Keith Robert Newton was an English international footballer who played as a defender in The Football League in the 1960s and 1970s. Newton was born in Manchester. He started his career with Blackburn Rovers and first played a League game in the 1960–61 season. Newton went on to play over 300 games for the club. In defensive mode, the tall, sparely built Mancunian was a study in quiet efficiency, an expert tackler, effective in the air and adept at intelligent interceptions, but it was his capacity for attack which illustrated his quality most vividly. At his peak he was renowned as a raiding overlapper, virtually doubling as a winger at a time when those entertaining worthies were sadly out of fashion, and no one deployed him more effectively than the England managerSir Alf Ramsey. He transferred to Everton in December 1969 and made 12 appearances for them in the latter half of the 1969–70 season, in which Everton won the Football League First Division. He also won the 1970 FA Charity Shield. Newton moved to Burnley for the 1972–73 season, making his league debut on 12 August 1972 against Carlisle United. He made a total of 209 league appearances for Burnley, his last coming in the 1977–78 season. Following this, he appeared for Clitheroe and Morecambe in non-league football.
International career
Newton made his international debut for England against West Germany in February 1966, and after being named in the provisional squad for that summer's World Cup, he ultimately ended up on the stand by list and missed out on England's victory. He went on to play 27 times for England, including three games at the 1970 World Cup Finals, where, through injury, he gained the distinction of becoming the first England player to be substituted at a World Cup, being replaced by Tommy Wright six minutes into the second half of England's opening match against Romania in Guadalajara. Newton also assisted in both England goals in the Quarter-Final defeat to West Germany. He was a distinguished, if somewhat underrated, component of one of England's finest international football teams. Indeed, there is no shortage of shrewd contemporary observers who would place the side which he graced as a stylish full-back, and which was eliminated so dramatically by West Germany from the 1970 World Cup, ahead of the more famous combination which had lifted the Jules Rimet trophy four years earlier.
