Albert Cheesebrough

Albert Cheesebrough (17 January 1935 – 2 September 2020) was an English footballer. An inside forward, he scored 81 goals in 331 league games over a 16-year professional career in the Football League.

Turning professional with Burnley in 1951, he spent the next eight years at the club, making 158 appearances in league and cup competitions. Signing with Leicester City in 1959, he went on to play for the "Foxes" in the 1961 FA Cup final. He moved on to Port Vale in 1963, and after recovering from injury, he became the club's top-scorer in 1964–65, before he transferred to Mansfield Town in 1965. He spent two years with Mansfield before he was forced to retire due to injury. He won one cap for the England under-23s in 1956.

Club career Burnley Born in Burnley, Lancashire, Cheesebrough joined Burnley as a 15-year-old in the summer of 1950, after a series of outstanding performances as captain of his school team, Rosegrove, and for representative schoolboy teams at town and county level for Lancashire. He finished the 1956–57 season with 12 goals in 45 games. He retained his first-team place under new boss Billy Dougall and bagged 14 goals in 42 games in the 1957–58 season.

Leicester City Cheesebrough was sold to Matt Gillies's Leicester City in June 1959 for a fee of £20,000. He then hit 12 goals in 42 games in 1960–61, and was part of the City side who were defeated 2–0 by Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup final at Wembley. City had to play most of the game with ten men after Len Chalmers picked up an injury; Cheesebrough later recalled that "the pitch was very tiring so playing with 10 men was very hard". He scored 11 goals in 26 games in 1961–62, as City posted a 14th-place finish in the league. He opened his account at Vale Park with a hat-trick in a 3–0 win over Brentford on 16 September.

Post-retirement and family After retiring from the game, Cheesebrough ran a butcher's shop business in Southport; he had learned the ropes of the meat trade whilst playing at Port Vale.

His daughter, Susan, represented Great Britain at the Summer Olympics in 1976 and 1980 as a gymnast, and was British national champion in 1978 and 1979. His grandfather, also named Albert Cheesebrough, was killed by sniper fire shortly after the Second Battle of Krithia in World War I.

Cheesebrough died in Southport on 2 September 2020, aged 85.

Career statistics

Honours Leicester City FA Cup runner-up: 1960–61