by Gordon Banks
The Cup final had been given an extra edge by the fact that Spurs were chasing what the newspapers had dubbed ‘the impossible double’. No team had won both the League Championship and the FA Cup in the same season throughout the century. Newcastle United in 1905, Sunderland in 1913 and Manchester United in 1957 had each won the League Championship but lost in the FA Cup final. Most people believed the heavy fixture programme and the intense competitiveness of the modern game were such that no team could win both in the same season. I just hoped they would be proved right.
If Spurs felt the pressure placed on them by the press, it certainly didn’t show. They were very laid back, taking a trip to the cinema to see The Guns of Navarone at the Odeon, Leicester Square, after which they all stayed up till after midnight with a couple of beers back at their hotel. We had all been in bed by ten thirty. When a reporter from the London Evening News queried the wisdom of this, it was Danny Blanchflower again who came up with the quotable quote: ‘I can only tell you the story of the golfer, Walter Hagen. Hagen was up late before a crucial play-off match, and a reporter told him, “I suppose you know your opponent has been long in his bed?” “Sure,” said Hagen, “but do you honestly think he’s getting any sleep?”’
Spurs were confident but so too were we. In his pre-match team talk Matt Gillies reminded us of how we had beaten Spurs at White Hart Lane. Our game plan, such as it was, again relied on Jimmy Walsh and Ken Keyworth closing down Danny Blanchflower and Dave Mackay, while Hugh McIlmoyle was to play as a deep-lying centre forward in the hope of dragging the Spurs centre half Maurice Norman out of position and creating space for Jimmy and Ken to exploit.
And that’s just how it worked out, for those first fifteen minutes. We set about Spurs with some verve but, after a quarter of an hour, disaster struck. Our right back, Len Chalmers, sustained an injury to his knee ligaments. It wasn’t the result of a bad tackle, just bad luck. The damage was so bad that he should have left the field immediately, but there were no substitutes in those days, and he carried on gamely.
I wonder how many players, prior to the introduction of substitutes to English football in 1967, did permanent damage to their bodies through continuing in a game with a bad injury? There are no statistics, but I should imagine it was quite a few. The absence of substitutes apart, the knowledge trainers had of injuries and their effects, was nowhere near as comprehensive then as it is today. When a player was injured he was expected to carry on playing as best he could, no matter how debilitating the injury. Wilf McGuinness, the former Manchester United and England wing half, sustained a bad injury during a United reserve game at Stoke City in 1959–60. The advice from the United bench to Wilf was to ‘run it off’, which was the advice most benches gave to players who had sustained any type of muscular injury. Wilf bravely carried on but it’s hard to run off a stress fracture, which is what he had. Wilf eventually had to have a bone graft, the bone failed to knit and he suffered numerous complications. He did make a return to the United reserve team, for one season, but irreparable damage had been done and Wilf had to retire from playing in his early twenties.
The injury to Len Chalmers was nowhere near as serious, but nonetheless debilitating. He couldn’t run, so Matt switched him to the wing, with Howard Riley dropping back. Such was Len’s courage that he battled on, wincing every time he limped towards the ball. Len made a positive contribution of a sort, in that a Spurs player still had to mark him in case the ball was played into his feet. But we were effectively playing with ten men.
So many players had sustained serious injuries in cup finals at Wembley in the fifties that the press came up with the line that there was a ‘Wembley Hoodoo’. Of course that was nonsense, but players getting seriously injured in Wembley showpiece occasions were becoming an almost annual event.
In 1952 Arsenal were reduced to ten men against Newcastle United when their full back Wally Barnes badly injured knee ligaments in making a tackle. Typical of Arsenal’s spirit, Barnes returned to the fray not once but twice, but so bad was his injury he eventually succumbed to it after half an hour. In 1953 Bolton’s left half Eric Bell carried on gamely despite a bad injury to his knee and even managed to score. Two years later Manchester City right back Jimmy Meadows tore knee ligaments and was stretchered off after twenty minutes against Newcastle United.
