the joy of - west bromwich albion f.c. the joy of ‘68 the story of albion’s fa cup winning...

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THE JOY OF ‘68 The story of Albion’s FA Cup winning season 1967/68

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The Joy of ‘68

The story of Albion’s fA Cup winning season 1967/68

By Dave Bowler

All written material copyright West Bromwich Albion, 2014

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Chapter 1: SGT AShMAN’S LoVeLy ALBIoN BAND

It was 47 years ago today, when Alan Ashman taught the team to play...

It’s very nearly half a century since England was basking in the radiance of that fabled “Summer of Love”, a sum-mer that had arrived full blown and fully formed on the first day of June 1967 when The Beatles unleashed “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on an unsuspecting world and instantly transformed an England of drab, post-war austere monotony into psychedelic technicolour.

Suddenly, the future had arrived, a future that the nation had been gasping for ever since Hitler found himself trapped in the bunker – not even Rory McIlroy equipped with a sand wedge was ever going to get him out of there. A new England was slowly emerging out of the late 1950s and early 1960s austerity that still prevailed, but moder-nity finally smacked us between the eyes in that incredible burst of colour on Peter Blake’s artfully conceived pop art record sleeve. It was telling that the previous Beatle album, “Revolver”, had boasted a black and white collage as its cover statement. By 1967, that was out. Everything now had to be encased in dayglo, psychedelic colour.

And yet while England was going colour, the Black Country was coming out of a period of monochrome mourning induced by disastrous defeat at Wembley Stadium at the tail end of the 1966/67 season, Jimmy Hagan’s Throstles squandering a two goal half-time lead to lose the League Cup Final 3-2. That was bad enough in itself, but this was to Third Division Queens Park Rangers, a beating that is still up there with the likes of Woking in the Albion Hall of Infamy.

Graham Williams was Hagan’s skipper, and he still remembers that day at Wembley very vividly. “Under Jimmy, life was never easy, there were a lot of upheavals, but we were very successful. I think the League Cup Final at Wembley was the exception and that did him a lot of damage, ultimately finished him here, but he was pretty un-lucky. Rodney Marsh would have been sent off today for what he did to Dick Sheppard in scoring.

“I played the second half with only one eye, I was at Moorfield’s Hospital for a fortnight afterwards. Ken Foggo would have been the first substitute at Wembley, but the referee wouldn’t let me go off – you had to be injured to make a substitution then. He said to me, “The only way you go off is if I send you off”. We were in control, it was finished by half-time when we were 2-0 up, but the second half turned into a nightmare. Going back out of the tun-nel for the start of the second half, Jim Langley from their team turned to me and said, “Christ, we’ve just been put on four grand a man to win this!” We were on 25 quid to win! Losing that one really hurt.”

According to Tony Brown, Hagan was a difficult man to work with, a completely different personality on and off the training field. “One of the weird things was he didn’t believe in players shouting for the ball. For me, that’s a big part of the game, but if you did it, he’d go mad. He didn’t want any of that, wanted you to just play. He was a real stickler for what he wanted. If you were playing a pass, it had to be in front of somebody for them to run onto. If you knocked it direct to feet, that was a sin in his book. He’d work on that and I think we became better players for the extra hours we put in.

“One problem was that Jimmy expected players to be as good as he was. I spoke to people who’d seen him play a lot and they always raved about him, what a great player he was. They had him down as one of the best players ever. I can believe it because he was amazing in training. If somebody got something wrong, he’d stop training and say, “I’ll show you how to do that” and he’d be on the pitch in the practice match, the best player on the park. But it doesn’t always work that way – I’ve heard stories that Glenn Hoddle was a bit the same. If you couldn’t do certain things, he couldn’t understand it, but not everybody is a Jimmy Hagan or a Glenn Hoddle.

“Jimmy’s biggest fault was his man management. Whatever he said, that was it, no arguments, no messing. And

Chapter 1: SGT AShMAN’S LoVeLy ALBIoN BAND 5

Chapter 2: ARe yoU eXPeRIeNCeD? 9

Chapter 3: ThRoSTLeS AT The GATeS of DAWN 13

Chapter 4: fIXING A hoLe 17

Chapter 5: NoT oNLy… BUT ALSo 21

Chapter 6: foUR IN hAND 25

Chapter 7: IT’S GeTTING BeTTeR 29

Chapter 8: TURN, TURN, TURN 33

Chapter 9: ALL yoU NeeD IS LoVeTT 37

Chapter 10: I’M A BeLIeVeR 41

Chapter 11: 2,000 LIGhT GAMeS fRoM hoMe 45

Chapter 12: fLyING 49

Chapter 13: BeND Me, ShAPe Me 53

Chapter 14: LIGhT My fIRe 57

Chapter 15: MeANS To AN eND 61

Chapter 16: WhITe LIGhT WhITe heAT 65

Chapter 17: CRoSSToWN TRAffIC 69

Chapter 18: heLTeR SKeLTeR 73

Chapter 19: LoNG, LoNG, LoNG 77

Chapter 20: hAPPINeSS IS A CLARK GoAL 81

Chapter 21: STReeT fIGhTING MeN 85

Chapter 22: Why DoN’T We Do IT IN WeMBLey STADIUM? 89

Contents

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he used to run us into the ground, fitness mad, run, run, run. He was a bit of a control freak, and the tracksuit revolt a few years before was typical, when he wouldn’t let the players wear tracksuits in the cold because he could train in a T-shirt and shorts! Away from the game, he was fine, he’d come to supporters’ clubs things and be the life and soul, but on the training pitch, totally different. It was Jekyll and Hyde.

“Looking back, he was building a new team a little bit in that 1966/67 season, because he obviously identified we had some problems at the back. Jimmy bought Eddie Colquhoun, John Osborme and John Talbut about the same time to shore up the defence. He made some good signings for us, he could spot a player, there was nobody better than him at that. He obviously thought we were a bit frail at that time at the back. Stan Jones was coming to the end of his career here, Terry Simpson had gone, we’d changed around in goal with Dick Sheppard and Ray Potter, but neither of them ever quite established himself ahead of the other, so Jimmy was looking to rebuild a bit. But in the finish, he never got the benefit out of it, and ironically, that was partly because Ossie was cup tied for the League Cup Final against QPR. He’d not long joined, him and John Talbut. They couldn’t play and probably that disrupted us a bit.”

In the final analysis, although Jimmy Hagan had plenty of issues to deal with over the time he spent at The Haw-thorns, from the big controversies such as the tracksuit revolt to the smaller, but regular, day to day disputes with pretty well every player who came under his charge, it was that QPR debacle that really did for him. Had Albion beaten Rangers and retained the League Cup, his position would have been pretty much secure even though they had endured another middling year in the First Division. Instead, Hagan got the chop and as the sixties were swinging, Albion were in turmoil, looking for the fourth manager since Vic Buckingham, our last FA Cup winning boss, had resigned in the summer of 1959.

Hagan’s qualities as a footballing man had never been in question, nor his ability to make shrewd signings and piece together a side capable of scoring freely and, on its day, taking apart any opposition. But Hagan’s acerbic nature and his talent for alienating players was increasingly out of step with the times, times when managers were increasingly looked upon as motivators, managers of men, not simply overlords of football units. The likes of Bill Shankly and Matt Busby were seen as the archetypes of a role that was still being fleshed out.

In the pre-war era, the job of the football manager was marginal at best. Teams were chosen by the board of directors, training was rudimentary, restricted to simple lapping of the field for the most part, the ball appearing only on a Saturday on the basis that players would be hungrier for it, having not seen it all week, though as Danny Blanchflower later pointed out, if they hadn’t seen it from Monday to Friday, how were they supposed to recognise it and know what to do with it come matchday?

Tactics, up until the arrival of the all-conquering Hungarians in 1953 were straightforward, all teams pretty much employing the WM formation of two full-backs, three half-backs and five forwards, strait-jacketed to the point where anyone shrewd enough to make even the most minor switch could clean up, as Albion did when Ronnie Allen played a deeper lying centre-forward role for the Throstles in the ‘50s.

Thirty years before, Herbert Chapman’s introduction of the stopper centre-half to exploit the changes in the off-side rule in the 1920s established him as the greatest manager of his time at a single, simple stroke, but by 1967, the manager was suddenly looked upon as the all-knowing guru who could deliver overnight success or, if he didn’t, could have an equally swift appointment with the employment exchange.

In the wake of Hagan, the Throstles were ready for a change of tack. Hagan’s ability to spot a player had seen him assemble a talented squad. Now the Albion board wanted to get the best out of that investment. The QPR debacle convinced them that Hagan could not deliver, so they turned to a younger generation and a man who had been cultivating a healthy reputation for himself at Carlisle United, the first staging post in the managerial career of the great Shankly himself, an encouraging portent. And so it was that, on the afternoon that Chelsea and Spurs

were battling it out in the 1967 FA Cup Final, Alan Ashman was being offered the job as Albion manager – how’s that for an omen?

The 38 year old Ashman, a former Nottingham Forest and Carlisle player, had had few intentions of going into football management after retiring from the game, becoming a chicken farmer after hanging up his boots, keeping in touch with football by running the amateur team in Penrith. Carlisle came calling again though, offering him the job as boss, an inspired appointment as United swiftly won promotion from Fourth and Third Divisions in succes-sive seasons before just missing out on a hat-trick in 1967, finishing up just outside the promotion places behind Coventry and Wolves.

Even so, as Tony Brown says, he was a bit of an unknown quantity. “We didn’t know anything about him at all before he came. All I knew was he’d been a centre-forward, good header of the ball. When he came, jokingly he’d say to Jeff, “One day, I’ll teach you how to head the ball properly! You’re not in the same street as me!” But we knew really nothing of him. The big thing in the press was that he was a chicken farmer, but that was it, we didn’t know what to expect from him, and probably that’s good, you don’t react to the reputation, you react to the person. When Don Howe came in, it was different some of us knew him, we had all the expectations because of his time at Arsenal, but with Alan, we had no ideas about him at all.”

So new was Ashman to the entire midlands scene that the Sports Argus tracked him down and threw some quick-fire questions at him to see what he was made of. The thoughts of Alan Ashman ran thus:

“No matter what you do or what you pay, every player wants to be in the first team. No one is really satisfied to be left out. But a first team squad of 15 players over a season, taking in a 50 plus League and Cup match programme, is bound to give first team football to all of them pretty regularly, allowing for injuries and loss of form.

“I am sure that first and foremost, the good supporter wants to see his team win. I hardly think any team can go through a time winning matches and playing badly, but there are times, when the situation warrants it, when you must resort to a hard defensive game.

“Referees in general are of a high standard, but the game has become much more theatrical. Supporters almost take part in it. There are a few more “actors” on the field than there used to be.”

With the season almost upon him, Ashman focused on the task ahead. For all that Albion were great cup fight-ers, all was not rosy in The Hawthorns’ garden. Sir Robert Hope had asked for a transfer to enable him to return Scotland – 47 years later and he still hasn’t gone! – while there was some discussion as to whether Graham Wil-liams should be replaced as captain after what was termed an ordinary season for him in 1966/67. Dougie Fraser was touted as a potential replacement as skipper, while young Ray Wilson was highly regarded as a future Albion number three. Ashman moved swiftly to assure supporters that Williams was his captain, while as the summer rumbled on, it became ever more apparent that Hope, the midfield magician around whom so much of Albion’s play revolved, was going nowhere.

Ashman left the Argus with one final thought, on the importance of hitting the ground running.

“A good start is most important. There is no guarantee that any team will start well but what we can do is plan and work for it. At Albion, I have been very impressed with the way everyone is willing to work. I feel more and more confident we have the willingness, and the right sort of players and people at this club to give us a good start.”

If only he’d known…

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Chapter 2: ARe yoU eXPeRIeNCeD?

Having taken over at The Hawthorns in May 1967, Alan Ashman had the advantage of the best part of two months to plan pre-season, then six weeks of intensive work with his new charges before the first ball in the First Division was kicked on August 19th.

Just as we see today, part of those preparations take the firm of pre-season friendlies, the Baggies looking for an early test of their credentials in the south of England, with games at Bristol City and then at Bournemouth inside 48 hours. Under new management, these games had a particular edge that was unlike normal pre-season friendlies, Ashman looking to formulate his best eleven ahead of the season, the side he hoped would carry him through the season – these were the days before squad rotation, when the top players would battle their way through 50 or 60 games a season on pitches like ploughed fields for much of the winter. Once the best team was picked, changes were made for injury, loss of form or suspension, not to let anybody put their feet up.

