60 years ago this month...

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Isaw Joeshaw said:
Great post Hodgy and a thoroughly deserved and well expressed tribute to Silent .

As to the experiment of putting the terrifying 6 ft. plus Jack Charlton at centre forward against the slightly built Joe Shaw , on paper there could only be one outcome and not a good one for us .

As it turned out , ‘Little Joe’ as my dad always referred to him won the battle hands down and Big Jack was man enough to admit later that he had been made to look a complete fool by the great man ,or words to that effect .
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What I can’t remember is Joe Shaw’s own goal that day. The report doesn’t describe it. It must have been into the goal I was standing behind, but was perhaps so traumatic just before half-time that I have wiped out the memory?
 

Blade-on-Tyne said:
Nice to see the goal average included in the league table - a long forgotten football statistic.

Am I right in thinking that goal difference was introduced instead of goal average for the benefit of those who could not manage long division but were ok with subtraction?
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It was certainly good for those of us who are mathematically challenged. Some of the calculations on the last day of the season. A 2-1 win was better than a 3-2 win, but might still leave you 0.01 of a goal behind your rival. Or that sort of thing. Fiendishly difficult to work out in your head.
 
HodgysBrokenThumb said:
It was certainly good for those of us who are mathematically challenged. Some of the calculations on the last day of the season. A 2-1 win was better than a 3-2 win, but might still leave you 0.01 of a goal behind your rival. Or that sort of thing. Fiendishly difficult to work out in your head.
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In 1950 Wendy pipped us to the 2nd promotion spot because their goal average was 0.008 better than ours Theirs was F67 A48 and ours were F68 A49, the goal difference was the same but with the modern ruling, we would have gone up.

1616757430903.png
 
Silent Blade said:
In 1950 Wendy pipped us to the 2nd promotion spot because their goal average was 0.008 better than ours Theirs was F67 A48 and ours were F68 A49, the goal difference was the same but with the modern ruling, we would have gone up.

View attachment 109205
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A long time to bear a grudge😊
Looks like we were more entertaining away from home. Perhaps a points system could be devised to encourage this.
 
Silent Blade said:
In 1950 Wendy pipped us to the 2nd promotion spot because their goal average was 0.008 better than ours Theirs was F67 A48 and ours were F68 A49, the goal difference was the same but with the modern ruling, we would have gone up.

View attachment 109205
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If it'd have been 3 points for a win, i think we'd have finished a point above Wednesday and gone up on either goal difference or goal average over Southampton.
 

March 27, 1961
FA Cup Semifinal, 2nd replay
At St Andrew’s, Birmingham
Attendance: 37190. Receipts: £7970
Leicester 2-0 United

The dream is over. The Cup run which began with a great win over moneybags Everton at Goodison Park, included knocking out the previous year’s finalists Blackburn, and reached dizzying heights in the 6th round with Russell’s hat-trick inside 18 minutes at Newcastle, ended disappointingly with a semifinal over 3 matches in which we did not manage a single goal. The moment when Pace scored at the end of the first game, only for it to be disallowed, was really the only time we really thought we were on our way to Wembley, and though the dream was kept alive until the second half of the third game, in the end we were short of that extra quality. The money from the Cup run which allowed us to buy Allchurch came too late for the Cup itself; the form he showed in the league could have perhaps produced a crucial goal for us. I loved that Cup run, but the semifinal was disappointing. 60 years on, and we still haven’t won one in my lifetime. At least the Hull semi was a good game - the first one I enjoyed.
Again because of school I missed the second replay, and was not too upset about missing it because for the second time in 5 days my brother returned from a game saying I hadn’t missed much.
I don’t have a report of the match, but include pictures from the scrapbook and programme as usual. The programme must be the worst semifinal programme in history- in effect, a single sheet of paper folded in 2. Fortunately there is some video of the game on YouTube, which I will provide a link to in the next post. It has plenty of interest, particularly as it is, I think, the first time I have seen any of the game. The quality of film is poor early in the second half, and their 1st goal is barely visible. And it misses Graham Shaw’s penalty in the second half - unfortunately, so did Graham Shaw! Our best chance was a lob from Summers which was headed off the line.
And I am sorry to report that the film shows the inaccuracies in Hodgy’s autobiography. He has their goals scored before half-time, and even more strangely says that Richardson gave away their penalty (it was Hodgy himself), and that King hit the penalty miles wide (Hodgy saved it). That is particularly odd - members of the goalkeepers’ Union normally remember every penalty save, and in the case of an easy save like this one, over the years it becomes more and more spectacular the more it is recalled. Very strange.
The good news is that despite all this focus on the Cup, the team had succeeded in remaining in one of the promotion positions. Next up, after the luxury of a 5-day break, was Liverpool. Looking back, it is remarkable that in League 2, one Saturday we play Don Revie’s team, Leeds, and the following Saturday it is Bill Shankly bringing his club, Liverpool, to the Lane. What careers they went on to have!
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April 1st, 1961
United 1-1 Liverpool
Attendance: 28853

