60 years ago this month...

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(United v Bolton, March 24th)
I have just realised I forgot to include this pic of Pace scoring against Bolton. A grainy photo, but anyone who saw Pace play will immediately recognise the perfection of his technique. Apologies for the delay.

 

[Isaw Joeshaw]

(United v Bolton, March 24th)
I have just realised I forgot to include this pic of Pace scoring against Bolton. A grainy photo, but anyone who saw Pace play will immediately recognise the perfection of his technique. Apologies for the delay.
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As I’ve posted elsewhere , the noble Doctor Pace made up for his lack of inches with his remarkable spring and the perfect timing of it , which left much taller defenders flat footed as this photo perfectly demonstrates .

Those qualities coupled with the huge power he generated in his headers , puts him up there for me in a very elite group which includes the likes of the great Dennis Law .

 

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As I’ve posted elsewhere , the noble Doctor Pace made up for his lack of inches with his remarkable spring and the perfect timing of it , which left much taller defenders flat footed as this photo perfectly demonstrates .

Those qualities coupled with the huge power he generated in his headers , puts him up there for me in a very elite group which includes the likes of the great Dennis Law .

I remember as a youngster at a Reserve match walking under the John Street stand and seeing a ball hanging from the ceiling. Somebody told us it was for Pace to practise jumping for headers. We couldn’t even reach it with our hands. I have always believed it was true.

 

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Tuesday April 3rd, 1962
Blackpool 2-4 United
Attendance: 11,199
Scorers for Utd: Docherty(2), Russell, Simpson

Fans frequently complain about the lack of communication between club and fans; there is nothing new about this. The original match had been called off on December 30th, because of a frozen pitch, and right up to the last home match before this game was eventually played in April, there was no mention in the programmes of when it was going to be played. Ironically, the last home programme before this game was the previous Tuesday, the League Cup replay against … Blackpool. Nothing in that programme to suggest we would play them in the League 7 days later. Perhaps the club secretaries got together over a pint after the match, got their diaries out, and realised they were both free the following week.
All this is by way of explanation of why I have very little to say about this 4-2 victory which took us to 3rd place in the League, with just 7 games to play. Presumably even my brother did not manage to get to this last-minute game, as we don’t even have the programme. I couldn’t even find the front cover of the programme online to post a picture of. This match is so elusive that even Silent Blade was prevented from taking a clear image of a match report:

Two youngsters made their debut that evening (Widdowson replacing Hodgy, Mallender replacing Joe Shaw), and Docherty replaced Allchurch for his first game of the season. That a team with 3 youngsters playing their first game of the season in April, replacing 3 of the key first-team era, came away with what seems to have been a convincing victory, was truly astonishing; it is also a warning not to get too carried away by successful debuts - none of the 3 went on to have outstanding careers (is that a bit harsh on Mallender?)
But for the moment, all was well. We had coped with absences, and gone 3rd in the League, as the season came towards an end. It was back to the Lane on Saturday, v West Brom, who were not in good form.
Hodgy was absent as he was reserve keeper for England v Austria at Wembley the following day. England won 3-1, with Springett in goal.

 

[Silent Blade]

 

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April 7, 1962
United 1-1 West Brom
Attendance: 18697

After the impressive win in midweek, this was a rather disappointing home draw against a West Brom side which had been unimpressive. The 3 regular first-teamers missing in the previous match at Blackpool (Hodgy, Joe Shaw, Allchurch) all returned (despite what we wrote in our programme jottings), and we gave all 3 returning players decent ratings. But it was clearly not a good overall performance (to be honest, I do not remember any of it), but at least at a time when it was only 2 points for a win, a home draw wasn’t too bad a result.
There is plenty of interest in the programme, including plans for the summer tour and the fact that finishing fifth would be the best since 1926, and finishing 4th, the best since 1907. There is again uncertainty over fixtures - the match against Spurs away is expected to be played on the following Monday, in just 2 days time! Not much good for fans hoping to travel. And I have included the scoreboard for the day, with worrying scores: we could celebrate Spurs beating Wednesday 4-0 (we were at last going to finish above Wednesday), but playing Spurs in 2 days time would be difficult. And ManU had just thrashed title contenders Ipswich 5-0; we were due to play ManU home and away over Easter. Our few remaining fixtures would be difficult.