August 7th saw the Albion roll up at Ashton Gate for a game that drew a crowd of 7,719, significantly more im-pressive than a similar pre-season game would attract nowadays. Plenty of interest was shown in the Albion side that Ashman put out, a team which contained plenty of familiar names. John Osborne was in goal, Doug Fraser and skipper Graham Williams were at full-back with John Talbut and Eddie Colquhoun the central defenders. Kenny Foggo and Clive Clark played out wide, Tony Brown and Bobby Hope in the centre of the park, Jeff Astle and John Kaye the battering ram up front.

The Throstles employed a 4-2-4 system according to contemporary reports, the Evening Mail paying particularly close attention to the way Ashman had changed the positioning of some of his players, Fraser taking on a full-back role after playing all his previous football at wing-half. With the Scot dropping back, it opened up a midfield berth for Tony Brown, who had hitherto been more often a member of the forward line, be it out wide or in an inside forward position. That move was to turn Brown, already a great goalscorer for the Throstles, into a unique scoring machine, fielding him in a position where his vision and his eye for a chance could be even more telling.

“I played a midfield kind of role for Albion. I never really fitted in as an out and out striker with my back to goal, it wasn’t my game to hold the ball up the way Jeff Astle or John Kaye might. I needed to have things laid out in front of me.

“I didn’t play in the hole as they call it now because I did a defensive job as well, but I had more licence because as time went on that season, the way the side lined up change and eventually I had Ian Collard, Bobby Hope, Gra-ham Lovett behind me because we only played with Clive Clark as a winger as things evolved. They would dig in behind me, so I had that security to bomb on, a bit like Paul Scholes or Frank Lampard in recent times or maybe Yaya Toure at the moment.

“Managers used to say to me, “You’re not a ball winner, but do a midfielder’s job. Stay with runners, track back, make it hard for them, stop them going where they want to, don’t let them get free in the box, be a nuisance to them”. You don’t have to be Bryan Robson winning tackles all over the place, you just need to understand the game and do your bit for the side.”

The way in which Tony Brown would cause havoc was something for the future, but going into these pre-season games, all eyes were on Clive Clark to see if he could emulate his astonishing form of the previous season. Bang-ing in 28 goals from his position out on the flank, as well as providing the ammunition that Astle and Kaye thrived upon, Clark was one of the most exciting talents in England, the kind who would surely have won international honours had he not been playing in the era when England had won the Jules Rimet trophy with the “wingless won-ders” system. Alan Ashman

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Fortunately, Albion still believed in the value of attacking with width and Clark was always going to be integral to Ashman’s plans. And if there was ever any doubt, his performance at Ashton Gate quickly dispelled it. The Thros-tles had been the better side throughout the opening half but it wasn’t until the 43rd minute that they broke the deadlock, Astle involved in the build up, Clark applying the finishing touch. Two minutes after the break, it was a similar combination that made it 2-0, Clark doubling his and Albion’s tally, moving the City manager, Fred Ford, to exclaim, “He is worth an extra three men to any team”.

Crowe blasted in a goal from 25 yards after 54 minutes to reduce the arrears, but Albion remained in command, Astle taking a pass from Brown, playing a quick one-two with Kaye and drilling the return ball past Gibson in City’s goal. Kenny Foggo completed the scoring ten minutes from time to complete a very pleasing work out for the Bag-gies, one in which perhaps the most significant move was Ashman’s refusal to use any substitutes.

Bournemouth offered the opposition two days later, Ray Fairfax replacing Williams at left-back, Gerry Howshall coming in at right-half to allow Brown to rejoin the forward line in place of Kaye who was carrying a groin strain. Albion lacked the same fluency going forward, but a clean sheet was perhaps of more lasting significance, an in-dicator that in his last months as manager, Jimmy Hagan had begun to resolve the Throstles’ biggest problem, a leaky defence.

The signing of John Talbut from Burnley in January 1067 looked to be the turning point, he and Eddie Colquhoun forming a “solid, towering partnership” according to one report. Another journalist, Dennis Shaw, added, “Albion under Ashman are likely to put defence before attack instead of the reverse approach adopted by the former Man-ager, Mr Jimmy Hagan.

“Secondly, there were signs of more uncompromising tackles from defenders than of old. The basis of Albion’s style seemed to be to always have seven men behind the ball, and sometimes as many as nine.”

With Albion infinitely more secure in defence, all that was needed to defeat Bournemouth was a single strike and that came from Tony Brown three minutes into the second half, diverting the goalkeeper’s clearance back into goal. Astle had a goal disallowed for pushing, but Albion had done enough to collect a morale boosting victory, the new season ten days distant.

Leading up to the big kick-off, the usual season previews were penned, the key question asked by the Sports Argus being “Can Albion be tough enough?” Lauding the fact that “Ambitious, widespread and most admirable ef-forts have been launched to raise the whole profile of the club”, Dennis Shaw questioned Ashman’s suitability for the task in hand, noting, “He must be able to buy wisely with the top of the First Division his aim AND he must get tactics across in the same highly successful way that he did at Carlisle”.

Much revolved around any change in emphasis, Shaw sniffily dismissing Hagan’s philosophy of “attack and be damned, with entertainment placed at least on a par with the desire to win”, a philosophy that had delivered Euro-pean football and consecutive League Cup Finals, one won, the other lost – if that’s crushing failure, can we have some more please?

The view from inside the dressing room was articulated by John Kaye in his Argus column, published as the Bag-gies were playing their opening fixture. “Albion have plenty of incentives” he wrote. “The Board has made it clear that they intend to boost the club to one of the foremost in the country and we have a new manager in Mr. Alan Ashman – so we want a better start than last year”.

Chelsea were Albion’s opening day opponents at The Hawthorns, ironically the club that had been busy losing the 1967 FA Cup Final at the very moment Alan Ashman was being offered the job as Albion boss. John Osborne was a doubt before the game, no surprise according to Tony Brown who remembers, “Ossie never thought he was

fit. He hated playing, and was always saying he wasn’t going to make it for Saturday!” Yet when the teamsheets were handed in, it wasn’t Osborne who was the notable absentee. Instead, Bobby Hope missed out, suffering from infected blisters on his feet, Gerry Howshall deputising for him.

As was then customary, the Throstles opened the game in a blaze of attacking glory, Tony Brown shooting over when well placed, Doug Fraser overlapping on the right to fire off a shot that Bonetti struggled to cope with, then Clive Clark nodded wide. But within nine minutes, the Baggies had conceded their first goal of the season, Bobby Tambling striking a beautiful shot with the outside of his left foot, the ball flying over Osborne before dipping vi-ciously into the net.

Albion regrouped, Astle coming close, Bonetti injured as the big centre-forward chased through, the England ‘keeper diving bravely at his feet to save. Retaliation was not long in coming, and, as you’d expect back then, it was Chopper Harris, who in another life would have made a great gangster, who sought retribution, putting Clark onto the running track. Astle was denied a penalty for a clear shove, but the interval came and went with Albion still a goal behind.

The cause wasn’t helped any just short of the hour mark with the loss of John Talbut, Ian Collard replacing the injured centre-half, Fraser having to clear Baldwin’s shot off the line as we regrouped. The closing stages of the game were all Albion, the Blues clinging desperately to their lead, running down the clock by whatever means pos-sible, but still Albion created chances.

Astle missed a sitter, then Brown dashed through to collect a Kaye through ball and score, only to find the lines-man’s flag waving him offside. As if that wasn’t enough, the errant official did it again minutes later as Brown guided a header into the Chelsea goal, signalling that this was not going to be Albion’s day, not that that should have been any great surprise to anyone – the Throstles had won just one opening day fixture in the swinging ‘60s, the 3-0 beating of West Ham in 1965/66.

For all that historical precedent, it was still a disappointing opening to the Alan Ashman era, both on and off the field – a dozen arrests were made by police as fighting broke out between opposition fans behind the goal before kick-off, some of the Chelsea fans having warmed up for the punch up by knocking seven bells out of a British Rail train on the way up from London. Ah yes, the golden age…

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Chapter 3: ThRoSTLeS AT The GATeS of DAWN

Facing Wolves early on in your reign as the Albion boss is the kind of challenge that can go either way – you become a hero or a villain pretty much instantaneously, depending on how the game goes. That’s what they mean when they talk of a baptism by fire, but for Ashman, it was worse yet – we had to take on the team from the Molineux twice inside seven days, home and away. Not much margin for error there.

Facing Wolves early on in your reign as the Albion boss is the kind of challenge that can go either way – you become a hero or a villain pretty much instantaneously, depending on how the game goes. That’s what they mean when they talk of a baptism by fire, but for Ashman, it was worse yet – we had to take on the team from the Mo-lineux twice inside seven days, home and away. Not much margin for error there.

From a Wolverhampton perspective, they were very much on a high after sneaking back into the top flight by finishing second in Division Two the previous season, six points clear of the team in third place, thereby denying Carlisle United a remarkable promotion. And Carlisle’s manager that year? Alan Ashman. Had Wolves had a slip up of 2002 proportions, Carlisle would have been in the top flight and Albion would have needed to look elsewhere for a new boss.

Wolves had begun the season well, overcoming Fulham at Craven Cottage on the opening day of the campaign, just as the Throstles were slipping to single goal defeat against Chelsea at The Hawthorns. With Don Revie’s powerful Leeds United up next for Wolves, it was important for them to get off to a winning start to their home programme, not least for the man who was their manager, Ronnie Allen, the great Albion centre-forward clearly engaging in some important missionary work, taking the beautiful game to those who hadn’t seen it before.

But for the Baggies, and for Ashman, this game was yet more important. Defeat against Chelsea was disappoint-ing and a little unfortunate given the balance of play. If Albion bounced back with a good display at Molineux, it could be easily forgotten, but if we were to lose the game, even in that gentler climate compared with today’s, the pressure would be on.

After the first day reverse, the Throstles were unchanged, Bobby Hope still suffering with injury, Gerry Howshall continuing to deputise. More than 52,000 spectators packed into the ageing Molineux stadium to watch proceed-ings and they should have seen Albion taking a seventh minute lead, but for an incident as rare as manure extract-ed from a rocking horse – Tony Brown missed an early penalty, given for handball by Woodfield.

Bomber had begun to take Albion’s spot kicks in the 1966/67 season when Bobby Cram, the previous penalty specialist, had begun to fall out of favour with Jimmy Hagan and was left out of the side. He’d knocked in four in that season, including a couple in one game against West Ham, so if he wasn’t quite the experienced dead eye from 12 yards that he was to become, there was every reason to imagine that Wolves’ 19 year old ‘keeper, the giant Phil Parkes, would be fishing the ball out of the net fairly shortly. Instead, as Brown blasted the ball straight down the middle, Parkes got his left hand to it and pushed the ball back into play.

Contemporary reports suggest that Wolves had the better of the following exchanges, John Osborne forced into early action to make a good save from Derek Dougan, put through on goal by Mike Bailey. There were early book-ings for Woodfield, for a hack on Jeff Astle, and for Kenny Foggo for dissent, but the referee’s next big decision came at the half hour point, Wharton shooting across the face of goal and wide, Osborne just following it round the post with an outstretched hand. Ossie should have kept his bionic knuckles to himself because the referee saw the gesture and concluded that he’d pushed the ball behind, duly awarding Wolves a corner, Osborne protesting vehemently but unsuccessfully. Dave Wagstaffe arced in the flag kick, Dougan got up to plant his head on it and Hunt diverted it over the line as Albion were in disarray and without their concentration. Wolves’ lead endured to Clive Clark

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the break, Ashman setting about turning things around with his half-time talk.

Getting greater width to exploit the Wolves full-backs, Taylor and Thomson, was one area that Albion chose to focus on, not least because it was important to put young Parkes under aerial pressure so early in his career at the top level. The approach paid dividends just a handful of minutes into the second half, Astle taking a quick throw to set Foggo away down the wing, Foggo responding with a fine cross which Parkes, totally losing his bearings, could only punch into his own net. All square.

Taylor went into the book for the typically shabby Wolverhampton trick of pushing Clive Clark over from behind, Jimmy Dunn rushing on to administer the magic sponge to the ailing winger. While Clark was still reeling, his oppo-site number, Wagstaffe, set in train the move that was to recapture the lead for Wolves, going on a mazy run that took him further infield. There, he spotted Bailey in space, delivering a fine pass for Bailey to crack past Osborne from fully 25 yards.

The unkindest cut of all came with 17 minutes to go when Wolves went 3-1 up courtesy of another former Albion star fallen on hard times. Hunt tapped a free-kick to one side and David Burnside crashed in a shot from a similar distance to Bailey’s, Osborne again grasping thin air as the ball flashed past him.