After 3 semi-finals in 2 weeks, plus a vital win at Leeds, it was back to an exhausting 3 days (Easter weekend), against promotion rivals Liverpool on the Saturday, followed on Easter Monday with a trip to relegation-threatened Portsmouth. The Liverpool match had become the proverbial 4-pointer (only 2 points for a win then), as it was looking increasingly likely that if we could prevent Liverpool catching us, it would be United and Ipswich for promotion. Liverpool had won their game in hand on Good Friday, and were just 1 point behind Utd; defeat for United would thus be a serious blow. Of course we did not know then how successful a manager Bill Shankly was going to be, but rather like United, they had been close to promotion several times (3 times in the previous 5 seasons they had finished 3rd), so this was always going to be yet another big game in this final few weeks of the season. And while the 1-1 draw was not the ideal result, we left the ground feeling that it was ok; we still had the advantage, and games were running out.
Liverpool brought a big following, and this created a good atmosphere, even though the crowd of 28853 was not as big as for a cup match. The first half was tense, with United the better side, but unable to create a killer chance. It continued in a similar vein towards the Kop in the 2nd half, and after 57 minutes Russell became Utd’s top scorer that season, sweeping the ball home following a 4-man move. The photo from the scrapbook was taken from a similar angle to the one I had near the front of the Kop, so it has helped keep the memory of the moment clear in my mind. United then went close again, before Liverpool scored (I have wiped that one from the memory bank), and then went close several times. The one I remember is the miss by Hickson; from the Kop it looked as if he was round Hodgy and only had to roll it into an empty net, but placed it wide. If you can picture McGoldrick’s miss at Brighton last season, it gives you the idea.
So, we just managed to hang on, got a point, stayed ahead of Liverpool, with a chance to put pressure on them as we were playing on Easter Monday, and Liverpool were not playing until the Tuesday. All will be soon revealed...
A final detail: Kevin Lewis, ex-Blade, is interviewed for the match report. He was Liverpool’s leading scorer that season, with 22 goals. I didn’t know that. Not bad for a winger.
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April 3rd, 1961 (Easter Monday)
Portsmouth 1-2 United
Attendance: 21987

Less than 48 hours after the final whistle of a demanding game against Liverpool, United were on the pitch again, at relegation-threatened Portsmouth. The previous away match had ended in a 2-1 victory at Leeds, with new signing Allchurch scoring the second, decisive goal; and lo and behold, the score line at Portsmouth was exactly the same, with Allchurch scoring the second, decisive goal again.
I did not manage to get to this game, but the match report from the scrapbook has lots of interest. I don’t think I would have shared the confidence of the headline (‘One foot in the First Division’), but the comments on what Allchurch brought to the team are reflected well in the description of the 2 goals: at a time when wingers were crucial to a team’s attack, his acquisition meant we had 2 wingers who were direct, could beat their full-back, and put in a good centre. If the centre evaded Pace and Russell in the centre, the other winger anticipated this, and kept the attack going, which seems to be what happened for the first goal. The team was now better balanced, and the opposition could not just focus on stopping Simpson on the left - there was now a proper threat on the right. Both wingers were also capable of coming inside and shooting, Simpson with great power and Allchurch with great accuracy, and Allchurch also had the knack of arriving in the box at just the right time. As well as our stand-in wingers had performed (Russell, Hodgson, Mason), they did not carry the threat of a ‘proper’ winger; the description of the second goal makes me think of Duffy’s goal on Bouncing Day - a different type of finish, but the same type of toying with defenders and then an unexpected shot from an improbable angle. The kind of goal that makes you think ‘this could be our year’.
So this put us 3 points clear, but Liverpool had a match in hand; however, the following evening they lost 4-3 at Bristol Rovers (despite a Kevin Lewis hat-trick), a result that left us in a strong position. And the following Saturday, it was another away game at Rotherham; it could not possibly be another 2-1 away win with the winning goal scored by Allchurch... could it?
A point of interest from the programme: yet again we were playing against a team with a new manager - George Smith, the United coach who had just left the club and joined Portsmouth. He was unable to prevent them being relegated, but led them back up the following season. In later life he was to treasure the letter of congratulations from the Pompey president - Field Marshal Montgomery, no less.
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Interesting the reporter felt that Jimmy Dickinson may not play in the 2nd division again after the season. He carried on playing regularly for 4 more seasons. He made 764 league appearances for the club. Only Swindon Town's John Trollope (770) made more league appearances for a single club.
 

Silent Blade said:
Click to expand...

Many thanks for that. It broadly agrees with the other report, although it makes Allchurch’s goal sound like one which should have been prevented. The other detail which surprised me is that Simpson almost scored with a header. I may be doing him an injustice, but I don’t remember him ever scoring with a header, in fact I don’t remember him ever heading the ball goalwards. He was from the Stanley Matthews tradition of wingers as far as heading the ball went.
 
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