 

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Monday, April 9th
Spurs 3-3 United
Attendance: 49030

So, 2 days after the Utd programme announced that it was ‘expected’ that the re-arranged match at Tottenham would take place in 2 days, United did indeed play Spurs that evening, and if there is one away match that I regretted missing that season, it was that one. Spurs, recently the first double-winners of the 20th century, were the glamour team of the time, and to gain a 3-3 draw there, 2 days after our neighbours from S6 had been thrashed there, was a terrific, and apparently deserved achievement. The run of 3 draws and 1 win left us in 4th place, with just 5 games remaining:

Burnley looked nailed-on to win the League ahead of Ipswich, who had been promoted along with us in 1961, and if anyone needs re-assuring right now that matches in hand do not always translate into points won, the finale to the 1961-62 season makes an interesting read - Burnley’s last 7 games produced just 4 points.
The match report makes clear that it was a great game, with enough contributions from Jimmy Greaves to keep Bert happy, and an improbable 25-yard right-foot shot from Bill Hodgson for one of his 2 goals. He seems to have played his best games for us at White Hart Lane - in the 4th Round of the Cup in 1958, he had man-marked Danny Blanchflower out of the game in a memorable giant-killing
3-0 victory. In a season where yet again our defence was the main strength, free-scoring matches were a rarity, so it was particularly annoying to have missed a game where the lead kept changing hands. And, of course, it was even more annoying as my (older) brother managed to get to the game; there were clearly advantages to having started ‘work’!
So 5 games to go, and a reasonable number of points from those games would give us a final position we could not have believed possible in early autumn. 60 years on, here we go again…

 

[SUFC Handsworth]

And Steve Cram's uncle who was in the Colchester team that knocked Leeds out of the FA Cup in 1971

The Bannister in the WBA team, would he be a relative of the one who played for Wednesday in the 80s?

 

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The Bannister in the WBA team, would he be a relative of the one who played for Wednesday in the 80s?

I don’t think they are related. Though they did both play for West Brom. Gary Bannister was born in Warrington, when Jack Bannister was at West Brom.

 

[Bell4]

Thatvea

And Steve Cram's uncle who was in the Colchester team that knocked Leeds out of the FA Cup in 1971

That was the first big cup upset I can remember . Leeds seemed totally unbeatable . Great time to watch footie

 

[SUFC Handsworth]

I don’t think they are related. Though they did both play for West Brom. Gary Bannister was born in Warrington, when Jack Bannister was at West Brom.

That wouldn't be Jack Bannister the cricketer?

 

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That wouldn't be Jack Bannister the cricketer?

There doesn’t appear to be any connection

 

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April 14, 1962
Birmingham 3-0 United
Attendance: 19470

If I was annoyed to have missed the Spurs match 5 days before, there were no regrets over school football keeping me away from St Andrew’s. I don’t recall ever seeing United do well there, and it appears that after a dodgy early penalty gave Birmingham the lead, United kept plugging away, but in the end were well beaten. It did allow Everton to push us down into 5th place, but we were still in a good position to achieve our highest league finish for many a long year:

There were several interesting results that day:
Burnley lost to ManU at home, which allowed Ipswich to move to top spot after their narrow win against Cardiff. Burnley were 2 matches in hand, and therefore still favourites to win the league. Wednesday won, but were still a good way behind United, and we were likely to be top dogs in the city for the first time in a good while.
4 games to go, and we were looking at an interesting end of season. On Easter Saturday we were at home to Burnley, who were looking good to match Spurs’ recent league and Cup double. That was the beginning of a typically insane Easter programme- on Easter Monday we played ManU away, and the following day we played ManU at home. 3 big matches in 4 days, especially as ManU were ending a poor season with a good run - they had just beaten Ipswich and Burnley, the top 2. And if that wasn’t enough, the season ended the following Saturday away at Arsenal, another of the under-performing glamour clubs.
For anyone interested, Birmingham’s Terry Hennessey is apparently a cousin of the current Welsh keeper, Wayne Hennessey.

 

[Isaw Joeshaw]

A hundred likes for the Joe Shaw photo .

Not seen that one before but it’s an absolute classic .

 

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A hundred likes for the Joe Shaw photo .

Not seen that one before but it’s an absolute classic .

I thought you’d like it. I was impressed that they gave a full page over to it.

 

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April 15, 1961
Utd 2-1 Southampton

One good thing to come out of today’s awful game (April 15, 2022) is that one year after apologising for having no photos from the above game (post 564), today’s programme has the iconic photo below from the Southampton game:

Captures a sense of the era to perfection. Anyone know the mascot?
Today has not been a total waste…

 

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BLADES 1962 EASTER EXTRAVAGANZA!

(For those too young to remember these times, I thought a tabloid-type headline might convey some sense of how bonkers Easter football was. Not only must it have exhausted the players, even I have felt the severe pressure of having to report on 3 GAMES IN 4 DAYS!)

