Everyone at Stockport County were saddened to hear of the death of our former player Phil Chisnall, who passed away on March 4th at the age of 78.
Born in Davyhulme, Phil was a highly talented schoolboy player who represented Stretford, Lancashire and England Schoolboys. He was signed by Manchester United straight from school in 1958, only a couple of months after the Munich disaster.
He made his first team debut for The Reds in 1961, in a game at Everton. The match finished 5-1 to The Blues with former County player Alex Young scoring one of the goals. His performance was good enough to retain his place for the following game and over the next two and half years he went on to make 47 appearances scoring 10 goals.
Despite playing for England U23’s, first team appearances becoming harder at Old Trafford, and in 1964 Chisnall was to make one the rarest moves in English football. To this day he remains the last footballer to be transferred directly from Manchester United to their rivals Liverpool. His signing by Bill Shankly took him to the league champions, but sadly his opportunities to establish himself in the first team were limited. He only made 10 appearances for Liverpool but he was to appear in the first ever game to be shown on Match of the Day (where he was the first Liverpool player to touch the ball) and he also scored a goal in Liverpool’s first ever European fixture against KR Rekjavik.
In 1967 he moved to Southend United for a club record fee of £12,000, and at Roots Hall he had his most successful period as a player. For four seasons, playing as an inside forward, he was almost ever present making 161 appearances scoring 32 goals.
In Sept 1971 Chisnall joined Stockport County. A match programme at the time records that his mother in law, called County manager Matt Woods to tell him he was looking for a move back north and within 24 hours he had signed for The Hatters. He played 32 times during the 1971-72 seasons and scored 2 goals, his final appearance being against Newport County on April 11th 1972.
During his time at Edgeley Park he played in a struggling County side that finished 91st in the Football League and were defeated by non-League Blyth Spartans in the FA Cup. With a knee injury hampering his performances, he was released at the end of the season and this was to be his last season in the league. This was a sad finish to a professional career that as a hugely talented schoolboy had promised so much but never really delivered to levels he might have expected.
After he finished playing football, he owned two betting shops before working on the production line in the Soreen malt loaf bakery in Manchester. In his latter years, his footballing connection with County remained as one of his grandsons trained in the County Academy. In 2014 he suffered a serious stoke after which the Manchester United Foundation fitted a stairlift into his home.
Chisnall is quoted as saying “Football was a game to me. I played for fun and was given a few quid for it. It’s a bit more intense today. We had no agents, apart from my wife, mind you, she used to take 80 per cent, not just ten!” We remember Phil for his contribution to County and we send our deepest condolences to his family and friends at this difficult time.