The Birmingham Post reported that, “the confident Wolves were walking away with the match. They showed up all the deficiencies that Albion still retained from last season – ponderous play in the middle of defence and an attack which lacks point”. But with time running out, that attack suddenly came into sharp focus and with seven minutes left on the clock, John Kaye bundled the ball over the line, Wolves trying to claim it had been cleared, play going on until the linesman’s award of the goal was noticed by the referee.

Albion pressed forward frenetically in search of the equaliser but it seemed the Wolves would hang on. But in the last minute, cometh the hour, cometh the hand of God. Skipper Graham Williams picked up the ball out on the left and swung a high cross into the box. Parkes was beaten to the punch, quite literally, by Tony Brown, atoning for the missed penalty by guiding the ball into the net with a deft movement of the hand. Albion had salvaged a draw in the dying seconds, but the day got funnier yet for Albion fans as Parkes, a youthful Albion fan, dashed off his line in protest, knocked John Kaye over and then pushed the referee, enough for Mr. Carr to point out where the dressing rooms were and suggest he go there a little earlier than the other 21 players.

With Molineux seething, the referee getting a police escort off the field, all suddenly seemed right with the world, but the fact that the Baggies had snatched their first point of the season did not blind anyone to the plain truth – the Throstles had made a poor start to things and, though they hadn’t lost a huge amount of ground on the rest of the First Division in those days of two points for a win, there was a lot of work to be done on the training field.

Not that there was any time after that Wednesday night game. The Baggies had a second consecutive away game in the offing, travelling down to Southampton for the game on Saturday afternoon, a game to be played out in the packed arena that was The Dell, a suffocating little football ground that offered huge home advantage to the Saints, something they exploited for years to keep them in and around the top flight.

The Baggies had only visited four times in the post-war era as Southampton spent the bulk of those years in the lower reaches of the Football League, but now they were becoming something of a force with a team that included Martin Chivers, Ron Davies and the England winger Terry Paine, a man who could be replied upon to star for the Saints on home turf, even if his away performances were rather less robust.

It was Paine who was the star turn as Southampton ripped a reshaped Albion to shreds. Bobby Hope was back, but probably wished he wasn’t, replacing Kenny Foggo. An injury to Eddie Colquhoun saw Doug Fraser move into central defence from right-back, Dennis Clarke taking the full-back role, yet Albion started the game in cohesive

mood despite the changes, playing some bright football until the brink of half-time whereupon, from nowhere, Paine conjured up a spectacular volley that flew into the back of the net and, from there, Albion simply collapsed.

The second half saw Saints on top, Ron Davies doubling the lead with a penalty after an hour, Sydenham and Davies again rubbing salt into the wounds late on as Southampton completed a comprehensive 4-0 win.

So, once again, for the second time in a week, Ashman was to prepare his team to take on the Wolves in a game that had far greater resonance than simply the fight for local pride. After such a sluggish start to the season, Albion simply could not lose, though this time, at least we had home advantage at The Hawthorns.

Looking for the formula that would kick start Albion’s season, Ashman made changes once more. Eddie Col-quhoun returned to the centre of defence, but Fraser moved back to his old wing-half position to give more bite to the midfield, Howshall missing out. Ray Fairfax came in for a first game of the season at right-back, Kenny Ste-phens getting the nod to play wide on the right, John Kaye dropping to the bench and admitting, “I’ve been playing badly and don’t deserve to be in”.

By now, football was having to compete against television for the role as the opium of the masses and the crowd for the return game with Wolves was poor, the screening of the final show in the long running series “The Fugitive” blamed for the attendance coming in at a very disappointing 38,373. The Albion fans that missed out should have been ashamed of themselves, and they were made to pay in the worst possible way – missing out on being there on a night where the Throstles absolutely thumped Wolves out of sight.

Where Wolves had been the more confident attacking unit at the Molineux, Colquhoun, John Talbut, Fairfax and Williams had Dougan, Wagstaffe and the returning Burnside in their pocket pretty much throughout, Mike Bailey the biggest threat coming through from midfield. At the other end of the field, Albion were delighted to see Jeff Astle get off the mark for the season with the first goal of the game, a crucial strike that helped settle any nerves around the stadium. In spite of that, Bailey got Wolves back on terms with yet another long range strike – John Osborne must have been getting a little bit tired of being on the receiving end of goal of the season contenders by that stage.

Happily, Clive Clark made a clever run to get on the end of a through ball which he nodded over the oncoming Parkes to restore the lead and from there, there was only ever going to be one winner. Stephens made it a good night for the wide men by making it 3-1 and the rout was completed by Kaye, coming off the bench to bang in the fourth after further good work by Stephens.

A first win under the belt, a much improved performance, a defence suddenly playing as a unit, and four goals to savour. Had Alan Ashman and his team turned the corner now? Were the Baggies on their way? With two home games in a row to come, surely things were looking up? Pity those games were going to be against Liverpool and Arsenal.

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Chapter 4: fIXING A hoLe

There’s nothing quite like handing a thumping out to the Wolves to get the feelgood factor going around the Hawthorns and after the Baggies had seen off the team from Staffordshire to the tune of four goals to one, new Albion boss Alan Ashman must have started to feel that things were coming together for him. A win, a draw (both against Wolves) and a couple of defeats wasn’t a perfect start by any means, especially as we weren’t allowed to play Wolverhampton every week, but the Baggies had edged up to 16th, had scored seven goals and were beginning to find a rhythm.

But if any team in the 1960s was going to put a spanner in the works, it was Liverpool, Bill Shankly’s mean, lean Red Army. The great team that had won the League twice, the FA Cup too and reached the semi-finals of the Euro-pean Cup between 1964 and 1966 was showing early signs that they had just – only just – passed their peak, but they were still a relentless, driving footballing machine that struck fear into every side in the land.

And then there was Shanks himself, the greatest football man of all time. Not only did he assemble wonderful football teams, not only did he show them how to play, motivate them, encourage them, put the fear of God into them, he managed to put the opposition on the defensive before a ball was kicked. Never mind Mourinho or Fergu-son, Bill Shankly was the master of the mind games, as Ray Wilson remembers from an encounter in 1969.

“In the old Halfords Lane stand where the dressing rooms were, there was a long thin corridor. Before a game with Liverpool, I was on my down there with John Osborne, and Shanks was coming the other way. I knew Bill from playing with the Under 21s in Scotland, so he said, “Hello Ray son, how are you?”

“Great thanks Bill”.

“And you Ossie, how are you son?”

“Well Bill, not so good. I’ve got this injury, it’s plaguing me. I’ll be alright for next week, but I’m not playing today.”

“Not playing? Why did nobody tell me? Jesus Christ boys, get out of my way! I’m going to have to go in there and give another team talk now you’ve got a real goalkeeper playing!””

Ironically enough, Osborne was ruled out of the 1967 encounter too, septic blisters on his feet ruling him out, Rick Sheppard drafted in to wear the number one shirt for the first time since the Baggies had lost 3-2 to QPR in the League Cup Final. Otherwise, it was an unchanged Albion from the team that had defeated the Wolves, lining up against Lawrence, Lawler, Yeats, Hughes, Byrne, Smith, Callaghan, St John, Thompson, Hunt and Hateley, legends in the game, then and now.

Liverpool took until the sixth minute to muster a first attack, and it ended with Albion picking the ball, and Shep-pard, out of the back of the net. Peter Thompson drifted in a free-kick from the left, Sheppard coming to collect, only to be eased over the line by Tony Hateley on his way down. Today, it would be a foul on the goalkeeper, no question, but 1967 was a rather more robust time and Liverpool had the lead, the last thing you ever needed to give them. It could have been worse a dozen minutes in when Ian Callaghan blasted in a shot from distance, Albion reprieved when the goal was disallowed with Hateley standing offside – oddly enough, under today’s rules, that goal would have stood. Swings and roundabouts…

For all that there was still only a goal in it, according to Ray Matts’ report on the game, the home side was hanging on grimly. “Albion were really finding it rough going against the Merseysiders who were inspired by their early goal and the home defence was under terrific pressure for most of the half. Liverpool were much sharper in the tackle

Terry Paine scores for Southampton

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and Albion were forced to weave harmlessly about in midfield”.

The Baggies might have found a way back into the game in the second half, for six minutes in, a fine cross picked out Jeff Astle, the King cracking a header past the flat footed Tommy Lawrence, the “Flying Pig” nowhere near it, but he couldn’t beat the crossbar, the ball thudding off the woodwork and away. It was a pivotal moment for, on the hour mark, Liverpool finished the job of throttling the Throstles by making it 2-0, securing the two points, World Cup winner Roger Hunt latching onto a Hateley knock down and thrashing the ball beyond Sheppard.

Albion skulked away from the ground well beaten by, admittedly, a magnificent team, but with the season still to get off the ground, an early place in the bottom two secured. A midweek meeting with Arsenal under floodlights was next up, Albion perhaps encouraged by the fact that the Gunners themselves had yet to hit their straps, only five points on the board compared with our three. A win would draw us level with them and people would start to feel there was nothing much wrong at the Hawthorns once again.

Unlike Liverpool, Arsenal were slowly building again after a pretty fallow period – things would get worse for them yet, losing the League Cup Final of 1969 to Swindon Town, a catastrophe on a par with our QPR humiliation – but there were signs they were piecing together a handy side. Peter Storey, a genuinely savage competitor was there, Frank McLintock, an intelligent leader, the suave George Graham, the wiry, quick little winger George Armstrong. These men were to be the bedrock of the 1970/71 double winners, but Arsenal were still some way short of the finished article and Albion had genuine reasons to believe they could come out on top as they went into the game, particularly with John Osborne fit to play again, John Kaye restored to the side, Tony Brown left on the bench.

Oddly, given their status in the bottom two, Albion were guilty of early over confidence, playing far too casually for comfort, giving the visitors a stranglehold on the game that they never relinquished. Reporter Gron Williams, noting the crowd of less than 20,000, reported, “Just as for the major part of last season, Albion are living adventurously. They seem a team of gay adventurers, almost amateurs in this serious business of First Division football. They lack the solid method to carry through a match with certainty – particularly when they are faced with such firmly mar-shalled defences as Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal have brought to The Hawthorns this season. The crowd sev-eral time raised a slow hand clap and there will soon be trouble if they continue to wallow in the relegation zone”.

Truth to tell, neither side were sparkling in the early moments of the game and it was gone the half hour before the match started to come to life, but sadly at the wrong end, Osborne making fine saves from Johnston and Mc-Lintock. But Arsenal wouldn’t be kept at bay and the first goal came after 33 minutes. Their inside-right, Colin Ad-dison, later to earn fame as Albion’s assistant manager under Ron Atkinson, was the architect, playing Armstrong through, the winger putting the ball in the net off Osborne.

With Albion still reeling, the Gunners went 2-0 up after 38 minutes, Graham heading down a Storey free-kick, Jon Sammels lashing it over Osborne and in. Albion enjoyed a late first half flurry, having a penalty appeal against a Terry Neill handball turned down, then seeing a penalty area foul on Astle rewarded with an indirect free-kick which came to nothing.

That momentum was carried into the second half, Furnell at his best to save from winger Kenny Stephens, but he could do nothing to keep out a Clive Clark header after 56 minutes, Chippy getting up well to head in a Stephens cross. That should have been the signal for Albion to take control of the game, but instead, within five minutes, they were staring at a two goal deficit once more, Addison bundling in a Graham cross to make it 3-1 – it’s amazing we ever let him come back here.

It took Albion time to get back on track, but in the final quarter of an hour, they “swarmed around the Arsenal goal, but a packed defence and the brilliance of Furnell kept them out”. Bobby Hope came close, Furnell twice tipping long range shots over the bar, then Astle forced the ‘keeper into a diving save with a strong header, but a comeback

was not to be, 3-1 to Arsenal the final score.

We all know that trying to beat Stoke these days is like pushing jelly uphill, but it wasn’t a whole lot better 40 years ago, especially on trips to the poky little Victoria Ground, a real footballing cockpit that created a rowdy atmosphere when roused. Stoke had made a steady start to proceedings and boasted a good side under Tony Waddington, building from the back and the qualities of the greatest goalkeeper of his day, Gordon Banks. The likes of Eric Skeels and Alan Bloor were powerful in defence, but Stoke’s strength was going forward, employing the experience of George Eastham and Peter Dobing and the youth of John Mahoney and Terry Conroy, both very underrated players suffering, as many Albion men did, from playing for an “unfashionable” club.

For long stretches of the game, a midfield stalemate ensued, the two sides cancelling each other out as Ashman looked to find the right combination, Jeff Astle demoted to the substitutes’ bench in place of the returning Brown, Ian Collard coming into the middle, allowing Doug Fraser to drop back to right-back instead of Ray Fairfax. In spite of the changes, it was Stoke who enjoyed the better of the game, but solid defensive work by Eddie Colquhoun and John Talbut in particular kept the chances down to a minimum, Osborne equal to the few that got through.

