On this day 40 years ago: Terry Byfield joins Crystal Palace

Imagine getting to work just one day behind the scenes at your boyhood football club – then imagine working 14,610 of them. Both prospects unfathomable to many – but both achieved by a legendary figure at Crystal Palace.

On this day (17th September), 40 years ago, a fresh-faced young man called Terry ‘Tel’ Byfield started his job as receptionist at Crystal Palace through the Youth Training Scheme.

Four decades – and a plethora of varied roles – later, Terry continues to serve the club with wisdom, vigour, decency and – as anybody who knows him well enough will tell you – no shortage of dry wit.

“I suppose looking back over that length of time, both on and off the pitch, there's been a lot of highs, lows, stories, whatever… I would say it's gone by quickly,” he smiles. “But I think that’s because no two days are the same at a football club.

“You don't see it as a day-to-day job, but you have to take yourself out of the fan element. You can't get wrapped up in whether it's a transfer or something happening at the stadium – it's being done for the good of the business.

“But as a working life, it's been an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to do it for so long. I'm certainly proud to be coming up to a landmark point in my career, and it's not until you reach that point, and people start congratulating you on it, that you realise a) how long it is and b) what has actually been involved!

“You know, whether it's ranging from the first home game under Steve Coppell, or Ian Wright coming on as a substitute to win us a game against Oldham, or being at Wembley for the FA Cup final, or being in the Premier League for 12 years… It's incredible, really, to be at your football club for 40 years.

“South London and Proud!… Sorry if that was too long!”

As a media man for much of his Palace career, it’s fitting his instinct is to consider the length of his own answer. But that’s skipping ahead. Back, then, to how it all began.

Hailing from a South London-based family of some-Millwall, but mostly-Palace (he assures us), supporters, Terry Byfield first truly began backing the Eagles in the 1970s.

Among the Palace side of the family was his Dad, who duly brought Terry the schoolboy to Football Combination – “what we now know as Under-21s” – and Under-18s matches. Terry fondly recalls watching, in the late 70s, the Youth Cup-winning teams of Vince Hilaire and Peter Nicholas as one of 200 or 300 fans present.

He and his friends eventually became Season Ticket Holders in the Holmesdale Stand, recalling: “I used to turn up at the ground and all the TV trucks – not as many as now – used to be in the Sainsbury’s car park, so I used to go there first.

“If there were two or three trucks, that would mean that it was the highlights game on The Big Match on ITV on Sunday afternoon!

“They used to show three games, and we would be one of the main games if those trucks were there. It’s obviously a world away from what it is now, but it was quite a big thing in those days when Palace v Grimsby was on the highlights!”

Terry left college with three O-Levels unsure of his next steps, but had “sort of having an inkling I wanted to do some kind of journalism.”

Prospective applications to local publications went nowhere, so Terry did the next most logical thing: in 1984, he wrote directly to Crystal Palace Chairman, Ron Noades, asking for work.

“I don’t think I even said in what department!” Terry laughs. “I just said ‘are there any roles available?’

“I got a reply back a few days later: Ron said there weren’t any definite roles, but to please ring our secretary to book an appointment. I rang his secretary, Paula, I came in, saw Ron, had a chat with him in his office for about an hour or so, and left.

“Not long after, I got a letter to say they were going to take me on in the administration side of the club, on £26.25 a week on the YTS [Youth Training Scheme].”

It’s strange to think 40 years on, but Terry’s Palace career may actually have only lasted a matter of months.

Because his salary was structured in line with the players on the YTS scheme, there came a point where Noades, deciding he could no longer maintain this for administration staff, almost brought his time at the club to a premature end.

“He said, ‘we might have to let you go, because the YTS has got to finish.’

“But then, just the following week, he said to me: ‘actually, we’re going to increase your money, and keep you on!’” Never in doubt.

After a few weeks’ working in the commercial department of the club, Terry moved into a role on reception: “A tremendous role where you know everything that was going on, because you’re answering the phone and letting people in at the door every day.

“I was here when Ian Wright first turned up to meet Steve Coppell – and I didn’t have a clue who he was! I went to Steve, ‘Ian Wright is here to see you’ - and a few weeks later he was playing for us!

“It’s hard to get across, but it was a completely different set-up – a different world.”

Nobody had really had that here before, the day before a game, listening to the manager talking about it

As Terry progressed, so too did his duties with the club. After a lengthy stint on reception, he became Assistant Club Secretary under Mike Hurst, and also became involved in the club’s box office.

Ever-versatile, it was in the role of Assistant Club Secretary where Terry made his most noticeable impact to supporters, setting up a publications department alongside Pete King. There, the duo soon became well known for running the match programme, Palace News, and ClubCall.

The latter was a club-by-club telephone information service of immense popularity in the 1980s, with fans calling a telephone line to listen to audio recordings of interviews and club updates, run by BT and charged at between 25p and 38p a minute.

“It was a rip-off!” Terry laughs. “But for us, Pete and I used to go down to the training ground on a Monday and get four interviews.

"On Thursday we’d get Coppell, and that would come out on a Friday – nobody had really had that here before, the day before a game, listening to the manager talking about it.

“We introduced a brilliant thing for three or four weeks where Steve would come in on a Sunday morning, and we set it up so people could leave a voice note. We took 10 questions and put them to Steve, and he’d answer them – a day-after review of the game.

"People could ring ClubCall and listen to that on a Sunday.”

After this latest successful stint, Terry became Communications Manager at Selhurst Park around the time Sky Sports began to grow, helping a myriad of managers and players through ever-burgeoning demands for press conferences and interview requests.

It was Terry’s longest role at Palace – he later became Content Editor, before adopting his current title of Production Manager – but, title aside, it was simply working for the club from which he drew the most pleasure, the most pride.

