Raymond (Ray) Ogden Charnley was born in Lancaster on 29 May 1935. Charnley started his career with Preston but didn’t make an appearance and moved into non-league football with Bolton-le-Sands and later for Morecambe when he signed for £15 in September 1954. His debut for the Shrimps came on 29 September 1954 in a 5-2 defeat at Lancaster City in the Combination Cup.
The 1956/57 season saw Charnley score 31 league goals in 37 appearances. A further 12 golas in 15 cup matches helped Morcambe reach the Combination Cup Final against Horwich.
In May 1957 Charnley was signed by Blackpool manager Joe Smith for a fee of £1,000 and stayed with the Seasiders for over 10 years.
Charney made his debut on 4 September 1957 in a 2-0 defeat at Luton. On 5 October he scored a brace in a 7-0 win against Sunderland which is their record home win, before going off with a gashed forehead. His first season for ‘Pool saw him net 12 goals from 20 games.
For the following five seasons Charnley was the leading goal scorer for Blackpool. He scored 20 goals from 35 appearances in 1958/59 and 18 goals from 34 appearances in 1959/60.
The 1960/61 season saw Blackpool avoid relegation from the First division by one point as he finished with 27 goals from 41 league appearances with the next highest goalscorer being Ray Parry with 8 goals.
Charnley only missed one game in 1961/62 and scored 30 league goals (36 in all competitions). Highlights included scoring four goals in the 7-2 win against Wolves on 20 January 1962 and hat-tricks against Leyton Orient and Chelsea. He also scored his 100th goal for the club in only his 156th appearance.
The 1962/63 season saw Charnley win is only England cap on 3 October against France at Hillsborough. Again he only missed one league match and netted 22 goals, 14 more than second placed Pat Quinn.
He was beaten as top goalscorer in 1963/64 by Alan Ball but was leading scorer again in 1964/65 with 21 goals from 38 appearances, 9 more than Graham Oates with 12 goals.
1965/66 Charnley was joint top scorer with Alan Ball with 16 goals was outright top ‘Pool scorer again for the eighth time in 1966/67 with 14 goals but couldn’t help Blackpool avoid relegation as they finished bottom of Division One.
The third match of the 1967/68 season saw Blackpool lose 4-1 at home to Millwall and ‘Pool manager Stan Mortensen made the unpopular decision to drop Charnley. In December 1967 a more unpopular decision was made when Charnley was signed by Bobby Seith at Preston.
His ten year career with Blackpool had seen Charnley score 222 goals in 407 appearances of which 193 goals came in 363 league appearances and had scored ten hat-tricks.
Charnley made his Preston debut in the 2-0 defeat at Millwall on 9 December and scored on his second appearance against his previous club Blackpool at Bloomfield Road the following week. Although the return to Bloomfield Road was not a happy one as Blackpool won 4-1.
Charley played for the remainder of the season in the number nine shirt and although he scored a brace in the FA Cup victory over QPR and a goal in the Fourth Round defeat at Tottenham he could not recreate his goal scoring form.
Charnley scored on his last home appearance in a 3-1 victory over Portsmouth on 11 May with his final appearance in a Preston shirt coming four days later in a 2-0 defeat at Crystal Palace.
In all Charney had scored 4 goals from 23 league appearances, his seven goals in all competitions was only one behind leading scorer Derek Temple with eight as Preston finished third bottom, narrowly avoiding relegation from the Second Division.
In July 1968 Charnley joined Fourth Division Wrexham but his stay only lasted 6 months with 5 goals from 20 appearances before he moved to Bradford Park Avenue.
Bradford Park Avenue finished bottom on Division Four in 1968/69 and were successfully re-elected as Charnley scored 3 goals from 19 appearances. The 1969/70 season saw Charnley finish leading scorer with 12 goals from 40 appearances, four more than Alan Woolmer. But in finishing bottom again the club was not as lucky this time as they failed to be re-elected to the Football League for 1970/71 and so was replaced by Cambridge United.
Charnley left Bradford Park Avenue to return to non-league side Morecambe where he took his total for the two spells with the Shrimps of 76 goals from 140 league appearances.