Attackers on both sides were profligate, Brown and Kaye coming in for particular criticism from the press from an Albion viewpoint in sharp contrast to Bobby Hope who tested Banks from distance on a couple of occasions. But for all that, Albion’s sound defensive play seemed to have done its job as we entered the last 60 seconds, a teasing cross from Clark drawing Bloor into handling it, the referee pointing to the spot.

Graham Williams against Gordon Banks to give Albion the points. As the Birmingham Post reported, “Williams gasped as his shot sent Banks the wrong way only for the ball to hit the ‘keeper’s outstretched leg and ricochet over the bar”. A goalless draw and a second away point of the season, not bad? Not good enough though. The league table saw Albion residing unhappily in 22nd place of the First Division. Had we hit rock bottom? No, not yet. Not by a long way.

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Chapter 5: NoT oNLy… BUT ALSo

It might be an exaggeration to say that the Albion were playing like drains at the start of the 1967/68, but the fact that an unusual number of plumbers were taking a special interest in our affairs told its own story. Bottom of the division after seven games, four points taken from a possible 14, the only consolation being that three of them were taken off the Wolves. No, the golden new era promised under Alan Ashman was taking a little time to materialise.

Still, 40 years or so ago, if you wanted to get the Albion going, all you had to do was show them a cup tie. There was no better cup fighting side in the country than the Throstles, especially if you were looking at the Football League Cup, a competition we had only entered twice. We ran away with the trophy at the first time of asking, beating West Ham United 5-3 over two games in the final in 1966, and then the following year, we went all the way to the final, the first time it had been held at Wembley Stadium, only to implode in the second half and let a 2-0 lead slip away to a 3-2 beating at the hands of Third Division QPR.

The draw for the second round of the League Cup, the stage at which we entered it, was tricky, but not especially unkind. Albion were presented with a journey down to Elm Park, then the home of Reading. Reading had made a useful start to the season, winning four of their first five league games, beating Bristol Rovers too in the first round of the competition. Yes, they were second in their league, but that league was Division Three. After Albion’s disaster at the hands of Queens Park Rangers the season before, you would have thought not only would we be prepared for the dangers, we would positively relish the chance of inflicting a bit of vengeful damage on a minnow as atonement for the previous year’s debacle.

Or not. Albion tumbled out of the League Cup at the first time of asking, with barely a whimper, a humbling great-er even than the one at Wembley because at least in north London, the Baggies had competed, had led and had been, at best, unfortunate with some of the refereeing decisions. But at Elm Park, they were simply woeful – and this was in the days before the League Cup became the competition where you gave fringe players a chance. You played your best side, or you were fined heavily for not doing so. Writing in the Express & Star, Robert Blackburn said, “There can be no excuses. Last night’s beating was only a continuation of the disappointing form which has run Albion into an early season struggle. Manager Alan Ashman preferred to remain silent. That is understandable. He has been handed enough headaches to make him reach for the aspirin”.

In attack, Albion were derided by opposition and press, Blackburn reporting, “The fact that a Third Division re-arguard could shut out this laboriously tip-tapping attack provides its own condemnation. The need for a striker is urgent”. Defensively we weren’t so hot either, falling behind after 27 minutes, though Ian Collard gave Albion hope of a second half revival by grabbing an equaliser just before half time. But if anything, Albion were even more ineffectual after the break and chucked in two Reading goals in six minutes just before the hour mark to seal our fate. Things were spiralling very rapidly out of control, Blackburn damning a lacklustre effort with, “On paper, Albion should have walked this one – they tried to do just that too often”.

The following day, the players reported for training as usual. What they didn’t find was the usual Alan Ashman, as Tony Brown recalls. “That was the point where it became obvious we had to do something to stop the rot. We had a nightmare start to that season, lost a lot of games and it was only the fact that we got a draw at Molineux and beat them up here that we kept the real pressure off. The first couple of months were horrendous but we went off to Elm Park to play Reading in the League Cup and that should have kick started us. Bearing in mind we’d been finalists the previous year but lost to a Third Division side at Wembley, we should have been really up for winning that one, especially the way the season was going.

“But we were awful, we got beat, and the following morning, Alan got us all in at the gym at Spring Road and that was the first time he blew his top at us. I remember him saying that it wasn’t good enough, that it wasn’t acceptable, Rick Sheppard is eased into the net by Tony Hateley

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that we had to start improving. He laid the law down and I think he was panicking a little bit to be honest. I think he was worrying about his job, because it was a terrible start.

“I don’t know if we thought he was a soft touch, whether it was just a culture shock after Jimmy Hagan, the fact that it was more light hearted, that we were treated like adults. Maybe we did take him for granted, it was a bit easy-osie, a bit blasé at that stage, but once he stamped his authority on the place, that was it. You do need a blast every now and again, the kick up the backside. The Wolves games where we’d done well, those are games where you don’t need geeing up, you know you’ve got to go and do it for the supporters. We’d let him down in the others”.

Skipper Graham Williams recalls that the players accepted they had to raise their game, and were keen to do it for Ashman. “It was pretty much the same team as the previous year under Alan, but we took time to adapt to him because he was such a contrast to Jimmy, very gentle. You could have a laugh at training and the dressing room became a great place to be, because the jokers like Jeff, Dougie, Hopey, Ossie, they could all come through. Jeff and Tony were like Morecambe and Wise. So from being frightened to do anything, we were suddenly free to be ourselves.

“We had a slow start, but really the change came that summer, when it became a fun place to be again. You’d come in on your day off, just because it was a great place to be. You’d play five-a-sides, Scotland and Wales ver-sus England. None of the coaches were in, that was our day, and the atmosphere just lifted. We played for orange juice, losers had to buy it. People would be asking if we’d got homes to go to! It was just great fun. We’d come in early just to have a five-a-side before we started proper training. At the end of training, there was a room upstairs and we’d play table tennis afterwards.

“But the problem was, results become habits. If you win a couple, you expect to win every week, and the same with losing. At the start of the season, we were losing all the time and it takes something to dig yourself out of that”.

Perhaps it needed a game where Albion were, if not underdogs, then at least up against it, to draw the very best out of them, to find some spirit. The visit of Nottingham Forest was probably the perfect game, with Forest riding high in fourth place, but very definitely a footballing side, playing a 4-4-2 formation and looking to attack, but miss-ing Henry Newton and John Barnwell, their key midfielders. You couldn’t have scripted better opponents.

Ashman made changes, putting Graham Williams on the bench, John Kaye and Tony Brown missing out alto-gether, Ray Treacy, Kenny Stephens and Danny Campbell coming into the side, a bold move given that Ashman had never actually seen either Treacy or Campbell play. In spite of the Albion changes, Forest were in fine form and were dominant for long stretches of the first half. But where Albion had capitulated in earlier games, on this afternoon, they were giving nothing away, putting in a gutsy, fighting display to keep them at arm’s length through a frenetic first half an hour.

The value of digging in and giving nothing away was very apparent 30 minutes into the game when the Throstles fashioned their first decent chance, Bobby Hope whacking the ball past the hapless Forest ‘keeper from just inside the box. Having got in front, the Baggies enjoyed a more upbeat ending to the half, prior to coming out and finding themselves under the cosh once again, the second half a repeat of the first, Forest throwing everyone forward, Albion defending as if their lives depended on it.

And, again, just like in the first half, such bravery got its reward midway through the second period as we mounted a rare attack, Jeff Astle, finally finding his true form, getting on the end of a cross, his header thumping against the crossbar and dropping invitingly for Stephens to ram into the roof of the net.

The visitors managed to grab a goal back with 14 minutes still to play, Ian Storey-Moore belting a long range drive past John Osborne, but this game was to going to slip from our grasp. A 2-1 win was duly completed, Ashman

commenting afterwards, “I was pleased with the way the boys went in for the ball. They showed more fight”.

Albion had duly climbed four places to 18th and though that made things feel much, much better, there were still problems at The Hawthorns. On Monday morning, the newspapers were full of stories that Clive Clark was on his way out of the club, Leeds United the favourite to get his signature, Leicester and Coventry both making overtures of their own. With Ashman looking to make signings of his own to change what seemed an ailing squad, the fee of around £60,000 that Chippy would have attracted was undeniably tempting, while for Clark, Leeds had to be an attractive proposition, not only because of their obvious quality but because it was the club where his career had begun as an amateur in the days before they were transformed by Don Revie.

Other reports suggested that Ashman was preparing for a huge clear out of players that were suddenly dead wood, Astle, Kaye and Williams all rumoured to be on the hit list, unthinkable given what they had already done for the club and the successes they were to go on and enjoy. As things transpired, none of those three, nor Clive Clark were through the out door. Just as well really. Who would have won us the cup otherwise?

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Chapter 6: foUR IN hAND

After a grizzly start to his reign as Albion manager, after the 2-1 victory over Nottingham Forest, Alan Ashman could begin to look optimistically towards the rest of the season. The tongue lashing that he had given his team after their inept departure from the League Cup at Reading had seemingly had the desired effect and the Baggies had jumped out of the bottom two to the relative heights of 18th position. Not good enough – not nearly good enough – but at least it seemed as if the patient was finally on the mend.

Albion’s trip to Highfield Road on 23rd September seemed like the perfect opportunity for the Throstles to un-derline that things were on the up and up. After all, Coventry, in their first ever season in the top flight, were strug-gling to come to terms with the new level, were a point worse off than the Baggies and were in the bottom two themselves after successive beatings at the hands of Manchester City and Newcastle United. A golden chance for Albion to put distance between themselves and the lower reaches of the division.

Ashman brought Graham Williams back into the team in place of the injured Doug Fraser, John Kaye also coming back in at the expense of young Ray Treacy who dropped to the bench. All seemed well as the Throstles tore into their Sky Blue opponents, the home side barely able to get a kick in the first ten minutes, by which time Jeff Astle had put us into a 1-0 lead with only his second goal of the season.

The ease with which Albion had got on top and imposed their superiority proved something of a false dawn. Per-haps we took the opposition too lightly, became complacent that the rest of the game was going to be a proces-sion. Whatever the cause, Brian Lewis changed all of that when he got to a loose ball first in the Albion area and equalised after 14 minutes.

Worse was to come before half time when Ronnie Rees, later to become an Albion player, ended the first period on a high for Coventry by snatching a 43rd minute lead as Albion stuttered badly all over the field, their early rhythm lost and apparently gone for good. The Birmingham Post was scathing in its report, complaining that, “Hope and Kaye linked with Collard in the middle line of a 4-3-3 plan. It was a plan wrecked by failure in every department, with Hope and Kaye negative and ineffective”.

Albion repeated their impressive first half start by getting back on level terms through Clive Clark almost immedi-ately from the restart, but it was another false dawn for a toiling team who struggled to make any further impression on a feisty Coventry backline, the Post adding, “Stephens and Astle showed endeavour and thrust but apart from spasmodic and below form bursts from Clark they fought a lone battle against a Coventry defence that covered its deficiencies with a rugged exterior. Coventry’s performance was one of complete team effort liberally laced with luck.”

Fortune was with them when Eddie Machin retook the lead with Coventry’s third goal in the 56th minute, the game finally sealed ten minutes from the finish when Ronnie Rees notched his second goal of the game. A 4-2 defeat, an abject performance and a fall to 20th place. No wonder the normally affable Ashman was beside himself after the game.

“Once Coventry got stuck in - and I don’t mean in an unfair sense – the lack of fight and determination in our play-ers was a big disappointment. Too many were acting – arguing about fouls and complaining to the referee while Coventry got on with the job.

“We would have been all right in an exhibition match but this was a competitive game and for competitive spirit, Coventry had us licked. They play with more enthusiasm than any other team in the country and you can’t afford to face them when only a few of your players are prepared to challenge.Suave, sophisticated men about Spring Road

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“When Coventry equalised, it should have had an even more marked effect on us than them. Our players should have been annoyed for letting the lead slip after their promising start. Instead they collapsed”.

In spite of his disappointment, Ashman resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes for the visit of Shef-field United the following week, the Blades one of only two teams below the Albion, with only six points and two wins to their name, though ominously, the second had come as Albion were losing at Coventry, Sheffield United beating Newcastle at Bramall Lane. That was a much needed upturn for John Harris’ team for in the previous three games they’d shipped four goals against Chelsea and Arsenal, then five at Manchester City, also finding time to go out of the League Cup at the hands of Millwall.

