Farewell Sammy – a manager who was loved by all of his players
CLIVE CORBETT pays tribute to Sammy Chung, Wolves trainer and manager, who died at the end of August
Under Bill Mcgarry, Sammy Chung was very much the peacemaker
One of Sammy’s greatest contributions was bringing on the younger players
ANOTHER – perhaps under-appreciated – figure in Wolves history, Sammy Chung, passed away aged 90 on 28th August.
Sammy played over 300 games and scored 46 goals in a career predominantly plying the lower leagues for the likes of Reading, Oxford United and Norwich City before turning his skills to coaching. He gained his first experience whilst still a player at Watford, under manager Bill Mcgarry. When Mcgarry left to become manager of Ipswich Town, he took Chung with him as his assistant. At Ipswich they won promotion to the First Division as champions in 1968.
Following a short period as manager of Swedish side IFK Västerås, Sammy returned to join Mcgarry, now at Wolves, as his assistant. It was on 23rd November 1968 that the pair sat in the Waterloo Stand to see their new team beat Newcastle United by five goals to nil. In sharing his first day memories of Mcgarry, former centre half John Holsgrove describes Chung’s role in the partnership: “On Mcgarry’s first day Sammy Chung came in first, a nice fellow but no disrespect, he knew who was boss. Sammy said, ‘The manager’s coming in to see you’ and we were all sitting waiting in the home dressing room. Then bang, the door comes flying open, smashed back on its hinges and Mcgarry just stood there. He looked around at everybody, really fearsome.” Another, later incident reinforces the image of Sammy the peacemaker. During the warm up to an FA Cup quarter-final tie with Coventry City, Steve Kindon felled Derek Dougan with a shot aimed at warming up the keeper, Phil Parkes. At this very time Bill Mcgarry had just reached his seat in the Waterloo Road stand and had to race back down to the pitch where Wolves in-form talisman was receiving treatment from physio Toby Anderson and Sammy Chung. The manager’s language was understandably choice, and John Richards remembers Kindon standing by the far corner flag whimpering, “‘I didn’t meant it boss, I didn’t mean it!’ They revived the Doog but it delayed the kick off by about five minutes.”
Kindon eventually made it sheepishly to the bench to position himself next to Sammy Chung and as far away from Mcgarry as possible, but as Richards recalls, this did not spare his old rugby league partner from a verbal savaging (with expletives deleted!):
“Kindon, you idiot, you must be the biggest waste of money we’ve ever spent. If I’d got a gun, I’d shoot you!”
Kindo sat there with his head in his hands but Sammy, always the ‘good cop’, calmed him saying; “Don’t worry about it Steve, he doesn’t mean it, he’s only repeating what he’s heard the directors say!”
Geoff Palmer also believes that this incident perfectly sums up the chalk and cheese nature of manager and assistant that made their pairing such a success: “I thought that they complemented each other very well. Sammy was an excellent coach and Bill knew exactly what he was talking about.”
Chung had to calm things down after another Mcgarry post-match rant, this time after Wolves had dispatched Chelsea in emphatic fashion in 1975. Phil Parkes recalls: “We beat Chelsea 7-1 and I didn’t have a lot to do. We came in after the game and Bill came in. He slammed the door, shouting, ‘That was **** crap, that was **** garbage. We should have won 15-1!’ With that he left and slammed the door. Sammy comes round, it’s like chalk and cheese. By the time Sammy had stopped talking we’d forgotten what Bill had said and everybody’s happy again. If he hadn’t had Sammy I think he would have struggled, because Bill was so intense about winning.”
Winger Dave Wagstaffe recalled Chung’s role in Mcgarry’s management team: “Sammy was the gobetween, sometimes he would turn a blind eye in training or on the field and say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ and if he reported to Mcgarry, oh my God!” Parkes adds: “Sammy was a good man”, and Palmer concurs; “You went from one extreme to the other with Sammy, but he was a very good coach.”
