60 years ago this month...

[Silent Blade]

There was presumably a mix of reasons. A feeling that the future looked good, with the new ‘Busby Babes’ feel; the glimpse of the passing of an era - for some of us that back 6, who played virtually every game each season, was all we had known, and to see 2 young kids come in and replace Coldwell and Graham Shaw so professionally was amazing; they were clearly welcomed by the senior players, and that suggested a strong dressing room; to see Mick Jones scoring goals around his 18th birthday suggested that there could be life after Pace. There was a feel good factor that evening. And to be honest, until I started preparing recent posts for this thread, I had thought for years that the Leyton match was the last game of the season, everything was so relaxed.

I read that the season was extended by 3 weeks because of the Big Freeze causing all the postponements so maybe the Orient game was scheduled to be the last game of the season when the 1962-63 season fixtures came out?

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

I read that the season was extended by 3 weeks because of the Big Freeze causing all the postponements so maybe the Orient game was scheduled to be the last game of the season when the 1962-63 season fixtures came out?

Very kind of you to come up with an excuse for my bad memory The programmes from the first half of the season confirm that that was indeed the case, with Cup Final as usual completing the season the first Saturday of May.

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

Wednesday, May 1st, 1963, at 7.30 p.m.
United 2-1 Aston Villa
(Pace, Wagstaff)
Attendance: 17,111

Villa, having been close to the top of the league in the autumn, were going through a disastrous loss of form after the Big Freeze, including a run of 9 successive defeats, so United were expected to win this game, and did so with a margin which did not reflect their dominance. Coldwell and Graham Shaw returned at full-back, but the other two teenagers retained their places, and made key contributions - Mick Jones provided what would now be called an assist for Pace’s opener, and Tony Wagstaff scored the winner with a powerful shot towards the Kop in the second half. This was a poor Villa side, but United’s continued upward momentum was good to behold. The only concern was that our 3 remaining fixtures were all tricky - Liverpool at home, Spurs and Wednesday away. But our confidence was high.

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

Saturday, May 4, 1963
Spurs 4-2 United (Jones, Hartle)
Attendance: 42,886

United’s good run of results came to an end in a match against one of Europe’s elite clubs. Spurs basically had the same squad which won the League and Cup double in 1961 (the first team to achieve this in the 20th century), with the addition of big-money signing Jimmy Greaves, the outstanding goal-scorer of his generation. And although their chances of winning the League were now slim, less than 2 weeks after playing United, Spurs beat Atletico Madrid 5-1 to become the first British club to win a major European competition, the Cup-Winners Cup.
The programme is generous in the space it gives to United, and the bonus I always liked - action photos, all for three pence:

The reports suggest that Spurs deserved their victory, but that United did put up a fight, and despite a crucial error from Wagstaff contributing to Spurs first goal, he and Mick Jones combined to produce United’s first goal, confirming again that the 2 youngsters had a lot to offer. But the result did allow the teams below United, who had been winning matches in hand, to put more pressure on United’s bid to finish high in the the league table. The previous year’s 5th position was now out of the question, but a couple more wins would give us a high finishing position.

 

[Knackered Blade]

I remember my dad recalling the Orient match also many older Blades told me they were at the match. It must have been the most memorable game of the season because of the full backs' debuts despite that we had nothing to play for near the end of the season

You can probably check this from your records, but as I remember it, the build up to the Leyton Orient match was all about the debuts of Len Badger and Bernard Shaw. The debut of Bernard Shaw was not a problem, as he was replacing his brother Graham Shaw, and Graham didn't mind. However Cec Coldwell had to be persuaded. Firstly Cec was the proud captain of the team and didn't want to relinquish the honour. Secondly, there was, quite rightly, kudos in playing all 42 league games in the season. An ever present throughout the season was some achievement as you can imagine. Cec was a true club man and let his potential record go for the good of Len Badger's development and finished the season with 41 league appearances.

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

Saturday, May 11, 1963
United 0-0 Liverpool
Attendance: 18494

Memory is a strange thing, especially when memories from many years ago come into contact with photos, film, newspaper reports, etc., and one of the pleasures of preparing material for this thread has been the testing of long-held memories. Today’s material, kindly provided by Silent Blade , produced a fascinating example for me. As part of my obsession with goalkeepers, and observing them from behind the goal at the Kop end, I have long held in my memory an image of a stunning save by Hodgy: a sunny day, a bone-dry pitch, a stiff breeze, a long-range right-foot shot by the opposition left-half, the ball dipping and swerving (unusual for the old leather footballs), Hodgy leaping up to his left, catching the ball and holding on to it when he landed on the hard pitch. In my mind the opposition player was Emlyn Hughes. Reading the reports from this game, the description of a shot by Willie Stevenson, just after the half-hour, creates exactly the memory I have held all these years. Definitely not Emlyn Hughes, but everything else fits, and it was the dipping, swerving ball which made it such an outstanding save. Wonderful to have that memory confirmed.
I do not have any other direct memory of the game, which appears to have been a good 0-0 draw, but a result, following the defeat at Spurs, which was allowing 2 or 3 teams just below United the chance to take advantage of matches in hand and overtake us by the final match of the season - the little matter of a local derby at Hillsborough.