Given United’s form, Albion fans were asking themselves how many more golden chances did their side need before it hauled itself out of trouble at last? Gift horses seldom came any mouthier than Sheffield United, so this was the time to ignite the season at last. With Doug Fraser fit again, Danny Campbell was dropped and the injured Ian Collard was replaced by Tony Brown in what was to be a very significant switch.

With Albion in a parlous position, you might have expected there to be a real edginess about the dressing room before a ball was kicked in anger, but according to Bomber, things couldn’t have been a lot more relaxed. “We used to have a telly in the dressing room, and we’d be watching Grandstand or World of Sport or whatever it was before Alan would come in and give us his team talk. He came in the one day before we played Sheffield United and said, “Ok lads, turn it off”.

“Jeff said, “You can’t do that Alan, there’s a race on here, I’ve had a big tip on this.” So Alan just turned round, walked out on us and we never saw him again until half time! Jeff went and scored a hat-trick and we won the game easy, but Jeff was still fed up because, “That bleedin’ horse came last!”

“That was Alan’s way of not upsetting you before a game. He could have made a fuss, then we’d have all been in a bad mood, but he let it go and we went out and won the game. Jimmy Hagan would probably have chucked the telly in the bath, but Alan was more easy going and I think after that start period, we started to appreciate his style more. He became the kind of manager where you wanted to win games for him because he was such a nice bloke.”

It only took the King six minutes to repay Ashman for letting him watch his money go down the drain. Roaming out to the right, Astle played a short pass to Bobby Hope who picked out Clive Clark with a typically inch perfect centre. Clark wasn’t quite so accurate and his header squirted across the goal, finding Astle rushing back into the box to bludgeon a shot past Hodgkinson from close range.

The returning Tony Brown almost made his mark within a few minutes, picking up a loose ball, skipping past two heavy challenges and then shooting just wide of the goal. At the other end, John Osborne made a very good save to deny Fenoughty, but this was an on song Albion side who were pouring forward at every opportunity, pummelling the visitors’ defence. Astle headed another Hope cross wide after 20 minutes, but nine minutes later, the number nine had all but secured the points. Hope, in inspirational form in the middle, released Kenny Stephens down the right and his cross into the box had Astle’s name on it, the centre-forward leaping to get on the end of it and plant the ball into the net.

Goalkeeper Hodgkinson just about kept United in sight of the game when he made a magnificent fingertip save from john Kaye, but with half-time looming, Albion let their grip on the game slip just a little, Graham Williams dis-possessed near his own goal, Woodward belting in a shot across the face of goal which Osborne could only parry, Reece mopping up the rebound to make it 2-1.

With fresh hope, United started he second half well, Osborne producing another fine save from Fenoughty, but Albion were not going to slip up this time. Astle should have snatched his hat-trick early in the second half but was

robbed as he was about to convert a Clark effort, so it was left to Tony Brown to restore the two goal advantage in the 56th minute of the game. Hope, instrumental again, picked out a lovely pass to Brown, who advanced a few yards and then drilled in a low effort that skimmed across the turf and just inside the post, a typical goal from the Bomber.

But Astle was not going to miss out on the chance of taking the matchball home with him on the third anniversary of his signing for Albion and, with 12 minutes to go, he made it 4-1 to the Throstles, completing an emphatic win. Astle was set clean through by who else but Bobby Hope, advancing on Hodgkinson before belting a shot direct at the ‘keeper. As the rebound fell back to him, he hit it harder yet, Hodgkinson somehow getting in the way once more. Clive Clark was now on the scene, and he took a third swing, Hodgkinson again making the half save, the ball finally returning to Astle who, at last, stuck the chance away.

With the points safely pouched, Graham Williams put his finger on the difference between victory over Sheffield United and defeat at the hands of Coventry the previous week: “It is all a matter of effort. There was none at Cov-entry a week ago. This time they pulled their socks up”.

Some commentators understandably suggested that Albion’s convincing victory was as much down to the defi-ciencies of a Sheffield United team struggling for their lives and shorn of their best player, Mick Jones, who had made the switch to Leeds United, and it was certainly true that Albion still had defensive questions to address.

But a 4-1 win certainly lightened the load around Alan Ashman, things looking more encouraging at The Haw-thorns all of a sudden. Importantly too, the Throstles were beginning to find a pattern of play, as journalist Ralph Hadley pointed out: “Albion were well served in midfield. Brown, normally a forward and playing his first game at wing-half, worked well with Hope and they were in complete command.” Hadley was clearly someone who knew his stuff. Hope and Brown were about to become the fulcrum of a very, very good Albion team.

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Chapter 7: IT’S GeTTING BeTTeR

Finding new ways with which you can bring revenue into a football club has exercised administrators and managers pretty much since day one. This is a business that devours money, be it on stadium running costs, on transfer fees, on wages. Even now, in the era of multi-billion pound television deals, everybody is busy trying to bring a little bit more in so that we can pay a little bit more out and bring in that additional player who will make us just that little bit more competitive.

Back in the 1960s, the Throstles had the revolutionary idea that they should use the West Bromwich Albion name to launch a series of social clubs in Albion territory, working on the basis that fans would be loyal to the club name, would enjoy a pint, maybe even a little bit of chicken in a basket and cabaret, all in Albion owned surroundings, thereby putting a few more quid into the club coffers and improving the fare they were then queuing up to watch on a Saturday as well.

It was a bold move but one which, in 1967, appeared to be coming to fruition. The Throstle Club which used to stand next to the ground on the Birmingham Road had just closed its books to new members after dealing with its 4,000th application. That led Albion to acquire land in Langley and Hamstead to build branch clubs in 1967, with others set to follow.

Chairman Jim Gaunt spelt out the Albion attitude in the Sunday Mercury, saying, “We believe that the future of football lies not only in the game itself but in making everybody feel they are part of the club, to the extent that they can find friendship, comfort and entertainment in the places were we intend to provide it. If we can achieve this, and we are confident we can, we will all be happy.”

Rare to hear such socialist talk around the board room table, even if these were the years of Harold Wilson’s white hot technological revolution. But Gaunt’s idea was both plausible and intelligent and, for a time, the Throstle Clubs made a contribution to the club. But that was for the future. Early in the 1967/68 season, comfort and enter-tainment were in short supply around The Hawthorns as Albion misfired in the opening fixtures.

The 4-1 win over Sheffield United had eased matters but heading into October 1967, local journalist Ray Matts pointed out a string of problems in his “Inside Albion” column, problems that new boss Alan Ashman was struggling to handle. Pointing to the need for a consistent team, Matts wrote, “Already there have been well over 30 positional changes in nine games including the League and Cup. This is no criticism of manager Alan Ashman’s handling of the side since he arrived at The Hawthorns. If a player is performing badly he must be dropped because he does not deserve to be in the side – and no one can blame the manager for injuries. I feel some sympathy for him. He came to The Hawthorns believing – as did most people – the players were capable of achieving success.

“Events have proved otherwise because so many who finished last season playing so well are now struggling to regain their form. Ashman has every right to study his playing strength and this can only be done by trial and error in a competitive atmosphere.

“At the same time, however, success will not come Albion’s way until the point is reached when first team incom-ings and outgoings are minimal. No doubt, Ashman is aware of this. Success, I feel, will come Albion’s way only after the rearguard has been tightened by new signings.”

There were no new signings ahead of the trip to Craven Cottage on October 7th, Ashman taking Matts’ advice – always a dangerous precedent – by naming an unchanged team after the Sheffield United win. With Fulham a point below the Throstles and in the bottom two, a second successive Albion victory would be priceless, giving them the breathing space to begin looking up the table rather than over their shoulder. Tony Brown

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Without an away win, the Baggies set about their task with real relish, pushing Fulham onto the back foot, the presence of the great Johnny Haynes notwithstanding. Albion were brighter and sharper to every ball, though a nasty tackle on Tony Brown in the 15th minute threatened to curtail their momentum for a time, Bomber taking treatment for some considerable time before he was able to get up and carry on.

It took Albion a while to recapture that early spark, but after 34 minutes, they seized a deserved lead, Clive Clark creating the opening, scything through the Fulham defence, taking World Cup winning full-back George Cohen to the cleaners. He interchanged passes with John Kaye and Kenny Stephens before picking out Jeff Astle with a tidy cross, Astle proving his left foot wasn’t only for standing on by banging a crisp shot into the net – it wasn’t the only time his left peg would prove fruitful that season.

The Baggies had a golden opportunity to really stamp their authority on the game just before the break when Clark went on the rampage again, only to be hacked down in front of goal by Ryan. The referee had no hesitation in pointing to the spot, John Talbut stepping up to be Albion’s third penalty taker of the campaign, goalkeeper Sey-mour guessing which way to go and pulling out a comfortable save from what was a fairly weak kick.

That miss knocked Albion out of their stride and it was a more determined Fulham that came back out after the break, yet the Throstles were still capable of carving out good chances, Seymour making a terrific stop from a pow-erful Kaye header and then another from Clark. Those saves were to prove invaluable when, in the 63rd minute, Albion fan Allan Clarke popped up at the other end, taking a glorious Haynes pass in his stride and lashing his shot past John Osborne.

Where earlier in the season Albion heads would have gone down, this was a different outfit now and within mo-ments, we were on the attack again, Astle seeing Seymour produce another brilliant save to keep his side on terms. But not even he could repel the Albion tide indefinitely and after 69 minutes, Albion were on top again, Tony Brown the goalscorer, a superbly executed shot from 25 yards flying past Seymour and in.

Fulham enjoyed a late flurry of possession, Eddie Colquhoun making an important clearance off the line in the last couple of minutes, but Albion had done enough to pouch two well deserved points. Things were on the up, Alan Ashman saying, “This was a far better display, though we still have a long way to go.”

One area where they had miles to go was in settling on a penalty taker, having already missed three. From this distance, it seems unthinkable that Tony Brown wasn’t taking them, his miss against Wolves notwithstanding, while Graham Williams’ miss against Stoke suggested that he wasn’t going to emulate the success of erstwhile Albion full-back Bobby Cram whose departure had left a void from twelve yards. Even so, the skipper had a view on the situation…

“I think the best idea is for the player who is having a good match to take any penalty that might be awarded. Confidence is a big factor and if a player has been doing well, he will have that bit of edge which could make all the difference between a goal and a miss.” But Ray Matts was on the money again when he said, “I think Brown is still the best man for the job. He is the hardest hitter of a “dead” ball on Albion’s books. In my opinion, the best way of scoring from the penalty spot is to forget abut placing the ball – just hit it as hard as you can.”

The acid test of Albion’s recovery was just around the corner. Don Revie’s Leeds United were the next guests at The Hawthorns and though they’d made a sluggish start themselves, picking up only one point in the first three games, they were now back to their utterly ruthless best, relentlessly climbing the table. While Albion were winning at Fulham, their west London neighbours, Chelsea, were at Elland Road. They should have stayed home because Leeds were imperious, wiping the floor with them to the tune of 7-0, that off the back of a 9-0 win in Luxembourg, beating Spora in the first round first leg Inter-Cities Fairs Cup tie.

Albion were unchanged again, while Leeds couldn’t have bee any more fearsome – Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Jack Charlton, Hunter, Madeley, Lorimer, Giles, Gray, Greenhoff, Jones, a line up that still rings down the ages. But on that October day at The Hawthorns, they weren’t in the same league as an Albion side who turned on the style from first minute to last in a pulsating performance that earned two vital points.

As the rain hosed own, Jeff Astle was the man of the moment again, scoring the game’s opener for the fourth week running, just 15 minutes in, ghosting in totally unmarked to get on the end of a perfectly played Tony Brown free-kick, steering his header beyond Sprake, Sprake and Charlton exchanging a few choice words as a result of the goal.

But Leeds weren’t a great side for nothing and they rallied quickly, putting Albion under the first sustained spell of pressure of the game, a weak defensive header from Talbut falling to Greenhoff who slashed a shot at goal. Os-borne made a parry but the ball dropped invitingly for Mick Jones, an opening which he somehow contrived to miss.

Ashman introduced an extra burst of pace at the break, Dick Krzywicki replacing Kenny Stephens, and the Welsh international was quickly involved, darting inside to get on the end of a Bobby Hope pass, hitting it first time, Sprake flinging himself across goal to make the save. But Sprake, like Seymour the week before, could not fight a rear-guard action all alone and eventually, he was picking the ball out of the net for a second time, Albion extending their lead after 68 minutes. It was the old firm again, Brown’s lovely cross which caused panic in the Leeds area. The ball eventually reached Astle who, left foot to the fore again, dinked a little chip into the Smethwick End goal. Two-nil to the Throstles, the team flying high once again, up to the giddy heights of 13th place off the back of four wins in five games. Out of apparent disaster, the seeds of a good season were suddenly being sown according to Tony Brown.

