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STUART WILLIAM BOAM 1971/79
Stuart Boam was born in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire in 1948 and signed professional forms for Mansfield Town as an 18 year old making 175 appearances for the Stags and making his debut against Leyton Orient in the last match of the 1966/67 season before becoming a regular in the side from then onwards for five years. He had his own house built in the village of his birth just as Boro came calling and had just taken completion of the house on the Friday, signed for Boro for a fee of £50,000 on the Saturday, and was reputed to have sold it on the Monday for a profit of £400, although to the chagrin of his wife.
He made 175 appearances for the Nottinghamshire club and his first meeting with Jack Charlton was not a happy one, as the Geordie assembled all of the Boro players in the Marton Country Club and having assessed each players strengths and weaknesses finally told Boam that he had no room for him in his squad as he himself expected to be the player/manager. Stuart of course was devastated and recalled later how he was almost driven to tears feeling his time at Boro had come to a premature end. Of course Jack had no intention of prolonging his playing career, and that was simply his way of motivating Stuart before making him captain, and he never dropped Stuart from the team thereafter.
Initially under Stan Anderson, Boam had partnered Bill Gates as twin central defenders at the start of the 1971/72 season, but the twosome had similar attributes so Stan decided that a Stuart Boam/Willie Madden partnership would be more dependable. Boam and Nobby Stiles made their Boro debuts on the same day in a 1-2 defeat at Fratton Park, but with Stiles taking over the captaincy from the evergreen Gordon Jones.
The Boro fans took to Stuart straight away as be became the lynchpin of the defence and sang “Six foot two, eyes of blue, Stuey Boam is after you” which became a regular terrace chant. It was Gazette Boro reporter who first christened the Boam/Maddren partnership as ‘The Telepathic Twins’. Boam ran a newsagent’s shop in St Barnabas Road quite near to Ayresome Park, and loved to wind Jack Charlton up by arriving late for home matches. He recalled how matchdays were very good business as he’d be behind the counter in his club suit, selling everything that newsagents provided, but also signing autographs. It used to drive Jack mad as he had to send an apprentice to collect him. Admittedly it wasn’t professional, but perhaps some revenge for his first meeting with Jack all those years ago.
It all ended when Boro signed Irving Nattrass for a record fee of £375,000 and found difficulty in meeting the payments so were forced to transfer Boam to the Magpies for £170,000 at the end of the 1978/79 season. His last match was a 0-1 home defeat to Liverpool having made 393 appearances and scoring 16 goals. He stayed at St James Park for two seasons making 69 appearances before returning to Mansfield as player/coach but his legs had gone and he only made 15 appearances and a single one at Hartlepools after which he worked at Kodak for 12 years, and then bought another newsagents shop in Nottinghamshire before retiring.
He still kept in touch with Willie Maddren and often agreed that somehow the pair of them were indeed telepathic, one of the finest pair of central defenders in Boro’s history.