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

Wednesday, 15 May, 1963, at 7.15 p.m.
Wednesday 3-1 United (Pace)
Attendance: 41,584

And so we come to the final game of this extended season, following a frantic run of games to make up for the weeks lost to the Big Freeze. United’s results dipped in the last 3 games, and with others just below them picking up points, we finished 10th in the League, a creditable, but slightly disappointing performance in the end:

There was a hard luck story for United in this defeat, with Joe Shaw injured after around 15 minutes, and given that no substitutes were allowed, it meant that United played almost the whole game with 10 men. And they performed outstandingly well in the first half, taking the the lead through Pace (how Wednesday dreaded playing against him!), and kept the lead until half-time. Wednesday’s numerical advantage came into play in the second half, as United tired, and in the end we were working hard to restrict the score to 3-1. But at least we were able to leave the ground with heads held high and a hard luck story to tell. And 2 seasons back in the top division had seen us achieve top-half finishes both times, 5th and 10th (8th =, if we ignore goal-average); not bad for a club that had conspicuously not bought any new players following promotion. Report below, courtesy of Silent Blade , and extracts from the (quite fair) programme:

In the next day or 2, I am intending to add some further reflections on United and on being a Unitedite in the late 50s and early 60s.

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

For a number of reasons, I will not be taking the lead in posting on the 1963-64 season (but I know a man who will!). I have been able to indulge my interest for several years on the basis of my scrapbooks, programmes, memories of travelling around the country watching United between the ages of 11 and 15. But by the beginning of the 63-64 season I was captain of the school 1st XI, and this, together with other developing interests (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) meant that I hardly went to any away matches; I look forward to adding some thoughts as the 63-64 season progresses, but it will not be based as much on first-hand experience.
As a final act of self-indulgence for now, I hope some of you will be interested in a few thoughts about following United in the late 50s and early 60s:
1. I was lucky to be following the Blades at a time of considerable success. United were incredibly consistent in the Cup, which was the most important competition at the time, and were challenging for promotion, and then consolidating their position in the top half of the top league.
2. There was strong continuity in the playing squad. We really got to know the players and their style of play, and the club had a very clear identity - good football, strong defence, remarkable goal scorer in Pace, emphasis on teamwork. The Wilder era had echoes of that sense of identity and continuity, which was one reason I enjoyed it so much.
3. The lack of ambition ultimately meant that we did not reach the very top, but at the time it was possible for clubs like United to achieve that. We could dream.
4. One of the best things about that era was the possibility of travelling the country by train, turn up at an away ground, and watch the games mingling with opposition supporters, enjoy the banter without problems, and make a lot of noise. So much has improved in football, but the loss of the freedom to mingle is a huge negative.
5. As the team grew older, it was clear that there were good young players coming through; Wagstaff, Jones, Badger, Bernard Shaw were the first to be making an impact, and for those of us who had witnessed the Busby Babes, it gave us a dream to hold on to…

And a final reminiscence from some time in the 63-64 season. As part of some coaching qualifications, Summers and Hodgy did half-a-dozen coaching sessions with our 1st and 2nd XIs, and I learnt a lot from them. Not perhaps the things you would expect, but with the best will in the world, I was never destined to be a great goalkeeper. But what I took from them was that here were 2 guys with a passion for something (football), and a genuine enthusiasm to share their experience with young people and bring out the best in them. Who needs to study the theory of education with role-models like that to follow? And I can still feel pleasure that 2 guys I hero-worshiped on the football pitch for several years were admirable in other ways as well.

 

[ancientblade]

fantastic lads hodgy and silent keep these threads going next season love em ⚔⚔⚔

 

[XH536]

March 3rd, 1962
Ipswich 4-0 United
Attendance: 20158

The team of 2021-22 ended its unbeaten run on the last Saturday of February 2022 with defeat at Millwall; the 16-match unbeaten run of their 1961-62 predecessors came crashing to a halt on the first Saturday of March 1962, with a heavy defeat at Ipswich. There must have been some tired legs and minds in the 1962 side, as there were no substitutes, few team changes, and 6 midweek matches in that sequence. And there was a 6th Round Cup tie to follow a week later.
I did not get to this match, though my brother did, so the marks for how the players performed are purely his. Nothing like the meltdown when we lose in 2022 - the marks are a bit lower than usual, but there are no ‘wage-thiefs’ or ‘players not putting a shift in’. I think the fact that the team changed so little in our teenage years was a factor in this: Utd were not a team of expensive stars, they were more like an extended family. They may not have been worldbeaters, but they were the club, and it was difficult to imagine a future without them. They made mistakes as family members do, but you wouldn’t want to swap them. It made for a good few years following them, even if they never won a trophy, except for the County Cup.
It is also worth bearing in mind that the possibility of winning trophies was there for clubs like United. Ipswich v United was a match between the 2 newly promoted clubs, at kick-off 5th and 3rd in the League. And Ipswich went on to be champions!
I will end with a grumble. The Ipswich programme was rubbish. They barely managed to fill 2 small format pages with text, and what was written was not very interesting. Not a patch on United’s programme!
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On re-reading this today I had to smile, advertising Rolex watches in a football programme.
Posh Buggers, not Peterborough but snooty and rich, I add this as, you slick sods are bound to give it a twist.