Gary Sprake
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Gareth Sprake | ||
| Date of birth | 3 April 1945 | ||
| Place of birth | Swansea, Wales | ||
| Date of death | 18 October 2016 (aged 71) | ||
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) | ||
| Playing position | Goalkeeper | ||
| Youth career | |||
| 1962–1963 | Leeds United | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1962–1973 | Leeds United | 381 | (0) |
| 1973–1975 | Birmingham City | 16 | (0) |
| Total | 397 | (0) | |
| National team | |||
| 1963–1974 | Wales | 37 | (0) |
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Gareth Sprake (3 April 1945 – 18 October 2016) was a Welsh professional footballer. A goalkeeper, he played for Leeds United and Birmingham City and also won 37 caps for Wales.
Sprake became known during his career as a goalkeeper who was brilliant, but occasionally prone to some unlucky, appalling mistakes. He was known as an overall, good goalkeeper. He was especially known for his ability to come out to catch crossed balls floating into the box and his shot stopping. At Leeds, Sprake played 504 times, keeping more than 200 clean sheets. He spent more than a decade as the number 1 keeper at Leeds during a period when they were a dominant side in the English domestic game.
Sprake represented Swansea Schoolboys and was noticed by Leeds United soon after he left school and was playing for a local works team.
Sprake joined Leeds as an apprentice, and made a last-minute debut in 1962 when the regular goalkeeper went down with a stomach complaint on the day of a game at Southampton. Over the next two seasons Sprake became a regular as Leeds won the Second Division in 1964, and then challenged for the Football League championship title and FA Cup double the following year. Sprake only missed one game in both competitions that season, but Leeds ended with nothing, missing out on the League title on goal average to Manchester United and losing the FA Cup final to Liverpool. At Leeds, he was also known to be sick before each match but managed to play regularly and keep the starting goalkeeper position.
The first of Sprake's two notorious errors came in 1967 when Leeds played Liverpool in a League game at Anfield. Sprake was holding the ball and was set to throw it to the Leeds left back Terry Cooper, only to curtail his throw when he spotted Liverpool winger Ian Callaghan running towards the area he planned to throw the ball. Unfortunately for Sprake, the ball slipped out of his hands behind him and ended up in the net. At half-time, the Liverpool tannoy-announcer played "Careless Hands", a record by Des O'Connor, apparently in reference to Sprake's mistake, and during the second half Liverpool supporters on the Kop sang the song repeatedly to Sprake. During his time at Leeds, fans of rival clubs gave Sprake the nickname "Careless Hands" as a result.
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