Not a bad weekend for teacher Mr Wilshaw
STUDENTS at Hanley Grammar School, Stoke-on-trent had quite a story to hear on Monday, April 4, 1955, if they asked teacher Dennis Wilshaw “How was your weekend, sir?”
For the Saturday afternoon had been pretty good for Dennis, a part-time footballer with Wolverhampton Wanderers. Playing for England at Wembley Stadium, the predatory inside-left had scored four goals as Scotland were hammered 7-2.
Oldest
Yet the game is more often remembered for two other things – the display of the oldest man on the field, 40-year-old Stanley Matthews, and the confident debut of the youngest, Manchester United’s Dudley-born 18-year-old Duncan Edwards. Matthews weaved his magic on the right wing while Edwards took his England bow in his stride. It is sometimes overlooked that Dennis secured a place in football history as the first player to score four goals in a full international between the old enemies. It’s a feat that remains unique.
Dennis was playing for England on home soil for the first time. He made his debut in 1953 against Wales in Cardiff and was promptly dropped by the selectors despite scoring twice in a 4-1 win.
Finals
Eight minutes from time, Dennis collected his fourth goal of the game
He made the squad for the 1954 World Cup finals in Switzerland and played in the group win over the host nation, scoring one of the goals in a 2-0 win. His club colleague Jimmy Mullen got the other. He also played in the 4-2 quarter-final defeat at the hands of Uruguay.
Dennis must have thought his chances of facing the Scots were remote when England gained a prestige win over World Cup winners West Germany later in 1954 but that counted little with the England selectors, who were notoriously unpredictable.
By the time the Scotland game came around four months had elapsed and seven changes were made, Dennis being one of the beneficiaries. Admittedly, one of the changes was forced as leftwinger Tom Finney was injured. Among those dropped were Albion centre-forward Ronnie Allen, Wolves half-back Bill Slater and Sunderland maestro Len Shackleton. Any criticism of the chosen line-up was wiped away, however, as the goals flew in. The ninegoal feast began with Dennis’s first in the second minute. Frank Blunstone, the Chelsea leftwinger, sent over a centre and when Nat Lofthouse’s shot was pushed out by keeper Fred Martin, Dennis was on hand to ram the ball home. Lofthouse was on target after 10 minutes from a pass by Manchester City’s Don Revie. Then Scotland gained some hope five minutes later as Ian Mcmillan on the left centred for Lawrie Reilly to fire past Wolves keeper Bert Williams.
Dennis almost struck again when his header to a Blunstone centre rebounded from the lefthand post. It became 3-1 on 23 minutes when Martin failed to deal with a long pass from yet another of the newcomers, Ken Armstrong. Revie was able to slot the ball home from just a few yards out.
Four minutes later Lofthouse collected his second when Matthews bamboozled the Scotland left flank again before pulling the ball back to the England centreforward. It was not all one-way traffic and Williams had to be at his acrobatic best to tip a Ring shot on to the bar.
Header
Scotland, who remarkably contained no player from Rangers or Celtic, held out until the 69th minute before Dennis, from five yards out, made it 5-1, heading home a Matthews centre, the winger having beaten hapless left-back Harry Haddock yet again.
Four minutes on and Wilshaw
completed his hat-trick, after more Matthews trickery was followed by a through pass which sent him racing clear to glide the ball past the advancing Martin.
Eight minutes from time Dennis collected his fourth as Matthews found Revie, whose pass into the penalty area saw the Wolves striker in the right place yet again to find the net from six yards. Two minutes later, Tommy Docherty pulled a goal back for the Scots, firing in a free kick from 30 yards.
Teams at Wembley on Saturday, April 2, 1955:
England; Williams (Wolves); Meadows (Manchester City), Byrne (Manchester United); Armstrong (Chelsea), Wright (Wolves), Edwards (Manchester United); Matthews (Blackpool), Revie (Manchester City), Lofthouse (Bolton), Wilshaw (Wolves), Blunstone (Chelsea).
Scotland: Martin (Aberdeen); Cunningham (Preston), Haddock (Clyde); Docherty (Preston), Davidson (Partick Thistle), Cumming (Hearts); Mckenzie (Partick Thistle), Johnstone (Manchester City), Reilly (Hibernian), Mcmillan (Airdrie), Ring (Clyde).