“Beating Leeds at home said we were on the right lines again. They were a great side, so anything you got off them was a bonus really. And we set off on a run that took us away from the bottom and got us comfortable.

“Confidence is such an important element in any football team. If you lose a couple of games, you start to doubt yourself, your mates, your manager. Win a couple and all of a sudden, you feel as if you’re invincible. It’s amazing really.

“It was important we started to get a few results because I remember there was a lot of rumblings and disenchant-ment among the supporters around that time, and I know Alan felt very much under pressure. Years later, he did tell me he thought he might get the sack at that time, but it suddenly started to come right.

“It just goes to prove how ridiculous it is to think about sacking your manager so early in his time at a club. We went and won the cup that year and had two or three great seasons under Alan. Would that have happened if Jim Gaunt had panicked and sacked him? I doubt it. You need to have faith, show a bit of guts, and Jim and the rest of the board had the bottle to do that.”

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Chapter 8: TURN, TURN, TURN

How swiftly things can turn. As September 1967 entered its final day, new Albion manager Alan Ashman was biting his fingernails, deeply concerned about his future at the club, wondering if an imminent return to his erstwhile occupation of chicken farming might not be on the cards. A fortnight later, it turned out that it was Albion that needed the eggs. After the Throstles had beaten Leeds United 2-0, not only was Ashman the darling of the Albion faithful, he was flavour of the month with the rest of the country as well because no result went down better back in the 1960s then a Leeds defeat.

Albion were suddenly halfway up the league, three wins on the spin behind them, and all was right with the world. Players that a few weeks before had seemed like rejects, ready for a mass cull before rebuilding could take place, were suddenly showing the form expected of them. Astle had banged in five goals in four games, Tony Brown was back on the scoresheet, things were tighter at the back, Albion were looking a cohesive side. In short, according to Tony Brown, the transition period from Jimmy Hagan to Alan Ashman was behind them.

“I don’t think the style of play had changed that much. Alan inherited a lot of good players. Alan was a gentleman, he encouraged you, didn’t come down on you like a ton of bricks. But if things were going wrong or you got out of line, he’d let you know. I think Alan allowed people to express themselves and I think we all responded to that. The system we had, it just seemed to work, it fell into place, we started winning games and got a great belief in ourselves. He treated you like adults, and we respected him for that.”

In his Inside Albion column, local journalist Ray Matts reflected on our improved form in front of goal: “Tony Brown has truly made his mark. It can hardly be a coincidence that Albion have won every match since he was reintro-duced into the side at right-half against Sheffield United. He has really struck form since moving into the half-back line. The other character to have stamped himself on Albion’s return to winning ways is centre-forward Jeff Astle, yet at the start of the season he was really struggling to find form – and suffered the justifiable indignity of being dropped for the first time since his arrival at The Hawthorns.”

After a couple of months of struggle, at last we looked like what we were again, a good, solid, middle of the road First Division team, capable of giving anybody a game on our day. What we were not – and this was the magnitude of Ashman’s task – was a side that could consistently find its best football and be relied upon to go anywhere in the country and get a good result. There were always trips that looked as if they might be too much for us, games where supporters pretty much dismissed our chances of success well in advance. Games like Everton at Goodison Park.

That said, the Toffees were having a mixed start to the campaign themselves, only a couple of points ahead of Albion, ten places adrift of league leaders Liverpool, so it was not quite the home banker that might have been ex-pected. Albion had shown they could give a good account of themselves in the blue half of Liverpool the previous season when they lost 5-4 in a breathtaking encounter, so a good result was not entirely out of the question.

Having thrived on a settled side, Albion’s pre-match preparations were thrown into turmoil when Graham Williams pulled out of the squad following the loss of his father, while Clive Clark did likewise because of illness to his wife. Ian Collard and Dick Krzywicki stepped into the breach but it was a big task against an Everton side well aware that it had to start motoring if it was going to mount any kind of title challenge. With the magnificent midfield of Harvey, Kendall and Ball in full cry, the School of Science was ready to hand out a footballing lesson.

Everton opened like a whirlwind and were in front after just three minutes, Alex Young dummying Alan Ball’s low corner, leaving Ernie Hunt to bundle the ball past John Osborne from close range. Hunt very nearly snatched a second within moments, his shot flashing just wide of the post. John Kaye gets up highest at Fulham

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That heralded a period of shots in, Kendall driving an effort wide, Hurst’s header thumping against the underside of the bar and back out, Albion’s goal living a charmed life until, ten minutes in, the second goal arrived, John Tal-but’s header out returned with interest by a Kendall lob that flew over Osborne and in.

Osborne made a terrific save to keep the score down within a couple of minutes as it seemed Albion must be swamped. But the Baggies were now made of sterner stuff, more resilient than early in the season and, through the rest of the first half, gave as good as they got, striving to get a foothold in the game. They did just that after 21 minutes, Bobby Hope’s accurate centre being powered beyond West by John Kaye’s emphatic header.

The Throstles ended the half on a high, Krzywicki twice coming close, first with a shot and then a header, but half-time came with Albion still behind, the interval interrupting the flow of our football. It was a different game again after the break, Harry Catterick’s team tightening things up at the back, happy to concede ground rather than goals, looking to retain good possession in the middle and hit on the break. Ball missed an open goal on 63 minutes, somehow hitting the post when it was easier to score, and he was almost made to pay for the mistake, Kaye quickly heading wide at the other end. But Everton were, for the most part, in control, seeing out the game and pocketing the points with the minimum of fuss.

Disappointed to have lost, Ashman was still able to talk up some positives on the way out of Goodison, saying, “We have now got to the point where we are not giving points away. This is something we should be satisfied about. We were prepared to contest those two points right to the end.”

That fighting spirit was next put to the test by a visit from Leicester City, a team that had been rock bottom until a three game unbeaten spurt – including a 2-1 victory over Liverpool and a 5-1 win at Southampton – had pushed them up the table. The Foxes were keen to keep that record going, but there was never any suggestion that they were after another five goal feast, the Birmingham Post’s reporter complaining that, “Uneasy Leicester went to The Hawthorns with the maximum aim of one point and they succeeded so well that they choked nearly all the interest out of a fixture which is usually good entertainment.”

Employing a blanket defence in front of a promising young goalkeeper called Peter Shilton, Albion quickly ran out of ideas as to how to break them down after an initial 20 minute onslaught brought no reward, too quick to simply sling the ball towards Astle’s head in the hope that he would fashion an opportunity. A goalless draw did little to aid Albion’s cause, but they had to wait a fortnight to get that frustration out of their system, the following weekend’s trip to West Ham postponed because of a waterlogged pitch as the rain lashed across Britain.

Burnley were next on the agenda, back at The Hawthorns, on Armistice Day, the solid Turf Moor outfit unbeaten in seven weeks and apparently offering a real examination of Albion’s credentials, the more so as the Baggies were under pressure to get back to winning ways.

Could they have done just that any more emphatically? Burnley simply couldn’t get anywhere near a dazzling display from the Albion as we thrashed the living daylights out of them, 8-1. Reporters compared the performance to those which had been commonplace under Vic Buckingham in the glory days of the 1953/54 season, but was it really that good? Who better to ask than Ashman’s assistant manager, Paddy Ryan, who had been a central figure in that team alongside Ronnie Allen, Johnnie Nicholls, the great Ray Barlow and Len Millard.

“It was just like old times,” Ryan said afterwards. “The boss has persevered to get them to play like this, and here was the result. Apart from the 4-0 League Cup win over West Ham last season, it was as near as we have got to the 1953/54 side.” In front of a crowd of just 18,457, Albion were imperious, swift moving, quick passing, intelligent, skilful, everything you would want from your team. Chances were created at will, and chances were taken without a moment’s worry. It was our day, and we milked it.

The Post waxed lyrical, saying, “Kenny Stephens must have made [Burnley’s] John Angus wish that he had never recovered from injury, Brown prompted an opponent to query afterwards, “Does that lad never stop running?” while Hope looked a natural deputy for suspended Denis Law [in Scotland’s team].”

The Throstles were two up inside 20 minutes, Bobby Hope and Clive Clark putting them in total control, then Tony Brown’s shot trickled between goalkeeper Thomson’s hands and legs to make it 3-0, Burnley clearly giving up the ghost after that, accepting they were in the presence of an irresistible force.

John Kaye made it 4-0 from a Clark pass and even Eddie Colquhoun got in on the act by registering goal number five before half time. Hope and Clark both scored again after the interval and finally, Jeff Astle got on the score-sheet to make it 8-0, Burnley’s Ralph Bellamy registering a consolation effort four minutes from time.

Tony Brown recalls, “When we beat Burnley 8-1, we absolutely annihilated them, they couldn’t get anywhere near the ball. We were just on top of our game and it was a day where they couldn’t live with us. Everything flew in, we murdered them.” Unsurprisingly Albion were nominated as the Uwin team of the week in the aftermath of victory, a result that silenced any doubters once and for all. This was an Albion team that was very definitely heading in the right direction.

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Chapter 9: ALL yoU NeeD IS LoVeTT

Sudden injury blighting an individual’s season is sadly part and parcel of the game of football, and has been right from the first day the game was played. But some players are luckier than others, some get through careers barely missing a game, others lose months, even whole seasons, to a variety of problems, some picked up on the field, others off it.

Graham Lovett was a gifted young footballer who found his career decimated by lengthy, interminable spells on the sidelines, a devastating blow to a footballer who, in his youth, was compared with the great Duncan Edwards of Manchester United, the Busby Babe who lost his life in early 1958 in the snows of Munich. No idle press comment that either, but praise from the lips of his first Albion manager, Jimmy Hagan, not a man who resorted to lavish praise when a rollocking would do instead.

A late developer, Lovett initially trained for a career in accountancy, plans that were dashed when his father died while Graham was studying for his A levels. Needing to go out and get work, Lovett accepted Albion’s offer of an apprenticeship, turned professional in November 1964 and made his first team debut within three weeks as Albion lost 2-0 at home to Chelsea.

Jeff Farmer, a journalist who covered the Baggies in detail, was an early admirer of the youthful Lovett and wrote a profile of him as he was making his way into the Albion side, a profile that mentioned his mode of transport and the role it played in Lovett acquiring his nickname, “Shuv”. “Graham drives an eight year old car which cost him £150 – and gets his leg pulled by the first teamers about the number of times it needs “a shove”.” Lovett also showed himself to be a sensible and sensitive youngster, wondering if all that early promise would come to anything.

“It’s great to be in the first team and playing with the big names against the big names, but there is a nagging feeling which makes me wonder whether you deserve the praise, and whether it’s going to last. And I am really lost when they start talking about Duncan Edwards or Ray Barlow, neither of whom I ever saw play. But once the game starts, it’s all different. The stars often seem quite ordinary when it’s under way. And I never have time to worry about the reputations of the opposition”.

Lovett had established himself in the team in the 1965/66 season, playing in the first leg of the Football League Cup Final at West Ham, and becoming a central figure in Albion’s plans. But all of that was wrecked on Christmas Eve, 1966, when he was involved in a car accident on the M1. Lovett said later, “I was driving to London to visit friends. When I woke up in hospital it was to find my neck chained back so that I had only the ceiling to look at. I was horrified. I didn’t care about the pains. All that mattered was my career and when they told me about the fracture, I was shattered. I never really gave up hope. Yet I could see myself stuck permanently in a bathchair while the boys I grew up with went on to make their names.”

The accident sent shock waves through the Albion dressing room as Tony Brown recalls. “Graham had a lot of things go wrong for him, lots of bad luck, terrible times he had. It was a shame for him just on the personal level, but it was also such a waste as a footballer because when he was first coming through, he was some player. Peo-ple were comparing him with Duncan Edwards and understandably so. Great strength, could pass it long or short, great tackler, he was probably the best youngster I ever saw, similar to Bryan Robson later on.

“I played with him in the youth team before he’d even joined us, but he was a giant, so powerful. He’d have been an England regular, no danger, without those accidents. Me and Jeff went to see him in hospital, his legs were in traction, he was in a neck brace, it was like “Carry On Doctor” or something! We couldn’t stop laughing. But he was lucky to be honest. He ran off the motorway and finished up in a ditch. It was hours before anybody noticed, he was trapped in the car, so it could have been worse.” Eddie Colquhoun and John Osborne arrive for training

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As it was, Lovett was sidelined for pretty much the whole of 1967, though given the diagnosis of a broken neck after that accident, he could count his blessings that he was back on the field of play at all – most were resigned to the fact that he’d never play again. Lovett again: “After weeks on my back, I had to make the kind of decision that turns you from a boy into a man. The surgeons told me that a bone graft was my one hope, that the operation might go wrong and that it could not be performed without my permission.

