Jim’s parting gift proved fine legacy
BLUE-EYED BOY’S BLACKBURN VIEW
IMUST commence this week by sending best wishes to Mrs Old Blackburnian who broke her ankle badly last weekend. Ian has asked me to step in and do a bit of a steady old Benno number from the bench, enabling him to help her convalesce and recover after surgery. Best wishes to them both for as festive a season as they can manage under the unwelcome circumstances.
I had intended to set off with all manner of witty election gags and puns and comparisons with redundant “Mowbray out” polls but just prior to the kick-offs in Tuesday’s Championship matches - the Swansea game unfortunately after the deadline - news came through to rock Rovers supporters of a certain generation.
When a much-loved old manager passes away, those of around my vintage lose a connection with our faded youth and the club a link with its relatively recent history. The news of Jim Smith’s death was a shock and a reminder of all our own mortality.
Jim Smith seemed as if he had been hewn from the kind of granite they made football managers out of in decades past even when he arrived at Ewood as Rovers approached their Centenary aged just 34 in the summer of 1975. He was Ewood’s youngest ever manager at that point and it was some years before he developed a late middle-aged liking for leather bomber jackets and flamboyant shirts.
Born just eight days after John Lennon - and thus of practically the first intake to miss National Service - even as a rookie manager he seemed, blazered and tied and of thinning thatch, to have more in common with men of a military air such as Ron Saunders and Gordon Lee than the flamboyant contemporary likes of Pele, Ringo and Frank Zappa.
A career as a jobbing wing-half spent largely scuffling in the Fourth Division and modest success at non-league Boston then with Colchester convinced Rovers chairman Derick Keighley that he might have some of the stuff his predecessors Ken Furphy and Lee had breathed life back into the club with.
It was an inauspicious beginning for not-quite Bald Eagle to say the least. After a draw and two wins in the opening Second Division games following Lee’s Third Division Championship season, Rovers won just three of the next 23. I imagine Twitter and the fan forums would have gone ballistic today at a campaign which saw us improve only marginally to finish a point above fourth-bottom Carlisle and eliminated from both cups to lower division opposition without scoring. Our top scorers, jointly were Beamish and Parkes with seven apiece.
A win at Burnden in front of 25,000, John Waddington’s goal ultimately robbing Bolton of promotion, was a rare highlight as Ewood gates fell below 7,000 regularly.
The next campaign was barely stuff of legend either and many of Smith’s signings were indifferent frees or “bargains” such as Svarc, Needham and Mitchell while a succession of loans such as Silvester, Hutt, Hindson and
Alcock were barely more than future quiz questions.
Finishes of 15th and 12th were little more than adequate but in early 1976 a loan veteran from Wolves, Dave Wagstaffe, brought a touch of culture and elan to the side seldom seen since the Duggie days.
Wagstaffe and another seasoned wide man, Gordon Taylor from Birmingham, neither much younger than Smith, seemed to encourage young full-backs Hird and Bailey to do their running for them and while a centre-half acquisition from Newcastle, Keeley, initially seemed a liability, a flowering was imminent.
There were odd signs in 1976-77 with a little cup run which ended with a big day out at Derby. Returning John Byrom added to the Dad’s Army feel but he scored braces in a win at Wolves and in a Christmas draw with Burnley at Ewood as hostilities resumed after a decade. A local lad, Paul round, scored on debut against Millwall.
But it was the 1978-7-78 season which sealed Jim Smith’s place in Rovers’ so-near-yet-so-far mythology.
A rather odd-looking Spurs reject, the elaborately-Afro’d Irishman Noel Brotherston and Grimsby striker Jack Lewis plus the permanentlyacquired Wagstaffe were the summer captures who got the side off to only a modest start and though there was never any extended unbeaten run, the form and football blossomed enough to see Rovers in third spot - just two up in those days - by early December with a number of performances so sumptuous those who watched the side remember the season with affection to this day.
While a scintillating 3-2 Boxing Day win at Turf Moor remains the high and most affectionatelyrecalled watermark, there were many other outstanding afternoons and evenings: a feisty Bonfire Night win against a starstudded Southampton who had Osgood and Williams sent off as Bailey teased them with insouciant dribbles, a 2-0 win over Luton on ice which had supercilious Match of the Day mogul Jimmy Hill purring over a Brotherston chip and seething about a Keeley tackle on the Hatters’ Fucillo in equal measure
My pick as performance of that season was a 3-0 win at home to Palace. With Lewis prone to injury and Mitchell ineffective, Smith put stalwart utility man Mick Wood up front and with the experimental, futuristic centre-forward-less line-up working a dream, he could hardly avoid scoring the only two goals of his Ewood career.
Hird added a typical solo worldie. Gates had risen to more than 10,000 as fans began to dare to dream of Division One for the first time in years.
Ironically . a prolific striker was all Smith lacked.
He signed the vastly experienced John Radford from Arsenal but despite a debut opener in a 5-2 rout of Oldham he looked largely disinterested and uninspired, particularly as the promotion dream had already begun to fade.
Jim left for Birmingham after just three Radford appearances. The ultimate irony was that his greatest legacy to the club, a young striker brought to Ewood on a tip from one of his old Boston United connections, hadn’t been quite ready at 17 to fit into a team his style would have suited perfectly.
His name? Simon Garner. Thanks for the memories, Bald Eagle and for leaving us with one of Ewood’s most enduring legends as your parting gift.
Smith had a distinguished career elsewhere but probably wouldn’t have lasted his first Ewood season out today.
Let’s hope Tony Mowbray still has the support of the faithful after a second successive tough away game in the SouthWest tomorrow.
A run of five wins in six - only the top two had bettered that before midweek - had bought him some time.
Only at Rovers could you have fans calling for the gaffer to go after the first two of those victories but the more assured performances at Stoke and at home to Derby have quietened the clamour for a change.
The Christmas games and the January transfer window will largely define the season.
Perhaps the tantalising, fleeting taste of success Jim Smith gave us 40-odd years ago can be recaptured or even improved on.
Best wishes for the festive season to all.