Wolves had three men in the England side and it could have been four. Clubs were bound by the FA to release players for the England team and league games still had to be played on the same day if scheduled. When the chosen right-half, Portsmouth’s Len Phillips, was injured in a practice game against Charlton four days before the big match, England boss Walter Winterbottom wanted to call up Slater.
Hopes
With his team still nursing hopes of retaining their First Division title, Wolves boss Stan Cullis successfully persuaded Winterbottom to look elsewhere. Ironically the England supremo turned to title rivals Chelsea and drafted in Armstrong.
It might have been worse for Cullis as most experts thought Roy Swinbourne was favourite to play centre-forward, yet the selectors defied popular opinion and recalled the veteran Lofthouse.
Often in later years, Dennis recalled that his historic day did not get the coverage it might have done. It was just his luck that there was a national newspaper strike in England. So, few cuttings for the Wilshaw scrapbook.
He once recalled jokingly: “All the Scottish papers said Scotland scored two great goals and we got seven lucky ones.” However, a week after the epic game, the Sports Argus carried a superb feature on Dennis, written by Charles Harrold. From it we learned that when Dennis began his football career ten years earlier he had three great ambitions – he wanted to win a ‘good’ medal, gain an England cap and play at Wembley. The first of those wishes came true with the game against Wales, when his proud dad Tom, a
haulage contractor, was present at Ninian Park to see it. His father died not long afterwards.
By the end of that season there was a medal for Dennis as Wolves had become champions of England for the first time and he was their top scorer with 26 goals. A year later came the final leg of his ambition – a game at Wembley as England recorded the biggest win over the Scots since the countries played the world’s first football international in 1872.
Dennis told Harrold that the occasion might have been his greatest achievement and the first time he had scored four goals in a first-class match, but for excitement it did not match the day of his Wolves debut he hit a when hattrick as Newcastle were beaten 3-0 at Molineux in 1949. “I was so keyed up to start with and, what with getting three goals as well, I was so excited that towards the end I could hardly move my limbs.
“Wembley was a thrill of a different sort. One of the things I remember particularly was scoring a goal in the first minute (sic) of the match. I can’t begin to tell you the difference it made to me mentally and in my approach to the game.
“I felt a terrific surge of confidence when the ball went in and it stayed with me throughout the match. The effect was that I felt keen and confident to try things and was able to play a normal game.”
Moment
Asked to say if one special moment stood out, Dennis had no hesitation: “It was the sudden realisation when I scored England’s sixth goal that I had collected three. I had moved into the inside-right position and Stan Matthews gave me a lovely ball, right to me. “As Cunningham came across, I was looking for someone to pass to, but no one was with me and I knew I had to go on. I swerved round the back and shot as the goalkeeper came out fast and it was a really tremendous moment when the ball went in. The double effect, as it were, of a good goal and the knowledge that it was my third.” As a youngster, Dennis had sat on his father’s shoulders at the Victoria Ground watching his Stoke City heroes, Matthews and Freddie Steele. “I secretly hoped that one day I might be able to play in the same team as Stan and that was a dream that came true in the World Cup against Uruguay. But last Saturday was even better for it was Matthews who had a foot in every goal of the hat-trick I completed towards the end of the game.”
During the war, Dennis was a ‘Bevin Boy’ – one of the lads assigned to working in the coal-mining industry and he was later three years at college, training as a teacher. So he had never been a full-time professional footballer.
He did not think it a handicap and said he made sure that by training at least three evenings a week he could match the high fitness levels on which Cullis insisted.
Maths
Not long before he died, Dennis’s proud dad Tom saw his son play for England
“I have a timetable which means that one third of my time is spent playing games, one third is devoted to PT and the other third to maths. It means I take part in a game of football every day and I am in the gym every day.”
There was no chance of Dennis getting too big for his boots after his Wembley triumph.
His next game of football after facing the Scots was playing for the Hanley Grammar School staff side in their annual match against the boys and it certainly brought him back down to earth – the boys won 10-1.