Inside Track: Could you imagine Erling Haaland playing for four hundred quid a week?

How much would £20 in olden days be worth in today’s money? (I once asked two bank men a similar question a few years ago, and they threw it back at me: How much was the pint that year? Not a very scientific way of working things out, you would have to say, but we still came up with what we felt was a satisfactory answer.)

The ‘olden’ days we are talking about were on the lead up to the early 1960s. I don’t know how much a pint was back then, but just say it was 20 times cheaper than it is today, £400 would be the answer.

(Talking about the price of a pint: I remember it had a few pence added in a Budget. There was consternation in the Democrat print works, one of the lads lamenting: “We won’t be able to get four for a pound any more.”)

And, now, readers, especially those who are English soccer followers, a question for you: Could you imagine a Premiership player turning out for his club each week for our projected ‘£400’?

But that’s how it was back then, Stanley Matthews, John Charles, Jimmy Greaves and all others who were filling stadiums to capacity getting no more than a Score a week. They were bound by what was known as the Maximum Wage rule, imposed by the Football League, the game’s governing body mostly comprised of club owners.

There wasn’t much else for people to do on a Saturday afternoon but get along to their local grounds. Back then, there was no wall-to-wall television coverage or up-to-the-minute scorelines. The first most would know how games had resulted was when that men with a very distinctive voice came on BBC radio with a rundown.

Benefiting from the big gates were the club owners. It was they who paid the paltry wages, and if Jimmy Hill hadn’t come along they’d have got away with it long after 1961. That was the year a halt was called to what you could say was slave labour on the football field.

Hill, later to become a BBC presenter, took over the chairmanship of the Professional Footballers’ Association in 1957. He was a Fulham player at the time, and immediately set about getting the Maximum Rule and another, the one that denied a player the right to a transfer when his contract was up, off the statute book.

Hill made the point that if these rules weren’t scrapped there’d be an exodus of the top-class players to the continent.

When Newcastle player, George Eastman, was denied a transfer to Arsenal, the PFA decided to take firm action: a strike was called for January 18, 1961.

The Football League big-wigs stood firm until three days before the players were due to stay at home. They relented, seeing that public opinion, or the bookmakers weren’t on their side.

The layers, who were – and still are – a strong lobby, feared their pools business would be greatly affected by a strike.

We can only wonder if Jimmy Hill were alive today what he would have to say about the pay packets players are now getting.

The pendulum has swung from the indefensible to the obscene.