Melvyn Charles (14 May 1935 – 24 September 2016) was a Welsh international footballer. Charles played as both a centre-half and centre-forward, with his preferred position being at right-half.
After a short stint on the Leeds United ground staff, he turned professional with his local club, Swansea Town, in 1952. He spent seven years in the Second Division with the club before he won a £42,750 move to First Division Arsenal in March 1959. His three seasons at the club were plagued by injury, and in February 1962, he was sold to Cardiff City for a £28,500 fee. He spent three years with Cardiff, winning the Welsh Cup in 1964, his only domestic honour before he joined Porthmadog in the Welsh League in 1965. He spent a brief period in the Fourth Division with Port Vale in the 1966–67 season before he returned to Welsh football with Oswestry Town. He joined Haverfordwest in 1967, where he spent five years before he retired from the game. He scored 122 goals in 401 league and cup games in the Football League.
He captained Wales at the international level, whom he represented at the 1958 FIFA World Cup. Charles also went his whole career without being booked or sent off. He also competed in eight British Home Championships and became only the third Welshman to score four goals in a game when he scored all the goals in a 4–0 win over Northern Ireland. In total, he earned 31 senior caps, in addition to one under-23 cap, and he scored six full international goals.
Growing up in a poor family in the Cwmbwrla district of Swansea alongside elder brother John and three other siblings, the brothers grew up on Alice Street in Swansea, being neighbours of fellow future Welsh internationals Ernie Jones, Mel Nurse, and Jackie Roberts.
John and Mel Charles seemed destined to begin their careers at local club Swansea Town. However, manager Billy McCandless was unwilling to test youngsters in the unforgiving waters of the Third Division South, so the boys were not signed up to the club. This proved costly to Swansea, and the result was that John signed with Leeds United, and 14-year-old Mel also followed him to Elland Road to become one of the ground staff. Despite fitting in well at the club, he was unable to settle in Leeds; due to his poor background he was unable to afford trips back to Wales to visit his family and he was also illiterate so could not write home. After a young apprentice, also from Swansea, failed to impress at Leeds, manager Major Frank Buckley asked Charles to accompany him on the trip back to his hometown. However, due to his homesickness, Charles never returned to Yorkshire once he made it back to Swansea. Instead, Swansea Town scout Joe Sykes persuaded Charles to join the club's ground staff.
He was offered a professional contract with Swansea Town at the age of 17, and he immediately settled into the Second Division side. His debut came at Bramall Lane on 20 December 1952, in what turned out to be a 7–1 defeat to Sheffield United. However, his progress was halted when he twisted his knee on national service, though this injury came as he was messing around outside the cook house rather than on parade or in the 9th Battalion's march to the Army Cup. He went straight back into the first team upon his recovery. He played mostly at centre-half or in his preferred position at right-half. He remained in the first XI under Ron Burgess, who was appointed manager following McCandless' death in July 1955.
He spent seven seasons with the "Swans" from 1952 to 1959, all ending with Swansea finishing between tenth and twentieth. They consistently picked up results at Vetch Field but failed to perform away from home. During this time they also reached the final of the Welsh Cup in 1956 and 1957, though lost out to Cardiff City and then Wrexham. A cash-strapped club, their cause was not helped by the fact that the directors refused to pay for overnight stays, and so many times the team's coach would appear outside the opposition's ground just minutes before the match. Swansea were a selling a club, and during his time Ivor and Len Allchurch, Cliff Jones, and Terry Medwin would all be sold to big English clubs. Including Charles, these five players all represented Wales at the World Cup. Jones' brother Bryn also played for Swansea, as did Cyril and Gilbert Beech; this meant three sets of brothers played for the "Swans" during this time, in what was an extremely local squad. Throughout the 1950s, Swansea were an attacking team. During his time at Vetch Field, Charles picked up four goals in a match against Blackburn Rovers, as well as hat-tricks against Stoke City, Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday. Charles offered to work at a second job to remain at Swansea with their strict wage limit of £14 a week, but this was not permitted, and instead, he put in a transfer request. He employed Neil Harris to act as his 'business manager' in his pending transfer move, thereby making him the first-ever agent in the English game. In one of his last games for the club, he helped Swansea record their first ever league win over rivals Cardiff City at Ninian Park.
Chased by Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, Charles was eventually sold to Arsenal in March 1959 for a fee of £42,750 with two other players, David Dodson and Peter Davies, going the other way. This was, at the time, the highest-ever transfer between two British clubs as Juventus had paid Leeds United £65,000 for John Charles in 1957. Aiming to use him as a centre forward, Arsenal manager George Swindin and captain Tommy Docherty managed to persuade Charles to take the move, and as the Arsenal men convinced Charles, Tottenham decided to withdraw their offer. Spurs manager Bill Nicholson was forced to sign Dave Mackay instead, as the White Hart Lane club would become a major force in the game in the 1960s. Due to this success, in his autobiography, Charles wrote that "signing for Arsenal was the most terrible choice I ever made". Though he also wrote that "I'll always have a place in my heart for Arsenal, and it was an honour to have played for them."
He was paid £20 a week and set up with a house and car by the Arsenal management – a Sunbeam-Talbot with the license plate 'MEL 9'. Not used to the complexities of a rapidly modernising game, he endured a frosty relationship with coach Ron Greenwood after numerous humorous mix-ups over new terms such as 'blind-side run' and 'marking space', and embarrassed himself in front of the TV cameras when he fumbled and said "I'm okay, I've just got clitorises in my eyes", instead of cataracts.
He made his debut against Sheffield Wednesday on 22 August 1959, in what was a difficult 1959–60 season for the "Gunners". Though they ended up in 13th place, Charles managed to bag himself a hat-trick at Highbury in a 5–2 win over Blackburn Rovers on 6 February. A fortnight later he missed a chance to make it two Highbury hat-tricks in a row when, already with two goals to his name, he scuffed a penalty into the arms of Everton keeper Jimmy O'Neill.
Always struggling with his knees, during the 1960–61 he started to be afflicted by ligament damage. The physios used whatever methods they could to reduce the swellings in his knees, and as he was a big-money signing, Charles would be forced to take to the field week in and week out, despite his injuries. His team were wildly inconsistent, beating Newcastle United 5–0, only to lose 6–0 to West Ham United a few weeks later; meanwhile supporters were anxious at the rise of their North London rivals. Arsenal finished eleventh, some 25 points behind Double-winning Tottenham Hotspur.
The 1961–62 season was another difficult one for Charles and Arsenal. However, he did manage to bag another hat-trick for the club, as he scored all three goals in an FA Cup win over Bradford City. His time in London would be dominated by injuries, though, and he underwent three operations in three years. Altogether, Charles played 64 matches in three seasons for Arsenal, scoring 28 goals.