The following year saw perhaps the most frightening injury of all when the Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, a boyhood hero of mine, broke his neck when making a save at the feet of Birmingham’s Peter Murphy. As I have intimated, the knowledge trainers had of injuries was very sketchy and Bert carried on playing with his neck broken. It was only after Manchester City’s 3–1 success, when Bert complained of severe headaches, that he was taken to a hospital and an X-ray revealed a fracture that could so easily have been fatal.
The ‘Wembley Hoodoo’ was seen to strike again the following year. On the occasion of Aston Villa meeting Manchester United in the final, the United goalkeeper Ray Wood suffered concussion and a broken cheekbone as the result of a robust challenge (deemed to be a foul) by Villa’s Peter McParland. This happened after only six minutes and with Wood off the field, United had to put wing half Jackie Blanchflower, the brother of Danny, in goal. As Jackie was later to say, ‘Playing in goal in a Cup final was the moment I realized adrenalin was brown.’
The Cup final of 1958, thankfully, was one in which the ‘hoodoo’ did not strike. But a much more profound tragedy enveloped this final between Bolton Wanderers and Manchester United. Three months previously Manchester United had been involved in the Munich Air disaster which claimed the lives of over half the forty people on board. Those who lost their lives included the United captain Roger Byrne, reserve left back, Jeff Bent, who was making his first trip abroad (and only because Wilf McGuinness had been injured when playing for United on the previous Saturday), right half Eddie Colman, centre half Mark Jones, left half Duncan Edwards, inside right Billy Whelan, centre forward Tommy Taylor and outside left David Pegg. The United secretary Walter Crickmer also lost his life along with first-team coach Bert Whalley and trainer Tom Curry. Several crew members and journalists also died, including that great goalkeeper of the thirties and forties, Frank Swift, who had been working for the Sunday People. In addition to those who died, several United players were so badly injured they never played football again. Having lost so many players, for United to reach the FA Cup final just three months on was a remarkable achievement, testament to their fortitude and courage.
I had heard about the Munich disaster in Germany when serving the final days of my National Service. Like any other compassionate human I feel deeply for those involved in any tragedy, but felt particularly sad when hearing the news of Munich. As with most professions, I suppose, there is a feeling of brotherhood among footballers and I was deeply saddened to learn of the catastrophe that had struck Manchester United. I had made acquaintance with a number of the United players when Chesterfield played them in the FA Youth Cup final, among them Bobby Charlton. Bobby was thrown from the plane still strapped to his seat and miraculously survived. Some of the other lads I knew were not so lucky.
In playing Manchester United in the FA Cup final of 1958, Bolton Wanderers were in a ‘no-win’ situation. The sympathies of the entire nation were with United that day. Their remarkable resurrection after Munich and their determination to succeed won the hearts of everyone. But Bolton had a cup to win and win it they did.
It was as if fate had spared the Bolton–United Cup final the pain of the ‘hoodoo’. It was the only final of the fifties in which no player suffered serious injury. The following year the ‘hoodoo’ was back to haunt Wembley.
Luton met Nottingham Forest in the final of 1959. Forest were triumphant but their outside right Roy Dwight, the uncle of Reg (better known as Elton John), was stretchered off with a broken leg. Then in 1960 a similar fate struck the Blackburn Rovers full back Dave Whelan in their defeat by Wolves. Life, however, was to have good fortune i
n store for Dave. He opened a sports shop in the north west and became so successful that JJB Sports are now nationwide. Dave is still heavily involved with football as chairman of Wigan Athletic and their super stadium at the Robin Park complex in Wigan, which the football club shares with Wigan Warriors Rugby League team, is Dave’s legacy to the town. Not for nothing is it called the JJB Stadium.
The plethora of serious injuries to beset FA Cup finals throughout the fifties and early sixties had, of course, nothing to do with a hoodoo. It did, however, have much to do with the pitch and the occasion.
In the fifties and sixties we basically played on three types of pitches. At the beginning of the season pitches would be lush and flat but due to heavy use for the first- and reserve-team games and occasional youth and local representative matches, the inclement weather of winter soon took its toll on the grass. Come January the vast majority of pitches had only grass on the wings, the rest of the pitch resembled a mudheap. Towards the end of a season the winds of March and April dried out pitches, so much so that we often played on surfaces that were as hard as if the ground had been frozen.
