Wales, the 1958 World Cup and Pelé: Terry Medwin reflects at age 90
Terry Medwin is at his dining room table, slowly running his index finger across a black-and-white photograph of himself and his former Wales teammates taken before their crucial World Cup playoff eliminator victory against Israel at Ninian Park in February 1958. A few months later, Wales made their first – and last – appearance on the global stage, with Medwin scoring the winning goal against Hungary to advance to the quarter-finals. “It is a nice feeling,” Medwin says of reminiscing. “Big John [Charles], Mel [Charles], Ivor [Allchurch], Cliffy [Jones],” he says, fondly.
Wales were knocked out by an unknown 17-year-old called Pelé, who went on to help Brazil win their first World Cup. When Mel and John Charles returned from Sweden to High Street Station in Swansea, there were no teeming crowds or commotion. “One of the porters asked Mel if he’d been on holiday,” says Joyce, Medwin’s wife of almost 70 years. “They didn’t even know they’d been playing in a World Cup. It was just played down, which is really sad. It was all very low-key. Nobody was there to greet them, except the porters, and they were saying the wrong thing.”
Terry has different mementoes, from pictures to a commemorative vase, but the most pertinent nod to the tournament is a velvet cap dated 1957-58 and adorned with the Welsh crest – even if it is not the original. A few years ago Medwin’s attempt to protect his caps by putting them in a black bag as he shifted some furniture backfired when his step-grandson mistakenly carried it out to the rubbish with bags of leaves from the garden. “Terry was almost in tears,” recalls Joyce.
“It was a horrible few days. But we went to a game [in 2018] when Gareth Bale was getting his golden boot, Terry and Cliffy were taken on to the pitch and the Welsh FA presented Terry with replacements of all of the caps that we lost, so that was wonderful. They had a photo taken together. Three legends: Cliffy, Terry and Gareth Bale.”
Terry turned 90 last month and marked the occasion by taking kick-off with Lee Trundle at a charity match in nearby Morriston. “Ninety and still kicking a ball,” Joyce laughs. “I can still do a bit,” Terry smiles. Joyce, who was staying with her mother during the World Cup, kept abreast of the scores on the radio.
To get a sense of how much things have changed, Terry and the rest of the Wales squad earned about £50 per appearance and trained in Hyde Park before flying to Sweden. There was no big sendoff either. “If we’re down the Mumbles [just outside Swansea] having a coffee, people come and shake his hand, they want a photograph with him,” Joyce says. “I think he’s quite enjoying all the fuss being made of him now.”
An enlightening afternoon at home with the Medwins in Swansea, a stone’s throw from Brynmill beach where Terry would enjoy a kickabout with Cliff Jones as kids, is enhanced when Joyce brings in a tray of her infamous Welsh cakes. Last year Joyce lost her mother’s wedding ring while baking before a reunion for Spurs’ title-winning 1960-61 side and when Jones took a bite what he presumed was a chunky currant turned out to be solid gold.
Joyce was mortified but pleased that batch didn’t end up in the hands of the Tottenham chairman, Daniel Levy, for whom she has made Welsh cakes since learning of his liking for them over a cup of tea. “He loves them,” Joyce says. “We were in a box [at Tottenham] one time and I told the host that I had Welsh cakes for the chairman and I thought he would have taken them for me. But instead he went and told him and he [Levy] came to our box and off he went with his bag of Welsh cakes.”
Terry, who Tottenham paid Swansea Town £25,000 to sign in 1956, gives a tour of the football memorabilia that fills their study and proudly points towards a photograph on the wall of him and the rest of the Spurs squad, including Jones, that beat Burnley at Wembley to lift the FA Challenge Cup, now FA Cup, in 1962. To this day Terry, who had six sisters, and Jones, and their wives, remain close. “The brother he never had,” Joyce says.
Twelve months later Medwin suffered a broken leg on Spurs’s pre-season tour of South Africa, forcing his retirement aged 30. He went on to manage Cheshunt and coach at Fulham, Cardiff and Norwich. It seems apt that the bookcase has two copies of When Pele Broke Our Hearts and a Tosh DVD. “I came back [to Wales] and was assistant to John Toshack [at Swansea],” he says. “Amazing days.”
Wales’s manager in 1958, Jimmy Murphy, was assistant manager to Matt Busby at Manchester United and only avoided the Munich air disaster earlier that year because Wales’s game against Israel was scheduled for the same day as United’s European Cup quarter-final against Red Star Belgrade.
At the finals Murphy led Wales out of Group C but they came unstuck against Brazil. “If John Charles wasn’t injured, I’m sure they would have gone further,” Joyce says. “Jimmy briefed them on all the top players – he warned them about which players to watch – but they didn’t reckon anything about this youngster that was playing, a teenager called Pelé and he just ran straight through and scored.”
Terry’s memory book tells how his father, Cameron, worked at Swansea prison and that the family lived at No 6 in the prison quarters. It details that Terry began playing for Swansea schoolboys at 12, where he first played alongside John Charles, who would later become a nextdoor neighbour for two years in Cardiff, and signed a parttime contract worth £3 per week with Swansea just before his 17th birthday.
A few years ago Chris Coleman introduced Terry to the Wales squad during a training camp in Portugal and asked Ben Davies, the former Swansea defender, if he knew of Terry. “Ben Davies said: ‘Yeah, I used to see him every day on pictures around the training ground!’” Joyce says, chuckling.
There are plenty of tales to keep their six children and 17 great-grandchildren entertained. Over the years the family have watched countless replays of Terry’s match-winning goal but they continue to discover other gems. “They’re all proud of him,” Joyce says. “There was a picture of him going to Egypt with his Tottenham team that we had never seen. My son, Stephen, has a photo of him in the ambulance with the nurse after he broke his leg that we had never seen.”
As for those caps, they surely now have pride of place? “They’re not in a black bag, I can assure you,” Joyce says, laughing.