Easter Saturday, April 21
United 2-0 Burnley
Attendance: 25003

Easter Monday, April 23
Man Utd 0-1 United
Attendance: 29536

Easter Tuesday, April 24
United 2-3 Man Utd
Attendance: 25324

Over and above the usual madness of playing 3 games in 4 days, this held considerable significance for us. A reasonable outcome would guarantee us 5th place in the top division for the first time since 1926, an achievement, as it turns out, that we have not matched now in the following 60 years. (I think I have that correct.) In addition, the first game was against Burnley, who had looked likely to be League Champions for many months, but a sudden decline in form was jeopardising their chances of equalling Spurs’ recent League and Cup double, the first in the 20th century. This was followed by ManU home and away; they were struggling to come back from the Munich disaster, as the attendance figures confirm, but in recent weeks their form had improved dramatically, and they were still arguably one of the 2 glamour clubs of the period, along with Spurs. So this was quite a challenge for the Blades.
It began in the mud at the Lane, the perfect conditions for our very own mudlark, Billy Hodgson. United had been unlucky to lose 1-0 to Burnley in the 6th round of the Cup a few weeks earlier, and the sense of injustice from that day, the fact that Burnley were struggling for form, and that they had played the day before (a 2-0 win over Blackpool on Good Friday), all provided a springboard for United, who deservedly won the game 2-0. This was a serious blow to Burnley, and reinforced United’s position in the top 5, confirming that United would finish above Wednesday at last. Wednesday defeated Burnley 4-0 in the last game, and then Burnley lost the Cup Final against Spurs, so their Double bid fell apart totally. Ipswich, champions of League 2, became League 1 champions, and manager Alf Ramsey went on to manage England to victory in the World Cup in 1966. Not a bad CV…
(Match reports and programme extracts will appear in subsequent posts, below).
2 days later, it was on the train to Old Trafford to watch another remarkable- and deserved- victory over the improving ManU. I had originally planned the report on this game around a wonderful couple of pages in Hodgy’s autobiography describing a brilliant penalty save from no less a player than Bobby Charlton in the final minutes of the game. I remember the save, but something had been niggling me about it, particularly as the book is so full of factual inaccuracies. And so it turns out again - a wonderful description of a huge moment in his career, with a generous gesture from Bobby Charlton, which is a terrific read with some exaggeration for effect, is marred by a simple factual inaccuracy: the penalty save he describes was in a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford the following April. The inaccuracy is of little importance and should not detract from the thrill of reading it, but it doesn’t help the person trying to chronicle a particular season!
And so it was back to the Lane on Easter Tuesday, again at 3.00, that the same 11 United players took to the field for the third time in 4 days, having won twice already, and everything seemed to be going perfectly with a comfortable 2-0 lead and 15 minutes to go. But we all have to learn that football is a funny old game, especially with United (or so it always seems), and whether tiredness or complacency or both set in, United collapsed in the last 15 minutes and lost the game 3-2. And some lessons do sink in: many years later, when Wilder’s Blades were murdering ManU at the Lane, and then went from 2-0 to 2-3 in a way that was totally out of character with what had gone before, my mind did go back fleetingly to that match so many years ago, and defeat seemed inevitable. But God works in mysterious ways - Olly McBurnie is not regarded by many as an agent of God, but in my eyes that night, he certainly was!
The end result of this breathless 4 days was positive: with 1 game to go, we were almost guaranteed at worst 5th position, although it was realistically unlikely for us to finish any higher. An end-of-season trip to London would be enjoyable, whatever the result against Arsenal:

Other material on the 3 Easter matches to follow.

 

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(United 2-0 Burnley)

 

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(Man Utd 0-1 United)

 

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(United 2-3 Man Utd)

 

[Silent Blade]

Here is the proof that John Nicholson was never our manager and we didnt have a manager until 1932

 

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EASTER BONUS
Easter Monday, April 23, 1962
United Reserves v Bury Reserves
Eddie Colquhoun Bramall Lane debut

While I was with my brother at Old Trafford enjoying watching United beat ManU, my dad was at the Lane watching the Reserves play Bury. The programme is annotated in his distinctive illegible handwriting, and little will he have known the significance of this game, which must have been the Bramall Lane debut for 17-year-old Eddie Colquhoun, who had signed for Bury the previous month. I have not been able to find the result of this match.
In one way this day set the standard for what was to happen throughout his career - his name was misspelled in the programme! Of all United players, his name must have been one of the most difficult to spell correctly. But he was a fine player for us.