Wembley was very different. The pitch was laid with Cumberland turf that was lush but also very spongy. This turf was so pliable that it felt like playing on delicate springs. Only two other football league grounds boasted Cumberland turf, Ayresome Park, the home of Middlesbrough and Doncaster Rover’s Belle Vue ground. After a long hard season playing mostly on muddied pitches or bumpy, bone-hard surfaces, the Wembley pitch, with its considerable ‘give’ and stamina-sapping softness, was not easy to adjust to. Many players when stretching for a ball were caught out by the supple turf and jarred their knee, hence the many ligament injuries to beset FA Cup finals at this time, Len Chalmers included.
The other reason for the injuries was the occasion itself. The FA Cup final was the showpiece of the domestic season, the most important game not only of the year but, in many cases, in the career of a player. Many was the player who made his name in a Wembley final and enjoyed lasting fame through his efforts and accomplishments in this one game alone. Who remembers Mike Trebilcock? Those who do, will remember him for the two goals he scored for Everton when they beat Sheffield Wednesday in the Cup final of 1966. But if I were to ask you to recall anything else about Mike’s career, the vast majority of people would struggle. Five years after being Everton’s Wembley hero, Mike was playing for Torquay United reserves in the Western League against the likes of Barnstaple Town and St Luke’s College. His fame, on the blue half of Merseyside, however, lives on to this day.
Roy Dwight of Nottingham Forest (1959), Norman Deeley of Wolves (1960), Sunderland’s Ian Porterfield (1973), Southampton’s Bobby Stokes (1976) and Roger Osborne of Ipswich Town (1978) are other examples of players who readily come to mind only for what they achieved in a cup final. The rest of their respective careers has, for the vast majority, been lost to the memory.
In addition to wanting to give everything for their team and club in an attempt to win the FA Cup, players are acutely aware that they may well have just the one opportunity to play in an FA Cup final. Where they might think twice about making a certain tackle in a league game, they have no such reservations at Wembley. They throw caution to the wind and go in where the boots are flying, committing themselves totally. This is especially so where goalkeepers are concerned and may well explain the injuries sustained by Bert Trautmann and Ray Wood. The FA Cup final is do or die for ninety minutes, in which players take risks that they wouldn’t normally take in a league match.
This is the other contributing factor to the tally of serious injuries that was dubbed the ‘Wembley Hoodoo’ in the fifties and early sixties.
That the so-called hoodoo was laid to rest in the sixties came about because players had become increasingly aware of the dangers of playing on the Cumberland turf that had been laid at Wembley in 1949, and compensated for its spring and sponginess underfoot. Also, teams were allowed to practise on Wembley on the day before the final, which helped them get a feel for the pitch. This was not the case when I first played at Wembley. The first time I set foot on Wembley’s hallowed turf was when I joined my Leicester team mates when we walked out on to the pitch in our suits to soak up the atmosphere ninety minutes before kick-off.
Although it did not occur to me at the time, looking back now it appears that events had conspired against our winning the Cup in 1961. We were without the spearhead of our attack, Ken Leek, and within fifteen minutes were carrying a passenger in Len Chalmers. With all due respect to Hugh McIlmoyle, who acquitted himself well in this game, had we had Ken to worry the hell out of Maurice Norman and been at our full complement of eleven fit players, I reckon we could have beaten Spurs, though it would still have been difficult. After a quarter of an hour, however, our task had become even harder, though we stuck to it with more than our normal zeal and application, and Spurs found us as hard to break down as we did them.
At half time it was goalless but as the second half progressed the contest of ten men against eleven began to take its toll. We tired a little on the sapping pitch and Bobby Smith put Spurs ahead after sixty-nine minutes. Latching on to a great throughball from Spurs winger Terry Dyson, Smith controlled the ball, for once beat Ian King and hit a hard drive that was too far to my left for me to get a hand to.
