The fabulous footballing Fifties!
PAT TALBOT continues his look back at the golden age of Black Country football. This week he turns his attention to West Brom and Walsall
ALBION’S decades was much more modest than that of Wolves in achievement terms.
They only figured in the top five on five occasions, and in bursts: 4th and 2nd in 1952-53 and 1953-54 and 4th, 5th and 4th in the three seasons between 1957 and 1960.
Style
However, it was the style of their tactics that attracted praise. If Black Country football rivalry was portrayed as the English Civil War, Albion were clearly Cavaliers to Wolves’ Roundheads. Over the decade, the Roundheads clearly triumphed (as in the Civil War!) but Albion’s style was clearly cavalier and positive compared to the pragmatic ways of Molineux.
Manager Vic Buckingham was a disciple of Arthur Rowe and his ‘push and run’ style at Tottenham, which he employed successfully at The Hawthorns, with Albion most productively on the front foot. Passes were short and firsttime, a player moving for a return pass. Wingers Frank Griffin and George Lee would drop deep exchanging passes with full-backs and wing-halves in triangles.
The team as a whole were to move up the field together and back to defend together. Much has been written subsequently about the Dutch version of ‘Total Football’ and Buckingham’s later stint at Ajax is a legitimate link between ’50s Albion and ’70s Dutch tactics!
Variety
Buckingham also favoured the occasional use of a long ball for variety, classically from the foot of Ray Barlow 30 yards up to Ronnie Allen, who was a deeper-lying centre forward, and he and Johnny Nicholls became a deadly dual strike-force. Allen would control, pivot and lay off to Nicholls the ‘poacher,’ who would run onto a clinical pass.
Again, to understand how
Albion blossomed when they did, you need to look backwards. Relegated to the Second Division before World War II, Albion took three post-war seasons to get back to the top flight under manager Jack Smith, a former Wolves player and coach.
Talent
Once back in the First Division, Smith brought fresh talent to The Hawthorns in Joe Kennedy, George Lee, Stan Rickaby, Ronnie Allen, Johnny Nicholls, Jimmy Dugdale and Frank Griffin. As well as instituting a major junior recruitment scheme, he also converted Ronnie Allen inside from the wing.
Into the 1950s, the club felt that they needed a fresh injection of direction and appointed an additional trainer/coach in Jesse Carver, from Juventus. Carver’s time at Albion was short but influential – he made them fitter, faster, improved their ball skills and gave them a new enthusiasm for the game. Vic Buckingham was made manager in 1953, and it was he who made them more stylish.
Vic Buckingham’s Albion were very good to watch. Don Howe remembered that “Buckingham was such a great man and he used to encourage us to play entertaining football … We often used to hear people say the crowd had gone away from The Hawthorns smiling at how we’d played. That’s what we aimed for …”
Disappointingly, having won the FA Cup in 1954, for the rest of the decade inconsistent Albion never really won trophies like they won friends. They had great players like Howe, Bobby Robson and Derek Kevan, but not enough of them.
Meanwhile, Walsall spent a fairly undistinguished decade in the lower half of Division 3 South.
Then, in the final year of the 3rd Division’s subdivision, they finished a promising sixth. As the lower halves of Division 3 North and South became Division 4, Walsall finished the 1959-60 season 5 points clear of Notts County and Torquay United as champions.
It was their away form in particular, 14 wins, that won them promotion. They set several club records: most wins, most league points for 2 points a win seasons and most league goals.
Tony Richards was top scorer with 24 league goals. Momentum was to take them up to Division 2 the following season.