RETURN TO FORM

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LX, Issue 17, 3 March 1939, Page 4

RETURN TO FORM

HYPNOTISM USED

WELL-KNOWN FOOTBALLER'S

STORY

(From The Guardian's London

Correspondent)

LONDON, February 11

A famous English footballer attributes his greatly improved form to hypnotism.

Fred Steele, the 22-year-old Stoke City and England centre-forward declared this week that he had been hypnotised by a doctor into his goalscoring feats. Badly injured after a sensational debut for England in 1937, Steele scored only nine goals in the first half of the present season, and his team was low in the League. Then, dramatically, he returned to his best form. In the last five games he has scored ten goals and has taken his side near the top.

Officially, it was stated that he had been worried about his wife, but that, with the birth of their child, the worry had gone. Steele himself said that was why he had come into his own again. But the real reason.

"Two piercing eyes have brought me back to myself," he said. "For six weeks, known only to the management of the club, I have been visiting a well-known nerve specialist in the Potteries. His eyes looked through me, but he could not help me, unless I gave myself completely over to him for a time. I agreed Constantly as we talked he drilled into me such ideas as 'You're a fine player, you know,' 'You must put your back into the game.'

With those eyes on me and that warm, smooth voice comforting me, I felt strangely healed. At the end of six weeks the doctor told me he had hypnotised me for the last time. 'I can do no more for you,' he said, 'I think you are yourself again.' As I left the house he said, 'Don't let me down.' The next day I played against Huddersfield. I scored the first goal that started my return to form."