LAY-OFF IS CALL BACK TO ACTION FOR PANEL
ONE of the worst winters in history saw terrible blizzards and floods leave the first football season after the Secondworld War in tatters – and matters only got worse when the government banned midweek matches in a desperate bid to maintain the ailing country’s productivity.
But amid all the off-field drama, the key question for football fans in 1947 was whether Bob Mcgrory’s exciting Stoke City side could claim the club’s first league title.
Sadly for Mcgrory, he would be remembered for a long-running personal feud with the legendary winger Stanley Matthews – a grudge that would ultimately rob the
Potters of their place in history.
It’s a joke in the Potteries that every team has their era – unfortunately Stoke’s came between 1939 and 1945.
The club had assembled its best-ever side in the 1930s, finishing an all-time high of fourth in 1936 in Mcgrory’s first season as manager.
But the abrasive Scot’s dislike of Matthews went back to when they were team-mates, and the wizard of dribble dislodged his best friend and room-mate, Bobby Liddle, in the Stoke team.
The simmering resentment came to a head at Easter in 1947, just as the country was emerging from a winter battering.
The Football Association and the Football League had been summoned to
Whitehall by Home
Secretary James Chuter
Ede. Some of the worst blizzards of the 20th century and the subsequent floods had done the equivalent in
2020 terms of
£15billion worth of damage.
The football season was due to have ended on May 3, but Clement Attlee’s Labour government banned midweek First Division matches.
Attlee felt it would tempt workers away from their work, slowing up productivity when the only way to avert disaster was for all workers to increase output.
The FA didn’t want to extend the season, but the League thought it would be a disaster to declare it null and void and eventually won the day. But the question was whether an uneasy truce between Mcgrory and Matthews could last until the middle of June, when Stoke were due to travel to Sheffield United for their final league match.
Matthews, regarded as the best player in the world at the time, lived in Blackpool where he ran a boarding house and trained at Bloomfield Road, commuting to Stoke only on matchdays.
Run-ins with Mcgrory and rumours of dressing-room unrest had left him unsettled and he reached an agreement to see out the season with Stoke and then move somewhere nearer the coast to keep a closer eye on his business interests.
By Easter, Matthews’ form had seen him recalled by the England selectors after an absence of seven years and he was picked for the
EMILE HESKEY has called on politicians to lay off footballers after the Premier League asked its players to take a 30 per cent pay cut after talks on Friday.
Former England star Heskey, believes footballers are easy targets for MPS and he expects stars to do their bit without interventions from parliament. He said:“it’s too simplistic to turn around to footballers, who are paid huge sums as they’re part of the entertainment industry, and demand a pay cut.
“Most would be happy to take a pay cut but let’s have that discussion.you can’t just have politicians demanding footballers do this.”
Home International clash with Scotland.with Stoke facing three games over the busy Easter calendar, Matthews asked to miss the Good Friday clash with Grimsby Town because he felt, at 32, he couldn’t play four games in a week.
But after missing the 5-2 win, he was left out of the following two games against Huddersfield – even through he was partly changed, having been told he would play – and the return with the Mariners.
He was recalled for a 3-1 win over Brentford but then found out that he had only played because Albert
Mitchell was injured.
Matthews (right) immediately sought out club chairman Harry
Booth and demanded a move.
Booth reluctantly opened talks with
Blackpool, and a fee was agreed. He moved on May 10, with Stoke’s title hopes still in the balance.
Their 1-0 win over Aston Villa in their penultimate game – a seventh win from eight games – left them in fourth place, two points behind leaders Liverpool but with a vastly superior goal difference.
Liverpool won their last two games against Arsenal and Wolves but faced a 15-day wait before Stoke played Sheffield United on June 15 – some 19 days after beatingvilla – knowing a win would crown them champions.
It was 1-1 at half-time but a slip by right-back John Mccue set up Sheffield United’s winner just after the break, handing Liverpool their first League Championship in 24 years – and leaving Stoke to rue what might have been.
ENGLAND’ S top keepers are helping kids cope with boredom by providing online training sessions for free.
Tom Heaton, Ben Foster, Jack Butland, Nick Pope, Joe Hart and Carly Telford are among stars to have signed up to a project by former top-flight stopper Richard Lee, who runs soccer schools for children. He was left stuck when covid intervened – but elite goalkeepers have come to his aid by taking part in daily Instagram live sessions to keep the youngsters active.
Lee said: “They’ve been amazing – we’d have had to shut down otherwise.they’ve been incredible.we want all young goalkeepers to benefit.”
WITH arctic conditions gripping the country, football in the winter of 1962-63 ground to a halt, leaving much of the betting industry in a frenzy.
Games were being called off in their droves. The nation’s weekly fix of filling in the pools coupon was at risk.
Enter the Pools Panel, six true men comprising former England players Tom Finney (below), Tommy Lawton and Ted Drake, former Scotland fullback George Young, ex-referee Arthur Ellis and a left-field selection in the shape of John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-brabazon.
He was a one-time Tory MP and aviation pioneer who, in 1909, attached a piglet to the wing of a plane – proving that pigs can fly!
Their selections were announced to an eager public via the BBC. The first sitting was at the end of January and it wasn’t until the middle of March that a full league programme was able to go ahead.
Now 57 years later, the panel is back in the spotlight – deciding on the results of the original fixture list every weekend until football returns.
Former Liverpool star Ian Callaghan (right), ex-manchester United defender David Sadler and former Newcastle forward Tony Green are the present-day trio in charge.
Callaghan admitted: “We all have links with different clubs but that doesn’t come into it. We select fairly, helped by statistics supplied about all the clubs.”
The days of 10 million people filling in coupons every week might be long gone but there’s still enough interest to keep Messrs Callaghan, Sadler and Green in business.