However, Sammy Chung was much more than a peace keeper. One of his greatest contributions to the cause in the seventies was his work bringing on younger players and keeping their feet firmly on the ground. The management team appreciated that John Richards, Steve Daley, Alan Sunderland, Geoff Palmer and a host of others were still learning and needed to build up their strength and experience before earning a prolonged run in the first team. Resisting the clamour for early promotion to the starting eleven, some seven to eight youngsters were taken onto West Park on Thursday afternoons for special skills training with Sammy. Different routines were arranged for strikers and defenders, and Richards appreciates that this hard work paid off, as the nucleus of the great seventies team came of age on the playing fields of WV1: “We were fortunate that we had someone like Sammy prepared to do that with us and it paid off.” Geoff Palmer agrees: “Sammy’s training was
Sammy’s Wolves launched a formidable assault on promotion
The stadium was the board’s priority and this severely limited their ability to bring in new players
that enjoyable. We loved it when he got the balls out. We used to go over West Park, the goalies trained there on Thursdays. We would cross balls in the mud for Lofty (Phil Parkes), Gary Pierce and the others whilst the first team had the afternoon off.
“The exercises were not only hard work but really enjoyable as well. Even though the coaching and shooting was for goalkeepers it was good because we were crossing the ball and doing what we had to do in a match.”
Sammy was of course a vital part of the management team that guided Wolves to victory in the 1974 League Cup final against Manchester City.
Along with physio Toby Andersen, Sammy worked overtime to ensure that John Richards could play in the final. Richards explains: “From January onwards I was having stomach pains. I had x-rays, all kinds of things but nothing was found. It was assumed it was a muscle and every evening in the build up to the final Sammy Chung used to come in and strap my legs together so that I didn’t aggravate my stomach muscle pull.”
JR of course played, albeit in appalling discomfort, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. It was fitting that as players on the Wolves bench (Wagstaffe, Parkes, Jim Mccalliog and Daley) poured onto the hallowed turf, they were joined by Bill Mcgarry, Sammy Chung and physio Toby Andersen.
Two years after their greatest triumph though, Mcgarry and Chung tasted the bitter pill of relegation from Division 1 – this cost Mcgarry his job and his loyal lieutenant was somewhat controversially handed the task of restoring Wolves to their rightful place in English football.
There was never any doubt over Chung’s worth as a coach but to many he had yet to prove himself as a manager. Fortunately for Sammy, the bulk of the team was still together to launch a formidable assault on promotion, with a squad of established players including Gary Pierce, Derek Parkin, Frank Munro, John Mcalle, Kenny Hibbitt, Willie Carr, John Richards and Steve Kindon being strengthened by maturing youngsters of the likes of Palmer, Daley and Alan Sunderland.
The appointment of Chung was a move that Richards broadly welcomed, believing that the foundations for a quick return were already there: “We still had good players here and it was a bit of a travesty that we had got relegated. But we bounced straight back up when us five or six players were joined by younger ones like Sunderland, Daley and Martin Patching, it repeated itself.” Hibbitt admired Chung but could not view him as a manager: “Sammy was a great coach and it was fantastic working with him, but he was never going to be a great manager. A manager has to be different to a coach and I don’t think Sammy was a manager.”
In August 1976 Wolves returned to a second tier that contained only eight of the teams that they had left behind some nine years earlier. New manager Chung had to deal with the expectation that they were firmly installed as bookmakers’ favourites to win the Second Division: “Although I don’t normally concern myself with such things, I cannot ignore that we are highly fancied contenders.” However, he was quick to make his priorities clear: “The number one aim must be to try and regain our place in the First Division as soon as possible.”
John Richards agrees: “With the squad of players that we had we were expected to be near the top and we fulfilled those expectations.”
Richards was particularly appreciative of Sammy Chung’s tactics that saw Kenny Hibbitt slotting in just behind the two front men: “Against strong opposition he was given the manager’s job, at which many were expecting, hoping for him to fail, and he developed a style of play that suited the players. Sammy’s style came to be appreciated by the crowd.”