Eight minutes later the game was as good as over when Smith returned the compliment. Terry Dyson met his cross from the right at the far post to plant a firm header into my net. There was nothing I could have done about either goal, and at 2–0 I knew Spurs had their hands on the Cup and achieved the elusive double.
Spurs had not outplayed us by any stretch of the imagination. For long periods of the game we had been their equal and even, at times, had held the upper hand. Jimmy Walsh and Ken Keyworth did a fine job of containment on Blanchflower and Mackay, neither of whom exerted their normal command on the field. Richie Norman kept their speedy left winger, Cliff Jones, quiet while neither Les Allen nor Bobby Smith got much change out of Colin Appleton and Ian King. We had our moments of promise – Hugh McIlmoyle flashed a shot inches past Bill Brown’s left-hand post with the Spurs keeper well beaten, while both Jimmy Walsh and Ken Keyworth had good efforts well saved. But in the cold light of day we were never going to win once Len Chalmers had been injured, though none of us cited that as an excuse for our defeat.
After receiving our medals, in recognition of Spurs’ remarkable achievement we stayed at the mouth of the players’ tunnel until they had completed their lap of honour (in those days only the victorious side lapped the pitch to receive the acclaim of their travelling support). As the ecstatic Tottenham players made their way back, we lined up either side of the entrance and applauded them on their way to the dressing room. It seemed the sporting thing to do.
To lose a cup final is awful. When Leicester lost a league match I couldn’t wait for the next game and the opportunity to rid myself of the general feeling of disappointment. You can’t do that after a cup final. The depression lives inside you for weeks. Desire for collective and individual glory aside, we had wanted to win the FA Cup for our supporters who had given us tremendous backing throughout the season. More than once during the traditional post-match banquet at the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane, Ispared a thought for the crestfallen City supporters travelling home. The banquet is a chance for directors, management, players, club staff and their partners to celebrate, as the menu of the night said, ‘The occasion of the appearance of the club in the final of the Football Association Cup’. There being no cup, we didn’t do much celebrating.
On returning home I turned to the special Cup final edition of the Leicester Evening Mail’s sports section, commonly referred to as ‘The Green ’Un’. In a piece by Billy King on the front page, Matt Gillies gave his reason for omitting Ken Leek from the team. People should be in no doubt: Gillies made the change for no other reason than the interest of the side, he said, and ‘purely and simply because I consider McIlmoyle to be t
he player in form and that is all’. Well, that was news to me. Never at any time was Ken told that he had been dropped because of a dip in form. In our final league game of the season we had beaten Birmingham City 3–2, Ken scored one of our goals and had played so well that two Sunday newspapers gave him the top mark in their performance assessment of each player. No, it was all to do with that Wednesday evening drink.
Matt Gillies would have given the true reason for dropping Ken Leek to the Leicester board. I’m sure that the meticulous Charles Maley’s minutebook would back up my opinion, too, were it not for the fact that, strangely enough, the pages recording the minutes of that particular meeting have been ripped out of the book. Ken was an honest professional who would have accepted his omission on form grounds. And why would the manager persist with a below-par player in league games? It just didn’t add up.
Following the Cup final Ken asked for a move. In June he was transferred to Newcastle United but only spent five months on Tyneside before moving to Birmingham City. From there he went to Northampton Town, then Bradford City before dropping into non-league football, first with Merthyr Tydfil, then Ton Pentre. He was probably never the same player after his crushing disappointment in 1961.
As for Hugh McIlmoyle, the unwilling and unwitting participant in this controversy, the responsibility of leading our line was too heavy a burden on his young shoulders. Unable to hold down a regular first-team place, within a year Hugh moved on to Rotherham United and was to become a football journeyman in every sense of the word. His subsequent career included three spells at Carlisle United interspersed with appearances for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Bristol City, Middlesbrough, Preston North End and Morton. Hugh developed into a fine player and a prolific goalscorer, particularly in his first spell with Carlisle when he notched 39 goals in 1963–64, just three short of Carlisle’s all-time goalscoring record set by Jimmy McConnell in 1929. All in all Hugh scored 200 league and cup goals on his travels.