“It’s as though you’re not going to work every day,” he explains. “Obviously, you’re here to do a job, but all along, whatever task you’re given, you’re not looking at it as if you’re at work.

“You just end up soaking up the fact that you’re doing it for a club that you’ve supported since you were a boy, and that your family supported before that.

“You can be going up to Newcastle in the Premiership in 1995, knowing you’ve got to win to stay up, and all the week before you think it's going to happen… and then on the day, you get relegated.

“The club has to change, you move back into the First Division, and that episode's gone – so you move on to another one.

“The fact is that, even so, every season's different, isn't it? Every owner's different, every manager's different… and obviously because I've done various roles, my job hasn't stayed the same either.”

I watched them as a fan, so to then start working at the club, and get to know them as people... incredible, really

We put another point to Terry: if he were a player, he would have enjoyed four testimonials by now – so who from his time at the club would’ve made his all-star Palace XI?

“I’d better be careful, because I’m going to miss people out,” Terry reminds us, cautiously. “It all took off with Wright and [Mark] Bright, Geoff Thomas coming down from Crewe… and you’d have Gareth Southgate as your captain.

“The promotion team of ’79 – I was one of the 51,482 that were here at Selhurst [in the deciding game against Burnley], a ridiculous crowd considering what we were getting then, and it was just an amazing night because of that amazing side.

“The ‘Team of the 80s’… I watched them as a fan, so to then start working at the club, and get to know them as people, ringing them to do programme interviews…  incredible, really.

“Ian Evans, Jim Cannon, Dave Swindlehurst… and then lots of people from Iain Dowie’s squad and Neil Warnock’s [both in the 2000s]… there are so many names to choose from over the years.

“It’s quite interesting that a lot of former Palace players have gone on to do really great work in the media – so I’ve then met them again when they’ve come back to Selhurst for that! And I’ve worked with close to 30 managers, I would think.

“It’s when you look back you realise who you’ve worked with – and that they were all great. For someone in my job, at any club doing Communications, you want a manager who ‘gets it’ – and I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of those here over the years.”

We put Terry on the spot again, then: of his 14,610 days at Crystal Palace, which were his happiest?  “Any of the finals,” he replies, without hesitation.

“The Iain Dowie final at Cardiff [a 1-0 win over West Ham in the First Division play-off final in 2004], the play-off final when we beat Sheffield United with the last kick of the game [in 1997], the promotion in 1989…

“We lost up at Blackburn in the first leg, 3-1 down. I was working in the box office the morning after, and we were putting play-off tickets on sale for the second leg.

“The club secretary came down from his office, and put a sign up on the door: ‘Saturday 1st June, 1989: Palace 3, Blackburn 0 – Be there.’ – and that’s obviously how it panned out! That was an amazing, sunny day, the celebrations afterwards…

“Probably if I had to pick one day, it’d be the 4-3 [win over Liverpool in the 1990 FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park]. We were 1-0 down but when we equalised, it all just took off from there.”

As a fan and an employee, you couldn't want for anything else

We choose not to dwell on the lows – Terry naturally cites the club’s two administrations, in which he saw many colleagues lose their livelihoods, as the most difficult days – but instead look to the future.

“Where the club are now,” he considers, “is just on another level to those days of everyday problems at the training ground, struggling to pay bills and run the club.

“It’s a different world. As a fan and an employee, you couldn’t want for anything else, you know.

“We used to be known as a ‘yo-yo club’, but since getting promotion against Watford, with the takeover in 2010 and the new shareholders that have come in since, it’s grown to a position where the season’s starting and everyone’s thinking ‘can we raise it to another level?’ – whereas previously, it’s been ‘let’s finish fourth from bottom and stay up’!

“We’ve sold out season tickets again this year. I can remember matches back in the 1980s against Shrewsbury Town on a Sunday afternoon where we had about 4,500! It’s another world.

“Since I’ve been here, we’ve had training grounds at Mitcham and over at Beckenham – but to have the training ground that we’ve got now for the first-team and, across the road, the state-of-the-art facility that is the Academy, which hosts Palace Women as well… it’s incredible to look back, over 40 years, at how the club has grown.

“I’m sure, in this next chapter, the stadium will look tremendous. Whether we reach the next level on the pitch, certainly we’re very close to reaching the next level off it."

Just as 40 years’ time dilated so much for Terry, so too does our interview zip by in an instant, Terry and this writer both realising we should probably get going – but not before we ask if there’s anyone he’d like us to thank.

He pauses. Among many close colleagues and friends he’d like us to, Terry duly pays tribute to the late Ron Noades for taking him on back in 1984; Ron’s wife, Novello, and their family; the managers he has worked with, including Steve Coppell, Iain Dowie and Alan Smith; and Noades’ secretary, Paula Morley, who “taught him all his knowledge and skills of working in football administration.”

He leaves the room with a thought: “In this job, you know that each day is going to be different here, but you’re working in an environment that you're familiar with, and you know the people, you know how the business works.

“I think you've got to look at it and say that I'm very lucky to have had this opportunity in my working life, to work somewhere that I'm very proud to be associated with.

“Because I’ve done various roles, there’s never been any fear of it getting boring or thinking ‘how long is this going to go on for?’ It’s gone very quickly, and the reason it's gone quickly has been because it's been exciting.

“Many Palace fans will say that to follow the club is a rollercoaster ride – and I'd say it's exactly the same behind the scenes.

"... what a line that is for you, eh!"

40 years. Some achievement. If a Football Club is a community – a cumulative sum of its people, their goals and their work – then Terry Byfield is, has been, and continues to be, a massive part of Crystal Palace.

On behalf of many generations of Palace media, then, it leaves us just to say: happy 40 years, and thanks for everything, Tel!