“In other words I could turn it down and face a life of disablement to the extent that I could not take part in active games – or I could give my consent in the hope that even if I did not play League football again I could at least enjoy a kick-about in the park. The game means so much to me that I gambled. I went into the theatre praying. I came out with a 50-50 chance of complete recovery”.

Finally, as 1967 edged towards Christmas, there was finally some light at the end of the tunnel as “Albion News” reported in the Burnley issue, on November 11th 1967. “[Some weeks ago Graham] was given permission to try a little gentle training. The last stages were begun about three weeks ago – practice matches can tell you so much and no more – but three weeks ago Graham re-started his career. He was back in the third eleven, two games, and then last Saturday he turned out for the Reserves at The Hawthorns. Yes, Graham Lovett is nearing the end of his long climb back.”

First team football was still some way away for Lovett, but for the Throstles, it was crucial to build on the 8-1 win over Burnley. Sadly, the omens weren’t great as we headed for one of our bogey grounds, Hillsborough. Wednes-day had had a strong start to the season but were beginning to drop off the pace, but as winter tightened its grip, the misty, icy conditions were anything but ideal for Albion to try to recapture the free flowing football that had de-stroyed Burnley a week before. That said, the Baggies were on top for much of the game, the Owls continuing their slide down the table just as we were confidently climbing it, but home advantage counts for plenty in Yorkshire and Wednesday were robust opponents.

Even so, Albion should have been four goals clear in the first half. Springett produced a brilliant diving save from a 30 yarder from Doug Fraser, Jeff Astle put a shot inches wide, then he and Kenny Stephens saw goalbound shots cleared off the line by Don Megson. With Bobby Hope in sparkling form in the centre of the park, it seemed as if the Throstles must take the lead but the only goal of the half came at the other end just 11 minutes before the break, a result of a comedy of errors. Doug Fraser’s backpass was weak and, with Fantham first to the ball ahead of the oncoming John Osborne, the Wednesday striker was brought down in the box. Eustace whacked his spot kick against the post but John Ritchie, later of Stoke, was quickest onto the rebound, guiding it into the net.

The Baggies were back on terms early in the second half, John Talbut then John Kaye bringing the ball out of defence to feed Hope whose pass was deflected on its way to Clive Clark, playing him onside, Chippy calmly advancing on goal and sticking away the equaliser. With Albion surely favourites to go and win from there, there was another suicidal moment at the back two minutes later, Graham Williams rolling the ball back to Osborne who slipped and could only watch the ball trundle past him and in.

Albion’s efforts to get back on terms grew gradually more intense as the clock ran down, Astle and Stephens again coming close, Ossie keeping us in the hunt with a magnificent save from Eustace. Finally, the deserved goal came, five minutes from time, Fraser chasing down the right before delivering a perfectly judged cross to the edge of the area from where Astle, running on to it, placed his header in the far corner, Springett off balance and helpless in the Wednesday goal.

Ten points from 14 for the Baggies, leaving press man Robert Blackburn to ponder the upturn in our fortunes: “Ashman attributes the improvement to “hard work”. I believe the unseen factor is the rapport he has established with his players.” The manager himself was simply pleased to maintain Albion’s impressive run of form: “When you’ve scored eight the previous week, the players tend to be confident but at the same time expect the goals to

come too easily. It may have looked good, but I was wriggling in my seat.”

Tottenham offered the next test in what was Albion’s 1,000th First Division game at home. Evidence of what changes would afflict us and the rest of the game as we headed off into the next 1,000 came with news of a fixture change recorded in “Albion News”. “Make a note in your diary. The Albion v West Ham United match at The Haw-thorns on

March, 30th has been held back until 6.30p.m. This is a Saturday fixture and our supporters may wonder why we chose to kick-off at this time. The fact is that the Grand

National is to be televised on that day and a lot of people want to be able to see thisEvent. Each year we are told that this is to be the last. We are not keen on Saturday nightgames but felt this compromise was best for all concerned.” The thin end of the television wedge…

Tottenham offered impressive opposition for the occasion as the FA Cup holders who had beaten Chelsea at Wembley the previous May. They were a side full of quality too, including names such as Pat Jennings, Dave Mackay, Alan Gilzean, Cliff Jones and the goalscorer supreme, Jimmy Greaves. But such was the confidence suddenly coursing through the Albion side, the Birmingham Post reported, “They gave Spurs no chance to pace the game to their own requirements. There was sharp running on and off the ball, with every player anxious to pull his full weight.”

Even so, Bill Nicholson’s Londoners were a far more organized outfit than Burnley had been in the last home game and they refused to crumble under the pressure, reaching the dressing room at half-time on level terms, having had perhaps the best chance of the half when Graham Williams cleared a Jones effort off the line.

Albion were in no mood to hang around when the game resumed though and they put the points to bed inside ten minutes. Bobby Hope, again the dominant force in the midfield, began to run matters and it was the Scot whose cross caused confused in the Spurs defence, allowing Clive Clark to take advantage and scramble in the first goal. Hope needed no assistance in making it 2-0 within three minutes though, running on to an Astle knock down and, “Without checking his stride, Hope hit an angled shot so hard that Jennings was beaten from 25 yards.”

With John Kaye dropping back into a more defensive role as the game came towards the close, the Throstles claimed two more crucial points, pushing them up to 12th in the table. The early season relegation worries now well behind them, how far could this Albion side now go?

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Chapter 10: I’M A BeLIeVeR

There’s little in football to beat that little extra rush you get when you are off to visit the home of the League Cham-pions. When they’re perched at the top of the table once again, it adds just that little extra frisson to the occasion, and when the place you’re going is Old Trafford, to take on a side that includes Bobby Charlton and George Best, you have to ask yourself just how much more icing you need on top of that cake.

The way Manchester United have pretty much battered everyone into submission over the last 20 years, and the way they’ve used their tradition and their wealth to do it, has left a sour taste in the mouths of some, but back in 1967, there was no team more glamorous, more exciting, nor better loved than Manchester United. They were pretty well everybody’s second favourite team, they were football’s equivalent of The Beatles. Everybody loved them, and with good reason because there’s no use denying it. They were magical. They thrilled, they excited, they went hell for leather for goals and in Charlton, Best and Denis Law, the third member of the Holy Trinity, they had perhaps the three best players in the land, the footballers that every kid wanted to be in the playground.

The flip side of the coin was that while it was exciting to venture to Old Trafford, it was also a very daunting prospect too. The previous season, we’d gone there on the opening day of the campaign and lost 5-3 – a familiar score up there – and games between the two teams were almost always full of goals, so there was little reason to anticipate anything different on this occasion. Small wonder that Prime Minister Harold Wilson was in the crowd for the occasion.

Albion hopes were buoyed by the fact that on the Wednesday before the game, while the Throstles were resting up, United had had a taxing European Cup tie to deal with on home soil, Matt Busby’s team eventually coming through it by beating Sarajevo, putting them through to the quarter-finals. In those days before anybody had heard of the idea of squad rotation, the team that beat Sarajevo on the Wednesday was wheeled out to take on Albion on the Saturday, United still missing the injured Denis Law.

But they did have George Best, and when George was in the mood, they really didn’t need anybody else. And when the Baggies rolled into Manchester on December 2nd, 1967, he was in the mood alright. The first 45 minutes were a masterclass from probably the greatest British footballer of all time. Yet it was the visitors who were the brighter team in the early passages of play, throwing themselves into the game in an effort to take advantage of any fatigue. Jeff Astle put a header straight at Stepney in goal, then Tony Brown burst past Paddy Crerand in the middle, only to be denied by a diving Stepney stop.

Bomber had an even better chance after 20 minutes according to reporter Ray Matts: “In the 20th minute, Krzy-wicki split the United defence with a ball to Tony Brown who was standing only three or four yards from goal. The United defence thought he was offside but the referee allowed play to go on but with all the time in the world, Brown turned and shot hopelessly wide.”

Within a couple of minutes, Albion were behind. Best collected a short corner on the left, picked his way between two tackles and then drilled a shot inside the post from the tightest of angles. Four minutes further on and Best had doubled the lead: “He rounded Albion’s defence to fire in a terrific shot which Osborne did well to palm over for a corner kick. Aston slammed over a long cross and Best came pelting in to scythe through Albion’s defence and head home.”

Best departed to a standing ovation at half time, then picked up from where he left off, but Albion were not short on confidence nor resilience after their run of 12 points from 16 and they offered United food for thought after the break. Brown had a volley well saved by Stepney, then the pace of Krzywicki released Astle whose effort dipped past the goalkeeper but also drifted beyond the post. The Throstles finally grabbed a late lifeline with 15 minutes to Graham Lovett

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go, Tony Brown’s free-kick reaching the head of John Kaye who powered the ball past Stepney.

Brown seemed to have snatched an equaliser a few moments later, only to have it chalked off for offside, but Albi-on kept coming at them and, according to Kaye, should have had a last minute equaliser from his powerful header. “As I nodded the ball, I saw Stepney rise in front of me and he grasped the ball as it went over his head. A foot to either side and I must have beaten him. The man’s uncanny.”

Speaking afterwards, United’s Crerand admitted, “That was the biggest run around we’ve had all season”, while journalist Gron Williams made a startlingly perceptive prediction: “On their Old Trafford showing, Albion must be fancied for a good FA Cup run next year. Their work-rate, determination, attacking ideas and defensive solidarity had United at full stretch for long periods.”

In the aftermath of the game, Albion were briefly embroiled in controversy as a result of their Scottish scouting operations. At the end of November, Albion had organised a special trial just outside Glasgow, featuring 50 young-sters, an event that was described as “the biggest cloak and dagger operation Scottish football has ever known.” The Scottish Football Association was said to be investigating the matter, but Alan Ashman stressed, “There was nothing illegal or underhand about the trials. As they were behind closed doors, between all-amateur players and only parents were allowed to watch, we weren’t breaking any rules. There isn’t any question of the boys being un-der any obligation to us or of my pirating them away from their homes.

“By this method I avoid the bad old scheme of clubs signing players from the other end of the country and then giving them free transfers when they fail to make the grade. By staging such trials we discover the quality of the players before we get near to signing any of them. I have picked out a handful of boys from the trials and they will be invited to West Bromwich to look around before there is any question of signing them.”

At the other end of the age scale, Graham Williams was telling Ray Matts that he hoped that Albion’s renaissance would see him push his way back into the Welsh national side after Birmingham’s Colin Green had replaced him. “I’m not complaining about being dropped. I was not playing well enough at the start of the season. Just as a cen-tre-forward needs to get goals, a full-back needs to get in good tackles, but this was not the case then I’m afraid. My timing seemed to be out.

“However, when you have been playing for your country for a long time, it’s hard to take when you eventually get dropped even though it may be justified. I can imagine the terrace critics were writing me off. People tend to think that when you lose form after so long with one club, it’s all over. But I aimed to prove them wrong.”

The skipper was also longing for a strong second half to the season in the hope of qualifying for European com-petition again: “Our games against Utrecht of Holland and Bologna of Italy last season were exciting encounters because of the prestige at stake. To play in Europe these days is almost like playing for one’s country. The atmo-sphere is terrific. I can’t wait for another chance to skipper Albion on the Continent. Who knows, we may be more successful than last time.”

The most obvious route to Europe was via a high league placing, but Albion’s hopes of picking up their strong league form after the United defeat were put on hold when the home game against Sunderland was postponed. Ironically, Albion returned to league action with a Monday night trip to Upton Park to play a rearranged fixture after that game had been called off the month before.

The Hammers were enduring a grim season, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore, Martin Peters, John Sissons, Billy Bonds and Harry Redknapp notwithstanding, and they were rumbling along just above the relegation zone as the Thros-tles made their way through the East End to play our 1,999th ever First Division game.

Albion and West Ham had plenty of recent history, Albion not winning at the Boleyn Ground in six years, including a thumping when Brian Dear scored five goals against us in one game. On the other hand, the Throstles had beat-en West Ham over two legs in the League Cup Final of 1966, and then in the semi-final of the same competition a year later, and like games against Manchester United, Albion versus West Ham was one of those fixtures that almost always guaranteed entertainment.

It was the home team that got off to the best start, bringing thoughts of us struggling to beat the Boleyn bogey to the fore, especially as they scored from a soft penalty, John Kaye adjudged to have impeded Sissons as he tried to get on the end of a Redknapp cross. Geoff Hurst put the penalty past John Osborne to make it 1-0 after seven minutes.

