Peter Hayter discovers how players in the modern game can find support from their ‘union’ when their careers end

The brilliant sports scribe Frank Keating was looking for somewhere to tap out his pipe and the small silver ashtray on the mantelpiece looked just the job. “The old man hears the clink,” he wrote in The Guardian.
“I think you’ve just emptied your ash in my most treasured possession,” he says, though without any trace of admonition.
“Read what it says,” he orders. “You read, ‘To Harold. For The Ashes. From a Gra...