Robin Friday

Robin Friday (27 July 1952 – 22 December 1990) was an English footballer who played professionally as a forward for Reading and Cardiff City during a career that lasted four years in the mid-1970s.

His on-field performances were regarded as excellent, and he won Reading's player of the year award in both of his full seasons there, as well as being the leading goal scorer.

However, his habit of unsettling opponents through physical intimidation contributed to a heavily tarnished disciplinary record, and his personal life was one of heavy smoking, drinking, womanising and drug abuse.

Despite his short career, he remains prominent in the memory of Reading and Cardiff supporters, both as a player and a personality.

He has been voted Reading's best ever player three times.

He entered the Reading FC ‘Hall of Fame’ in 2022.

Born and raised in Acton, West London, Friday was scouted, but not retained, by four professional clubs during his teenage years.

Robin Friday and his twin brother, Tony, were born on 27 July 1952 in Acton, west London.

Their parents, Alf Friday, a driver for a laundry firm, and his wife Sheila, were both born in Acton and had married a year before, both aged 20, having met three years earlier.

Sheila's father, Frederick Riding, had played professional football for Brentford before the Second World War.

The Fridays lived with Sheila's family until moving into a prefab of their own in Acton Green when Robin and Tony were aged two; they moved to a maisonette in South Acton in 1962 when it was found that the prefab was sinking.

Robin and Tony were later described by their mother as having been remarkably close, rarely arguing or fighting.

A noticeable difference in personality was that Robin was shy, whereas Tony was more confident.

The twins attended their first professional match at the age of two, when their father took them to a Brentford match at Griffin Park.

From the age of four Alf took both boys to play football at a local park every afternoon.

Around the age of ten, Friday possessed notable ball-skills, and according to his father could flick an orange up onto his neck, balance it and then let it roll it back down his body and catch it on his foot.

As well as football, Robin played cricket to a high standard, boxed and played tennis.

Despite their many similarities and common interest in sports and football in particular, the twins were wildly different in academic terms: while Tony did well at school, Friday was uninterested and according to his brother "was always bunking off, having birds around the park".

Friday was scouted by numerous London sides during his teenage years, joining Crystal Palace's school of excellence at 12 or 13, then moving on to Queens Park Rangers aged 13 and then to Chelsea, with whom he attended the 1967 FA Cup Final; as one of the club's youth players, he was part of the team's official party.

However, Friday's individual style of play and refusal to change his game resulted in each of these clubs losing patience with him.

The twin brothers joined a men's team, the Acton British Legion Reserves, aged 14, and in some matches would play alongside their father.

Tony played in midfield, and Robin up front, but according to Tony his brother was better as a goalkeeper than a forward: "He was a brilliant goalkeeper. He had no fear ... But he obviously preferred banging them in at the other end".

Around this time Robin became interested in music, dancing and attending concerts; he also had a talent for drawing, but suddenly abandoned this interest at 15.

Robin became more outgoing than his brother and started taking drugs in his mid-teens.

He left school at 15, a year before Tony, and began training as a plasterer.

Friday lasted two months as a plasterer before moving on to become first a van driver for a grocery firm, then a window cleaner.

His laid-back attitude and indifference was already clear: in his father's words, "he didn't care".

Friday regularly stole by this time, but despite numerous convictions, did not go to a detention centre until he was 16.

Having been caught stealing what Tony recalled to be "a car radio or something", he was released almost immediately because he suffered from asthma.

He appeared for local semi-professional sides in the Isthmian League until he joined Charlie Hurley's Fourth Division Reading team in 1974; quickly becoming a key player, he helped Reading to win promotion to the Third Division during the 1975–76 season.

As his drug habit intensified, Friday's form began to dip in the first half of the 1976–77 season, leading Reading to sell him to Second Division side Cardiff City around the New Year.

Friday travelled to join his new team by train without a valid ticket and had to be bailed by the Cardiff manager Jimmy Andrews before he signed for the club.

He performed strongly on his debut, but afterwards his form declined and his personal life caused him to repeatedly miss matches altogether.

Following a number of incidents, on and off the field—including kicking Mark Lawrenson in the face —Friday retired from football in December 1977, aged 25.

He died in Acton in 1990, aged 38, after suffering a heart attack.

The strongest aspects of Friday's game were his ball skills, footballing intelligence and physical and mental strength.

Andrews labelled Friday "the complete centre-forward", and, along with numerous contemporaries, retrospectively rated Friday as good enough for the England national team.

The Cardiff-based band Super Furry Animals dedicated their 1996 single "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" to his memory.

Author, Stuart Kane penned two fact-based novels titled "Man Friday: The First Half" and "Man Friday: The Second Half" about Friday's life on and off the pitch.

In a 2004 BBC poll, Friday was voted the top "all-time cult hero" for both Reading and Cardiff City.