In the end Wolves, in their centenary year, were promoted as champions, ahead of Chelsea and Nottingham Forest, with Chung collecting the January Manager of the Month award along the way.
As had been the case exactly ten years earlier, on the occasion of Wolves’ last promotion, there were no additions to the squad, as manager Chung recognised: “I am very conscious of the fact that I have not purchased any new players for our return to the First Division. I have been working very hard in this direction since the end of last season to acquire one or two new players, without any success so far. In some cases I have been asked to pay extortionate prices way above my valuation of the player’s ability.”
On the positive front Chung was able to make the point that this offered more opportunities to a crop of promising youngsters that included George Berry, Bob Hazell, Mel Eves and Maurice Daly.
Sammy Chung’s first successful raid into the transfer market did not come until September when England Under-21 keeper Paul Bradshaw was secured from Blackburn Rovers for a club record £150,000. But it soon became clear that the purchase had to be balanced by sales, and fans were shocked that these included Steve Kindon and Alan Sunderland. Kindon’s return to Burnley in July was less controversial but Sunderland’s £220,000 transfer to Arsenal was seen as a backward step for the club. At the time Chung defended the departures:
No further support for Chung on signings was forthcoming and by the time that Middlesbrough visited Molineux on April 15th 1978 Wolves had a mere 28 points from 37 games and were hovering precariously above the bottom three in the table. Sammy Chung was able to inspire the players to three wins (over Manchester United, Aston Villa and Ipswich Town) and a draw at Chelsea in the last four matches that secured the club’s safety. Ultimately, Wolves and QPR had climbed out of the danger zone to condemn West Ham to twentieth place by a safety margin of just four points and one point respectively. The Hammers were relegated alongside Newcastle and Leicester, but patience with Chung and his youthful squad was undoubtedly wearing thin in spite of a final finish of fifteenth.
The 1977-78 season began with a run of 11 defeats in 14 and no new signings. Before the match with QPR on 30th September, four friends (Mike Billingham, Mark Fenton, Malcolm Hughes and Steve Yardley – pictured) met with Sammy Chung in the wake of a letter that Mark had sent to the Express & Star.
In those days, communication between fans and clubs was limited to the odd comment in the press, so frustrations with fans quickly built when results were poor. Mark’s letter, inviting an explanation from Sammy on the lack of new players, was printed in the Express & Star letters column with the heading “Invitation to Mr Chung”. To Mark’s amazement he received a phone call from Sammy a few days later inviting Mark and friends to meet with him at Molineux before the next home game against QPR.
Sammy quickly explained that the board’s priority was re-development of the stadium and this severely limited ability to bring in new players. As Wolves were struggling to score goals Mark suggested the idea of buying Alan Buckley from Walsall. Chung admitted that this was a line of enquiry, but nothing came of it. Nonetheless, Mark remembers Sammy for his warm welcome, and as a true gentleman.
But, in the wake of the horrendous start to the season and following protests from the club’s fans, Sammy Chung was dismissed on Wednesday 8th November, although it would be another three weeks before a successor would be appointed. According to the Express & Star, Chung and Wolves parted company, “mutually and amicably”, leaving coach Brian Owen in temporary charge. Chung was pictured shaking hands with (chairman) Harry Marshall and explained: “I would like to thank those supporters who have supported me during a difficult period, particularly those on the South Bank. I have not been sacked. I have come to an amicable agreement with the club.
“I wasn’t going to let it get me down. I love this great game of football and certainly have no regrets about the ten years I have spent with Wolves as a coach and a manager.
“I wish the club well and hope they stay in the First Division.”
It seems clear that Marshall’s failure to support Chung with transfer funds (as a result of the prioritisation of ground improvements that ultimately sparked the financial collapse of Wolves in the 1980s) fatally undermined his tenure.
No true fan will forget Sammy’s contribution to Wolves between 1968 and 1978 in what was arguably the second most successful period in its history. Thank you Sammy and may I offer my condolences to his family and friends.