Blackpool in the prem?

Date published: 19/04/2010

A top Manchester cop has helped answer a football-related riddle that has puzzled a sports-mad Antipodean journalist for more than a quarter of a century.

When New Zealander Roy Pilott was scanning the 1981 edition of the Rothman�s Football Yearbook � an annual bible of statistics and player information - looking for details of New Zealand-born players plying their trade in the UK, one entry caught his eye:

Jon Rush. Ht 6.0. Wt 12.9. Birthplace: Wellington, New Zealand. Club(s): Blackpool, league appearances 4.

Little did he know, this innocuous information would take him on a spiritual journey from Waikato, New Zealand to Bury, Lancashire.

Roy said: �I was intrigued about who Jon Rush was, especially as New Zealand had just qualified for the 1982 World Cup with a team mostly made of ex-pat Brits and there was a Kiwi goalkeeper playing league football halfway around the world!�

Years passed and technology advanced, and in 2009 a chance Google search answered to Mr Pilott�s quarter-of-a-century old conundrum when it revealed that the same Jon Rush had been appointed as the new Chief Superintendent of Greater Manchester Police�s Bury Division.

Chief Supt Rush was born in Wellington after his family emigrated from Salford to New Zealand in search of a better life only to return two years after his birth.

On returning to England, he rose through the footballing ranks to become a professional footballer playing in the same Blackpool team as the legendary England Word Cup winner Alan Ball and treading the turf at grounds such as Old Trafford, Maine Road and Anfield.

Roy � who�s parents also emigrated to New Zealand when he was a child - decided to write a feature about his research for the Waikato Times, of which he is deputy editor, so he contacted Chief Supt Rush and the pair waxed lyrical about the ups and downs of a football career which eventually led to the upper echelons of GMP.

Chief Supt Rush said: �I was surprised when I was contacted by Roy asking me about my career but I was only too happy to share some of my footballing memories and old newspaper cuttings with him.�

Today, Chief Supt Rush�s main involvement with football is as a fan. He follows his first love, Manchester City along with Carlisle � he spent more than 20 years with Cumbria Constabulary - and Bury.

�I have never returned to New Zealand but I�d love to go back one day. I will obviously be supporting England at the World Cup but I will be watching out for the All Whites and hope they do well,� said Chief Supt Rush.