Terry Medwin
Winger who won the League and Cup double with Spurs
TERRY MEDWIN, who has died aged 91, was a Welsh international footballer who spent seven fruitful years with Tottenham Hotspur; a gifted outside-right who could play across the front line when needed, he won the League and Cup double in 1961, and the FA Cup again the following year.
Terence Cameron Medwin was born on September 25 1932 in a flat at Swansea Prison, where his father worked as a warder, near Vetch Field, Swansea’s ground. He showed promise at an early age, and captained Wales Schoolboys, a team which contained a future Welsh great, John Charles.
Medwin worked as a mechanic while playing part-time for Swansea Town, as they were then known, at £3 a week, then signed professional terms in 1949, making his first-team debut in January 1952. Over the next few years he played 148 League games, scoring 60 goals, and was twice the club’s top scorer in a season.
In May 1956 he joined Spurs for a fee of £25,000 and scored twice on his debut, a 4-1 demolition of Preston North End.
He had won the first of his 30 Wales caps in April 1953 in a 3-2 victory against Ireland, and was a linchpin of the side that qualified for the 1958 World Cup (along with his Spurs teammates Cliff Jones, and Mel Hopkins).
Managed by Matt Busby’s assistant at Manchester United, Jimmy Murphy (whose international duties had kept him from being on the plane that crashed in Munich in February 1958), the squad trained in Hyde Park before flying out to Sweden.
Their opening match in Group C, a 1-1 draw against Hungary, has the distinction of having been played at Sandviken, the northernmost venue in World Cup finals history. Two more draws, against Mexico and the Swedish hosts, saw Wales needing a play-off in Solna – another encounter with Hungary – to progress.
The Magyars were 1-0 up at half-time but Ivor Allchurch equalised on 55 minutes, then with 11 minutes to go Medwin hit the winner. It would be the last Welsh goal at a World Cup finals until Gareth Bale’s penalty against the United States in Qatar in 2022.
In the quarter-finals they were missing the injured “Gentle Giant”, John Charles, as they came up against Brazil, and were beaten 1-0, thanks to the first World Cup goal by Pele. The 17-year-old prodigy scored five more times as Brazil went on to win their first Jules Rimet Trophy.
Four months later Bill Nicholson was appointed Spurs manager, and began assembling a formidable side built around Jones, Danny Blanchflower, Dave Mackay and John White, and Medwin was in and out of the team as required.
In the 1960-61 season Nicholson used only 17 players, three of them only once, and Medwin played 15 League games, scoring five times, as Spurs became the first double-winners since Aston Villa in 1897, taking the League title with three games to play and beating Leicester City 2-0 in the FA Cup final.
They retained the Cup in 1962, as Burnley were beaten 3-1 at Wembley. The following season Medwin did not make the XI for the final of the European Cup-winners’ Cup, a 5-1 victory against Atlético Madrid, though he was on the plane to South Africa shortly afterwards for a post-season tour. But in a match in Cape Town he broke his leg and never played again.
He went on to manage non-league Cheshunt and coached at Cardiff, Fulham and Norwich, then went back to Swansea as John Toshack’s assistant, where he helped his hometown club rise from Fourth to First divisions in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “His knowledge and experience were pivotal in our success,” said Toshack. “He was a wonderful individual who made a lasting impact on my career.”
Medwin married Joyce in 1954; she survives him with their six children.