The club should definitely do much better in honouring a club legend who continued to excel when he left us.

My dad was a West Ham boy, but took me to Selhurst to support our local club. Though I was relatively young when Johnny was there, his class was obvious. My dad was not surprisingly less than distraught when Johnny was sold to the Hammers, and actually took me to Upton Park to watch him in the 1985 Cup Winner's Cup semi-final.

There are quite a few mentions of him in the fairly recent Bobby Moore biography as they were great friends.

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If you've never had the privilege of seeing him in action, Youtube has the complete match of the 1964 Cup Final: West Ham vs Preston. Well worth a watch of him and his Hammer contemporaries.

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I was enjoying this post until you suggested that because Budgie was a Palace legend Bolaisie is a joke by comparison. Why should Budgie's reputation reflect badly on anyone else? Bolaisie will be seen one day as a legend at Palace, though not so much as Budgie, but so what? There's room in my Eagle heart to accept both and more! I remember seeing budgie dribble the ball upfield and hold on to it, then coming back to the Palace half. With two minutes of the game to go and Palace one up, what cheek! I think that was against Torquay in about 1964. Palace's emergence as a club with a bigger future was upon us. I feel Palace are about to take the next step up and Budgie was certainly at the very beginning of this growth.

No Sarge, Budgie did show boat and very effectively.

Well remember that 4th div promotion season.

Vic rouse was my favourite, but we also had Johnny Gavin and Ron heckman on the wings, plus terry long and George petchey, the skipper, in midfield.

We seemed to win every home match 5-0 - except against posh.

Budgie had great ball control and was certainly a show boater, but IMO he was not as clever as wilf whose brilliance can take your breath away.

Other players of yesteryear who could also turn on the magic include Vince hillaire, don Rogers and peter taylor.

I recall budgie had a column in the croydon advertiser - once he had a right go at a teammate , Brian Lewis, which prompted a flurry of angry letters.

Am I right in thinking he was in the 1966 World Cup squad?

Later in his career, he played in midfield for Fulham but this was not a success.

Yes, Budgie played against Real Madrid but he didn't score. Ron Heckman, Andy Smillie and Terry Long's thunderbolt were our scorers.

Comparisons between Byrne & Bolasie aren't really fair to either party, until his return in 1966 Byrne only played for Palace in Divs 4 & 3, but my grandfather and older brother have both told me that he was the best player they ever saw play for Palace. But they didn't see him in the Prem where I can say that Bolasie ripping Liverpool apart is just about the most thrilling thing I've seen at least since Ian Wright did the same to Man Utd, and before that Don Rogers did it too. It doesn't mean they were better than anyone else, but they were brilliant at that level at that time. Who of us knows how good Peter Simpson was? All we can do is look in the book - 165 goals.

Here's Budgie appearing against Madrid....

Attachment: CP v Real Madrid 61-2 FR 2.jpg (788.96Kb)

Zaha, Williams, Murray, Ambrose, Scannell.

A 5-man forward line who scored 3 goals in 10 minutes on 27th September 2011 at .......................

No he missed out on selection, as he had a poor season by his standards, that was due to him carrying an injury for a lot of the season, in those days if you could walk you played.