Aston Villa.

“I didn’t play centre-half until I came to Villa, Tommy signed me as a right-back though I had played in ten different positions.

“The only position I was never picked was left-wing.”

Musically though, he dipped in-and-out of that throughout his life, having a guitar from being a teenager just as much as having a pair of football boots.

The music continued into later life as well, going as far as setting up a band with his sons, Dan and Matt, known as ‘The Edwards Boys,’ playing Country Music.

Born in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, in late 1942, Edwards certainly lived his life, both on and off the football pitch, and had much more than his fifteen minutes of fame.