IT is, today, the world's most glamourous profession for millions of young men, a life of fast cars, pop singers and private 'planes, fashion models, champagne and sometimes cocaine too, writes John Sheard.

It is also a world of cynical fouls on the pitch, punches thrown in night clubs, broken marriages and tabloid headlines which, a few years ago, would have ensured that a man was drummed out of the public spotlight for the rest his days.

Welcome to professional football, 2000, subject to more media hype than even the Royal family and financial deals so big that even the loads-a-money traders in the City of London turn green with envy.

It was not always thus and there lives in Hurrs Road, Skipton a soft-spoken, ever-smiling gentleman who remembers when professional soccer was played with a mixture of brute force and chivalry before an audience of discerning fans who mixed together on the terraces without a single strand of razor wire to keep them apart.

Ken Drake can remember when football boots had to be smeared with dubbin to stop them setting like concrete, when the ball itself was like a rock with leather laces that could cut your forehead if you headed it wrong - indeed, when some centre forwards became punch-drunk like boxers from constantly heading the ball.

Ken was a full-time professional footballer who never drove to the game in an Aston Martin. Nor, indeed, in an Austin Seven: he went on the bus. And in all his time, he never earned more than £10 a week - and that included a £2 bonus for a winning game.

He is, he admits, somewhat bemused by the modern-day game but there is not an ounce of rancour in him: "I find it difficult to grasp that some of these modern players can become millionaires at the age of 22.

"Some of their antics on and off the pitch take a lot of swallowing, all the niggle and the arguments. But they are under a lot more pressure than we ever faced and the game is much faster than it was in my day. Good luck to them, that's what I say."

Ken, 78 this month, would be the first to admit that he never hit dizzy heights of soccer. He started his sporting career at football and cricket at the Ings School, Broughton Road, Skipton, continued it in the RAF during the war, and spent seven years as a full-time pro with Halifax Town in the 40s and 50s, when even top players like Sir Stanley Mathews could only earn £15 a week - plus that £2 bonus.

Halifax Town were not a fashionable club, stuck as they were in the old Third Division North, but they regularly drew crowds of 10,000 and often 20,000 in local Derbies against teams like Bradford City.

He went to Halifax by public transport and married his childhood sweetheart, Kathleen, in the same year as the Queen and Prince Philip (they received a congratulatory letter from Buckingham Palace when both couples celebrated their golden weddings).

With his full-time days as a centre half and then full back over (positions that had disappeared from the game, too) he played part time for a couple of non-league clubs in Lancashire before spending the next 27 years of his working life as a machinist with Rolls-Royce at Barnoldswick - where he turned out for the works team.

But his sporting life was far from over. Always a good cricket all-rounder, he played for Skipton Church Institute from the age of 14 to 52, war time service in Africa excepted, and was club treasurer for 25 years.

In the late 50s, he also began to coach the Craven Minors Under 18 soccer team which, when he arrived, had not won a major trophy for years.

Under his guidance, they won the West Riding Minors Cup twice, quite a feat when they were against clubs like Leeds and Bradford, some of whose players had already signed professional contracts.

"I'd thoroughly enjoyed my professional sporting life so I thought it was only right and proper to give something back to the youngsters," he says.

Not that his own sporting days are over: he still plays snooker twice a week at the Swadford Street Rest Centre with retired photographer Stanley Johnson, who has been a sporting partner for some 70 years: both played for the Ings School First X1 in the late 20s!

Now I would not like to seem over-cynical but I wonder how many of today's soccer millionaires will be celebrating their golden weddings in 50 years time or playing snooker with a childhood mate when this century is nearly over?

Ken Drake may not have reached the pinnacle of his much-loved game but he got near the top. And he remained a gentleman, a remarkable example of what that long-tarnished word "sportsmanship" once signified. I suspect he and Kath have won the game of life.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.