John Jackson

‘Stonewall’ Jackson was one of the many Crystal Palace players who trusted their former coach George Petchey enough to follow him and his mentor Arthur Rowe across the Thames from Selhurst Park in the 1970s. Phil Hoadley, David Payne and Gerry Queen were already on board when Jacko arrived in October 1973 and were firmly established in the first team, having all played in the opening 11 League games of the season. Many Orient fans must have thought the new goalkeeper might have a battle to dethrone Ray Goddard, who was seven years younger, but it was only a leg injury early on that kept Jackson out of the team at any point in the next five seasons. At Palace he had already established an astonishing record of consistency, missing only 12 matches in eight years and making 222 appearances in a row, and from the start of Orient’s 1974-75 season at home to Manchester United he stood between the posts for every League match and almost every other first-team game over the next five years. Like Goddard four years earlier he played a huge role when the O’s attack was misfiring: in that 1974-75 campaign his 19 clean sheets meant that somehow the team finished as high as 12th despite scoring a feeble 28 goals – once again the lowest in the division. It was the FA Cup for which most supporters will remember his most defiant individual performances, conceding just four goals in seven tough ties before the 1978 semi-final; in particular when defying Middlesbrough at Ayresome Park in the sixth round – a stonewall show bettered the following season in another goalless draw, with Bobby Robson’s outstanding Ipswich Town team at Portman Road. “He played like a hero,” the Ipswich manager said after what the Sunday Express called “an incredible sequence of saves”. Ironically his last game for the O’s turned out to be against Palace at the end of that season. In the close season Jimmy Bloomfield signed Mervyn Day from West Ham and Jacko followed Petchey back across the river to Millwall. Having had two spells on loan in the United States while with the O’s, he later played briefly at Ipswich and Hereford. The peak of his representative career was to be picked for the Football League team in 1971 and he was unfortunate to have keepers like Gordon Banks, Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton in front of him – but at his best was not far behind them. He died in December 2022, aged 80.