 

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April 28, 1962
Arsenal 2-0 United
Attendance: 18761

And so the most successful season that any Blades fan alive has witnessed (unless there is someone around who went the Lane in 1925/26) came to an end. As was customary, all the League fixtures were completed before the Cup Final, which was always on the first Saturday in May, and was THE highlight of the season. After that, there could be the County Cup or a foreign tour, and by 1962 the World Cup was beginning to make an impact here, but as it was played in Chile it was hard to feel involved, England were not very impressive and Hodgy wasn’t selected for a single game, so I was not alone in taking up cricket from the beginning of May, and only focussing on football again when the new season started.
The match itself was an anti-climax. End-of-season games were generally poorly attended, unless they had great significance, and were given little importance. This particular game was more memorable to me for the aftermatch - when we went to a game in London we sometimes caught the last train back, and spent the evening at Battersea Funfair. Being devotees of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach, me and my brother enjoyed broadening our horizons and spending our hard-earned (!) pocket money on the best rides.
But back to the football. There were interesting final scores: our position in League was secure, which meant that Wednesday’s late run could not move us out of 5th place, but similarly Everton and Spurs had gathered sufficient points to prevent us moving above 5th.

Burnley’s season was falling apart; Ipswich ended up surprising everyone and took over from Burnley to win the league title, and the following Saturday, Burnley lost the Cup Final. From being fancied to win the Double, they ended up double runners-up.
United held their own in the game, but not for the only time in the season, they did not convert possession and chances into goals. But 5th place had been earned by a tight-knit squad still performing to the best of their abilities, especially in defence; the poor goal-average reflected the fact that in a small number of games they went behind and went on to be well-beaten. We were well pleased, but I don’t think many people expected us to make a serious push and ‘do an Ipswich’ the following season.
I always liked the Arsenal programme. It cost more, but for me the photos justified the extra 2 pennies! I have never understood why the front cover photos on United programmes disappeared in the mid-50s, leaving us with text only for many years.

 

[Hull Blade]

Didn't Ipswich get relegated the season after winning the title? Or maybe the season after that.

 

[Rufus Smalls]

Love these articles, keep them coming chaps.

In 9 years time I can read all about my first season watching our beloved Blades …… and I have a few home programs from the 70/71/72 seasons to contribute with !!

 

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Didn't Ipswich get relegated the season after winning the title? Or maybe the season after that.

They were relegated in 1964. At least we outlasted them.

 

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Love these articles, keep them coming chaps.

In 9 years time I can read all about my first season watching our beloved Blades …… and I have a few home programs from the 70/71/72 seasons to contribute with !!

Thanks. Be careful with making promises - some of us have long memories

 

[Silent Blade]

 

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May 2, 1962
County Cup Preliminary Round
United 3-2 Wednesday
Attendance: 12089

Before I clear off to the north of Scotland to escape the tension of play-off qualification, I am adding a couple of posts to round off 1961-62. The first is a game I ought to have gone to, but I am pretty sure I didn’t, and until recently I had forgotten its existence. It has a wonderful symbolism - not only did we beat Wednesday twice in the League, we finished above them in the League, and then beat them again in the County Cup. From the report, it sounds like a good game, and a pleasure to ram home our new status as Sheffield’s number 1!
As the report says, United were about to go on their tour of North America, and so the rest of the competition was deferred. The following winter was exceptionally cold, and the season had to be extended, so it was not until 1964 that we actually went on to win the Competition. The following report is again a result of Silent Blade ’s endless generosity:

 

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Review of 1961-62 Season.

Our best season in living memory is worthy of a little further analysis. I look back with greater fondness to the previous season, because of the fact that we achieved something specific (promotion), and had that fabulous Cup Run as underdogs. 61-62 almost repeated the Cup Run, and finishing 5th in the League was a greater achievement, but it didn’t reach the emotional heights of the promotion season.
The following gives an idea of the consistency of team selection. It is from the last home programme, but only went to match 38 with stats. It is sufficient to illustrate a point:

It shows that at a time when no substitutes were allowed, 7 players missed 5 matches or fewer. The back 6 (keeper, full-backs, half-backs) only missed games through injury (Summers missed the most), and Allchurch and Pace were automatic choices, Simpson had some injuries, but the only real doubt was over inside-forwards - Russell, Kettleborough and Hodgson competed for 2 spots. The promoted team passed the test with flying colours. They were truly a unit. And coming along in the background was a good crop of youngsters.

Below are extracts from the first home programme of 1962-63, with interesting comments on a number of issues, including our participation in the Fairs Cup (!), and the glowing report of the tour of North America.

I conclude on a personal note. There is a welcome to a new director, Ken Lee. He was more involved with cricket than football. He lived near us, and we were friends with his 2 sons. Before I was in my teens, on our back lawn I got him out at cricket several times, and believed that I had a future as a bowler. It took me years to work out that perhaps it wasn’t my brilliance as a bowler that got him out. He was a nice man.