Vic Akers and Sid Hayes, former neighbours in Camden Town who were key figures in the development of the Arsenal women’s team

SID Hayes was remembered this week as a pioneer of women’s football, a father figure to hundreds of Camden teenage players over the years, and a go-getting entrepreneur whose kindness and laughter would light up any room.

He played a crucial role in building an Arsenal team which dominated women’s football, but also set up the Regent’s Park youth leagues and running teams for young men and women, scooping dozens of trophies in the process.

He died last week, aged 82, after a battle with lung cancer.

Chelsea manager Emma Hayes, one of his three daughters, paid tribute to him as she prepared for her first match without her father watching along by her side.

“He was my champion,” she said. “He always told me ‘you are going to change the face of the women’s game’. But make sure you go hard. Whip it up. He gave me confidence to take risk, to go after it.

“Nothing was ever enough for him. It was always about doing something for others, and teaching people – from what you do in training to your menstrual cycle. ‘Teach the world’, he used to say – and call-out the crap behaviour. There is no question I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am without him.”

Sid enjoys Emma’s (furthest right in the picture) FA Cup success at Wembley 

Emma, who also works as a pundit for ITV Sport, added: “My Dad was a terrific dad to me and my sisters – and he kind of lives in all of us. We are all entrepreneurs. Most of all – we all love the community.”

Mr Hayes set up a family-run theatre tickets and currency exchange business in Jubilee Market Hall, Covent Garden, which he was still working at almost right up until his death.

His favourite phrase was “sometimes you can be too busy counting money to make any money”, said Emma, who said the term entrepreneur was putting it politely.

She said: “He attended football all over the world, often as a ticket tout – but he would watch all the games too. He went to the Atlanta Games in 1996 [the first time women played soccer at the Olympics] – and I remember him calling up and saying ‘Emma you’ve got to move to America, this is where it’s at’. And I did move there, in 2001.”

Despite her huge success winning countless trophies, Ms Hayes said one of her proudest achievements was helping her father grow the Regent’s Park youth league into the success it is today.

“But my proudest memory of him had nothing to do with me,” she said. “It was after the Lionesses won the Euros. His old pals used to always ask him about me, but they had become fully fledged fans. It was no longer just ‘how’s Emma doing?’ It was ‘oh my god isn’t she a good player that Millie Bright?’

“To affect that generation, it meant so much to me. The Euros was the tipping point, but it was all about the work that had been done in the 15 years before that.”

Sid with his wife Miriam

Mr Hayes was born in Walker House, Somers Town, in 1941. The family home was bombed during the war and he liked to tell a story about his mother sheltering him and his sister Patricia under the kitchen table.

He went to St Aloysius School and lived for most of his life in the Curnock Estate in Plender Street, Camden Town, with his wife of more than 60 years Miriam.

She still remembers meeting him for the first time in a Somers Town pub aged 17 and said: “He was football crazy. We had football on every single day of the year since I was 17. Literally just football. We’d eat, sleep and drink football.”

Daughters Victoria and Rebecca worked with Sid for decades at the ticket box office. Rebecca remembered how he began trading there “out of a caravan that he used to wheel down from Russell Square” and described her father as a “go getter” who could always spot a gap in the market, whether it was selling umbrellas, CDs or Marlboro Lights.

She told how he had run the pioneering Mary Ward women’s team, based near Coram Fields, which for some of the players was a precursor to joining the Arsenal Ladies team, and how he later took the reins of the St Aloysius and Lithgow young men’s teams that played at Hackney Marshes.

Rebecca said: “He got them kids off the street. They were all Camden kids and they would be there in the morning for him whatever they had been doing the night before.”

Bizarrely, given the strong connection with Arsenal and now Chelsea, the Hayes’ family are all ardent Spurs fans – with Sid’s favourite player being Jimmy Greaves.

Arsenal legend Vic Akers, a former manager of the pioneering Gunners team, lived opposite Sid in the Curnock estate.

“I had a final walk with him before he died, down near the hospital,” he said.

“It was like old times and he was on form, making each other laugh. He was just a good guy and he did it all for nothing, and having people like that helping me out, well it meant all the more. Without him, we wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as we were.”

From pitchside chats to a lucky wrong turn at Wembley

By CATHERINE ETOE

I TOOK a fortunate wrong turn at the Women’s FA Cup final at Wembley in May. Hopelessly lost on the way to a media briefing, I bumped into Emma Hayes’ sister, Rebecca, who pulled me into the family box.

“Come and see dad,” she said. So I did, and there was Sid, perched on a seat outside, proudly running the rule over a sold-out stadium and fans draped in the blue of his manager daughter Emma’s team, Chelsea.

Seeing him there, I was taken back 20-odd years to when, as a cub reporter, I first spotted Sid leaning against the railings at Borehamwood, his beady eyes on the pitch as Arsenal ‘Ladies’ and his old pal Vic Akers bossed every opponent.

Few cared about the sport then.

But Sid did, and as time went by I’d look forward to our pitch-side chats, lapping up his deadpan humour and infectious laugh, admiring him for the way he championed all three of his daughters as he gave me updates on their lives.

I also enjoyed his pithy insights into whichever match was being played out before us, because Sid knew football; he knew it inside out.

He had strong opinions too, but was no terrace bore and always asked my views in the midst of giving his own. As time went by, I came to be impressed by the way he put his football brain and easy way with people of all ages to use in his own community too, and I saw him quietly, but effectively, support Camden’s district team and the Regent’s Park League.

So in typical fashion, it was football and his girls we discussed on our chance encounter that day at Wembley. Except this time, we also spoke of his illness and as I rose to leave his side, he did something he’d never done before: he hugged me and gave me a fatherly kiss on the forehead.

It was almost as if we both knew this could be our last goodbye.

I’m sad to say it was, but I’m so glad I took that “wrong” turn. I’ll never forget you “Sidi”, you were one in a million.

Catherine Etoe is a journalist and former sports editor of the Camden New Journal