My Time At Town - Steve Norris: “It was just a perfect fit, I loved the club, they loved me”

Halifax Town manager Jim McCalliog was among those in attendance, in need of a striker to solve his team’s goal drought.

The Shaymen had made a disastrous start to the 1990-91 campaign, failing to score in any of their opening seven league matches, and were stranded at the foot of the Fourth Division.

But McCalliog was convinced the man he watched that night was the answer.

“I fell out of favour with Carlisle, well I never really got in favour there!” recalls Steve Norris.

“They’d signed me from Scarborough for about £65,000 and I only started and finished about five games.

“I’d played in the reserves at Bury on a cold, horrible Wednesday night, and after the game Jim McCalliog came up to me.

“We went to a pub, had a pint, and he said ‘I know you can score goals, your record proves that, don’t concentrate on the defensive side, we need a goalscorer’.

“I remember speaking to my dad the next day and I said ‘bloody hell, has it come to this, Halifax Town?’

“And my dad said ‘look, sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards, and it’s better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond’.

“So I signed, and the rest was history. It was just a perfect fit, I loved the club, they loved me.

“Ian Juryeff was a great help, having him up-front, he was a worker and he put everything on a plate most of the time.

“We had a good partnership, and I suppose we scared the hell out of teams.”

Norris’ impact was almost immediate. The team’s goal drought stopped, and the striker plucked from Carlisle’s second string lit up the Fourth Division.

“They’d played Man United in the cup, but I was cup-tied for that,” he says.

“We drew at home to Scunthorpe and we hadn’t scored in eight games, but we went up to Carlisle, Billy Barr scored, then I scored the second and we won 3-0.

“After that I think we played York, I scored two in that and we drew 4-4.

“We went on a run, put quite a few games together unbeaten, and I was scoring, Ian Juryeff scored a few.

“I scored nearly every game. I think the most I went was two games without a goal.
“I’ve got a scrapbook somewhere with all the cuttings, and if you look down the results it’s just Norris, Norris, Norris, Norris, Juryeff, Juryeff, Norris.

“It was great. I always used to look at the centre-half and think ‘they can’t stop me’.

“I used to say ‘just give me the ball, just give me one chance’

“As soon as I got it, I knew I could drop my shoulder, beat one or two and I’d score.

“Just when the ball came to me, I’d see the picture in my head, I’d get it, turn, drop the shoulder beat one, beat two, sit the goalie down and roll it in.

“You’re born with that gift but you’ve also got to do some hard work and make some sacrifices, dedication and application to make yourself fit.”

Norris went on to notch 30 league goals that season, many of which were scored when put clean through on goal before rounding the keeper.

When the TV programme Saint and Greavsie came to The Shay to run a feature on him in March 1991, Norris responded by scoring twice against Wrexham.

“I remember the last goal really well,” he says of his collection that season. “I bent it in against Aldershot, we won 3-0.

“There was a great header I scored against Blackpool. We went 2-0 down after about 10 minutes and the ball came to me near the halfway line, I remember controlling it, spinning and drilling it out to Ian Juryeff on the right-wing, he ran down, I ran in the box, he crossed, I just pulled away from the defender, I wasn’t the best header of a ball, I couldn’t head a bus queue, but I managed to put it in the bottom corner.

“We ended up winning 5-3, I got a hat-trick that day, two were penalties I think.

“I think this was shortly after the Carlisle (3-0) game. I got brought down and we got a penalty, and Ian Juryeff said ‘I’m not having it’ so I said ‘give it here’ and I scored.

“Then me and Juryeff were fighting over the last penalty, both for our hat-trick.

“And then a goal at Aldershot, I picked the ball up and beat two or three defenders, I did a one-two, sat two defenders down, sat the goalie down and scored.

“That was when the run started, from day one basically.”

When asked what changed from his time at Carlisle, where he’d scored five in 29 games before joining Town, Norris said: “I think it was being wanted. Jim encouraged me to play my game and not worry about anything else.

“I was one of those players that needed encouragement, an arm round the shoulder.

“If you slaughtered me and had a go at me, I’d go into my shell.”

But for all Norris’ prowess up-front, which unsurprisingly earned him the club’s player of the year award, The Shaymen still only finished third-from-bottom.

“We had Paul Futcher, who was a quality player, he could pick a ball out, pick you out from 60-70 yards.

“There was Dave Evans, Billy Barr one side, Paul Fleming the other side, and Craig Fleming played at the back, all in a five.

“But we just seemed to get overrun. My job was scoring goals, that’s how I used to look at it, a bit selfish really.

“People said ‘you should player higher’, I knew people were looking at me.

“I think Bristol City offered £250,000 and they turned that down.”

Norris was the first player since Ted McDougall to score more than half his team’s league goals, netting 30 of the club’s 59.

Only Matt Le Tissier and James Beattie, both for Southampton, have done it since.

“It’s a good quiz question that isn’t it!” he says.

“It was one of the highlights of my career.

“I got two awards for that, one was a Rothman’s cap, and the other was from the Sunday Mirror.

“But the club wouldn’t let me go down there because we were back in for the following season by then.

“I was supposed to have been sat next to Neil Warnock, who’d signed me at Scarborough, Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank and a few others.

“They couldn’t believe someone from Halifax Town hadn’t turned up to collect an award because people from Halifax never got awards.

“I’ve still got my golden boot, it’s in my house, my Rothman’s cap and my England cap, I played for the England non-league side.”

Only Albert Valentine, who netted 34 times in the 1934-35 campaign, has scored more goals in a single season for Halifax than Norris, who ended up with 33 for Town in 1990-91 – 30 in the league, two in the FA Cup and one in the Leyland DAF Cup, plus two for Carlisle prior to joining The Shaymen, bringing his tally to 35.

Norris continued to score goals the following term, and quickly became the club’s biggest asset, a fact not overlooked by John McGrath, McCalliog’s successor.

Looking for a quick buck, he sold Norris to Chesterfield in January 1992, much to the astonishment of the supporters.

“John McGrath came in and we started off letting in goals, as per usual,” recalls Norris.

“I think I’d scored 12 by the time I went to Chesterfield.

“I think I finished up with 42 goals in 60 or 70 games for Halifax.

“I went to Chesterfield on loan first, and eventually they paid £33,000 for me.”

Norris ended up as top goalscorer at Chesterfield for three seasons running, and finished his career with 101 goals in 210 league games.

But it’s his time with Halifax which Norris looks back on with the most fondness.

“I had some great times there, some wonderful people, a lovely club,” he says.
“The supporters were brilliant for me. There weren’t that many because the crowds weren’t the best in those days, but I loved it.

“That’s probably the highlight of my career, without a doubt.”

Thanks to Johnny Meynell for his help with this article.

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