Albert McCann – SkyBlueArchive

Position

Midfielder

Nationality

Place Of Birth

Maidenhead

Date Of Birth

November 1, 1941

Date Of Death

January 9, 2014 (72)

Games Played

Per Game

Games Started

1.0

Per Game

Minutes

1980

90.0

Per Game

Goals

0.1

Per Game

Assists

Per Game

Albert was a precocious schoolboy footballer and a Luton scout spotted him starring for Berkshire Youth and at 16 he signed for the then First Division side. He was only 18 when he made his debut for the Hatters in 1960 against Blackburn. Luton were relegated that season but the young McCann struggled to get a game in the lower league the following season and after just six first team games Billy Frith signed him for Coventry.

He wasn’t immediately a regular in a struggling City team but made his debut in a 1-1 draw at Shrewsbury in mid-September and according to Nemo in the Coventry Evening Telegraph was: ‘the only bright spot in a forward line that offered little threat’. Albert, remembered for his bandy legs, played eight games that autumn but had lost his place before the Kings Lynn fiasco that was to be the end of Frith’s reign at Coventry.

Jimmy Hill however selected ‘Albie’ and by the end of the season he was a regular, making 22 appearances and scoring three goals. The following season McCann was out of the first team picture and when Portsmouth offered £8,000 for him two weeks into the new season, City were happy to cash in.

For McCann it was a rise in status – Pompey were in Division Two - and it started the happiest period of his career. Over the next twelve years he was a virtual ever-present playing 379 games and scoring 98 goals and heading Pompey’s scoring lists for three successive seasons in the mid-60s.

He left Pompey in 1974 after a deserved testimonial with West Ham the previous year and spent two years in South Africa playing for top club Highlands Park. He later bought a newsagents business in Southsea which he had expanded to three shops at the time of his retirement.