But this Albion side simply shrugged off reverses like this and, as the report of the time noted, “They always pro-duced the more calculated, constructive soccer, and West Ham virtually had to rely on breakaway moves. Albion always looked like pulling this game out of the fire.”

The Baggies were on top for great swathes of the game, an exuberant team performance topped off by a terrific individual contribution by Bobby Hope, “Another five star performance from this young man on the verge of Scot-tish international honours. He buzzed about like an enterprising bee to form a potent midfield link which constantly threatened to send the Hammers to yet another home defeat, their seventh this term.”

That defeat came closer after 50 minutes when the Baggies got back on level terms, Hope flinging in a fine left wing cross that saw Dick Krzywicki leap to head past goalkeeper Ferguson, and it was a copycat goal that gave Al-bion the lead 12 minutes from time, a similar cross from Hope, Jeff Astle getting on the end of it this time to head in.

It wouldn’t be Albion if we hadn’t made the late stages fraught and we conceded in the 85th minute, Peter Bra-brook seemingly snatching a point, but this Albion team was not going to be denied. Continuing to force the issue, Krzywicki dashed into the box only to be hacked down. Bobby Hope stepped up to take the 87th minute spot kick, clipping it past Ferguson to seal both points and a much better trip back home. They’d be coming back the other way again on the Saturday, when they’d be off down the Kings Road to take on struggling Chelsea. More points to be had?

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Chapter 11: 2,000 LIGhT GAMeS fRoM hoMe

One of the enduring debates in the current game is the gulf in class between the Championship and the Premier League. It’s a question that comes up time and time again as clubs tumble out of the top flight at the first time of asking after promotion, rarely looking as if they were going to stay the course.

But was it ever thus? Has the top flight always represented a bridge too far for clubs from the second tier, or are the commentators right when they say that the gap is getting bigger and bigger with each passing season? How did things look back in the season of love, 1967/68?

The best part of half a season had elapsed since Alan Ashman had traded life with Second Division Carlisle United for a crack at the big time with the Baggies. As an up and coming manager, Ashman had had plenty of exposure to the game in the lower divisions, but the First Division was clearly the pinnacle of the domestic game. Many managers had tried to bridge that gap in the past and failed but, after a tempestuous start to his time at The Hawthorns, Ashman was starting to show signs that he was going to make the step up without too much trouble.

But was that step up in class really the huge gulf that some suggested it was? Or was the gap between the two leagues rather less daunting than some would make out? Ashman was in a perfect position to supply the answers.

“People who write off Division Two as a poor division ignore so many facets, like this point about effective players. There are scores of good, skilful players about today, but it is the man who can translate his ability on to the field where it counts who becomes what we term in the game an effective player. It is this type of player who is being chased by every First Division side and it is this sort of player who gets a First Division place.

“This is the Super Division of the finest League in the world. But there are still many fine sides and fine players in Division Two. What critics also confuse is the fact that the Second Division is the toughest section of all. You have more than a dozen clubs every season almost on a par and they are all scrambling for those two places which will get them up amongst the big guns.

“You have many clubs who have tasted the power and prestige of Division One and several more who want badly to taste it. So teams and managers dare not make mistakes. Every point is vital. That emphasises defence because teams are cautious. They dare not risk too much on attacking football in case they make the one error which could cost them the game.

“Some of the problems of tight technique arise in Division One but there you have the individual players of effec-tive quality who have the ability to counteract the problems. Standards are always relative. But the standard today is higher than ever within any context.”

That high standard was reflected by the football the Throstles were playing and by the opposition they were fac-ing. Game number 20 in the 1967/68 season was the trek down to Stamford Bridge and a meeting with Chelsea, a team that was coming towards its own maturity at that point, a side that would, in time, take over Albion’s own mantle as the cup fighting team par excellence.

It was a side not dissimilar to the Throstles in many ways, with a sprinkling of steel and silk right the way through it from the acrobatic Peter Bonetti, to the granite tough Eddie McCreadie and Ron Harris, to the neat passing of John Hollins, the wing wizardry of Charlie Cooke, a dazzling footballer every bit as exciting as Clive Clark, albeit in more intricate fashion. And then there was the King of the King’s Road, Peter Osgood, a striker fighting for a berth in the England squad, a fight that included Albion’s own king, Jeff Astle.

Graham Williams leads out the Throstles

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Chelsea had beaten the Baggies on the opening day of the season, a 1-0 win at The Hawthorns that precipitated that very shaky start to the season which Albion were only now recovering from. But as we grew in strength, Chel-sea’s season was busily going wrong, the beaten FA Cup finalists of the previous season languishing in 17th place as they prepared to take on Albion after a fortnight of inactivity because of the weather.

These were two very different sides to those who had slugged it out on the opening day of the season, in mood if not especially in personnel. Chelsea had won just two games from the previous 13 in the league while Albion were on a run of only two defeats in 10 matches. Yet when the game kicked off, the difference in their fortunes was anything but apparent as the home side got off to a strong start, enjoying a healthy share of possession.

Five minutes in and Chelsea’s new £100,000 signing Alan Birchenall was in on goal, John Osborne having to produce some heroics to keep the scores level, but Albion were simply soaking up the pressure, ready to spring a counter attack and create havoc at the opposite end. Sixteen minutes in, that plan worked to perfection, Dick Krzywicki hurling a long throw-in into the Chelsea box, Tony Brown dashing on to the end of it with a cleverly timed run. Bomber steered the ball into Clive Clark’s path and he side footed it past Bonetti to give Albion the lead.

It might have been better yet within a minute as a shell shocked Chelsea were relieved to see Krzywicki fall inch-es short of connecting with a John Kaye through ball, then it was Kaye again, away down the right, placing a lovely cross on the head of Astle, Bonetti performing miracles to claw his header to safety.

Chelsea finally, belatedly, rallied with a superb, slick passing move that saw Boyle got past two defenders before passing inside to Birchenall. His clever flick reached Tommy Baldwin whose back heel could easily have caught Osborne off guard, but the ‘keeper was equal to the task once more. They did finally get an effort beyond Ossie, just before the break, but Boyle was penalised for handball.

A dog invaded the pitch early in the second half, but it was Chelsea who were the terriers, worrying away at the Albion defence, but with little real glimpse of an opening. Indeed, it was the Throstles on the break who looked the more likely to score, Bonetti making another fine save in the 63rd minute to stop a full blooded Astle drive. Evidence that it wasn’t going to be the Londoners’ day came after 70 minutes when Birchenall thought he’d notched his first Chelsea goal only to see the referee disallowing it.

In such circumstances, the best course of action is to apply salt liberally to the opposition wound, and we didn’t hang about. Within six minutes it was 2-0, Krzywicki’s express pace down the right opening Chelsea up once again, his cross perfectly weighted into the path of Astle who met it on the run with a fierce first time volley that left Bonetti wrong footed.

But why stop at two? The Albion completed the rout with nine minutes left on the clock, Clark racing away through the middle on another counter attack before measuring a pass into the path of Krzywicki, the Welsh international nipping inside before putting a crisp finish beyond Bonetti and in. Two points to add the collection, and eighth place in the table. What better way to celebrate the club’s 2,000th top flight game, the overall record being won 770, drawn 453, lost 777, goals for 3,291, goals against 3,313.

A home game against Southampton awaited us on the Saturday before Christmas, the game which marked the halfway stage in the season. Speaking to Ray Matts in the run up to the game, Ashman was prevailed upon to give something of a Christmas message to the supporters.

“Now we have won our way into the top half of the table we have a good opportunity to put ourselves among the leading teams. No matches are easy, but the mood we are in at the moment will make it difficult for any team to take points from us.

“We can feel very satisfied with our performances in the first half of the league programme, but we realise points do not come easy and we also appreciate we will have to work just as hard to hold a high position in the table.

“I am pleased to be able to send Christmas wishes to all our supporters but I cannot say we are going to make extra special efforts for them during the holiday period. I like to think maximum effort is given at all times by my players, but I will repeat what I said at the start of the season: All our efforts at The Hawthorns are entirely devoted to providing fans with the best possible soccer entertainment!”

And after you’ve promised the fans great entertainment, what can you guarantee from your next game? Yep, a goalless draw. In pouring rain.

In spite of struggling in the First Division, the visiting Saints posed a potent threat in the shape of Ron Davies, Terry Paine – rarely effective away from the Dell, it’s true – Mick Channon and Martin Chivers, “for sale at the astro-nomical price of £125,000”. But as you’d expect from a team only three points clear of the relegation zone, Saints came to spoil the game, making it as scrappy as possible.

Albion paid little heed to the opposition and instead concentrated on their own qualities in a game that struggled to beat the taxing conditions. Albion were the more enterprising side in the first half, Dougie Fraser having a shot cleared off the line after it skidded through a goalmouth melee, Krzywicki having a header turned against the post by ‘keeper Forsyth. Nice to see him, to see him, a damned nuisance.

Albion did finally get the ball in the Southampton net some 58 minutes in, John Kaye glancing a header in from a Brown free-kick, the referee calling play back because the Southampton wall had not retreated the requisite ten yards. Yorky was not amused.

There were a couple of half chances at either end and John Talbut escaped conceding a penalty for what looked like a handball, but the game ended as a damp squib. The Throstles’ handy run continued though, and the festive period was in the offing.

Merry Christmas, one and all…

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Chapter 12: fLyING

One of the great traditions of Christmas past was playing the same side home and away over the course of a couple or three days. Very often, these would be derby affairs to ensure that supporters of both teams could easily get to the games, but it wasn’t exclusively so.

As Albion reached the festive period in 1967, the challenge that lay before them was Manchester City, first at The Hawthorns on Boxing Day and then at that great old theatre of football, Maine Road, four days later. A fierce enough task at the best of times, but in 1967/68, City were the acid test because the side run by Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison was supplanting their rivals from the other side of Manchester as the finest team in England, and this just two years after they’d been promoted back to the top flight after a three season long aberration in the di-vision below.

With Christmas approaching, City were clearly a team on the upward slope, free scoring, exciting, feared. They’d put six past Leicester City, five past Sheffield United, then knocked in a host of fours, against Southampton, Ful-ham, Burnley, Tottenham and, in the previous game, Stoke City, a 4-2 win that had pushed them into second place with 30 points.

Didn’t frighten the Baggies though. After all, we were only seven points behind, in terrific form of our own, increas-ingly seen as potential FA Cup winners and desperate to take points off City to boost our own hopes of a high finish in the league and a place in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup – forerunner of the UEFA Cup – as a result. For the punters, the Throstles against City couldn’t have been a better Boxing Day bash.

People poured through the turnstiles for the game, setting a new ground record of 44,897 for The Hawthorns in its new configuration, capacity reduced by the replacement of some of the terracing with the Rainbow Stand, a fabulously exciting, sparkling structure in its day, hard though that was to imagine just before we knocked it down and built the East Stand instead.

The changes did not meet with universal approval as Ray Matts noted in his “Inside Albion” column. “It is unfor-tunate that in a bid to provide better spectator amenities, such as the Rainbow Stand, the capacity of the ground should have been reduced to around the 45,000 mark. That some of the gates had to be closed shortly after the start of the game, and that some people had difficulty getting a good view, highlighted the accommodation short-age.

“But the Albion board are alive to the need for more terrace room to compensate for that lost by ground improve-ments. In the club’s annual report, plans were revealed to extend the Birmingham Road end of the ground to ac-commodate an extra 10,000 people next season.”

Another 10,000 might easily have come to his Boxing Day game and would have enjoyed the fare on offer. The game was hard fought, close, enthralling, everything that the pre match publicity had suggested that it might be, a head on collision between two of the form teams of the First Division. With City missing the magnificent mid-field presence of the injured Colin Bell, early on it looked as if home advantage was going to prove crucial as the Throstles gradually took greater and greater control of proceedings, Bobby Hope again earning the plaudits for a masterful display in the middle of the park, and setting up Albion’s opening goal 28 minutes in.

According to the Birmingham Post, “It was Hope’s well directed corner that Astle converted to put them ahead. It was, for my money, goalkeeper Mulhearn’s ball, but centre-half Heslop went for it. In the confusion, Astle towered high over Heslop’s shoulder to nod in a brilliant goal.”

Dick Krzywicki at Anfield

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Full of confidence after that strike, Albion swarmed forward and it was no great shock when nine minutes later, it was 2-0 to the Albion. Bobby Hope started the ball rolling again, picking out Dick Krzywicki with a precise ball into the box. The Welshman cushioned a header back into the path of Tony Brown, arriving late in the box to crash home a thunderous volley – he scored about 120 of them in Albion’s greatest career.

Even so, City served notice that they were a long way from being out of this game, Francis Lee marauding for-ward to crash his own volley just a foot over the bar, but Albion saw out the half, the Post reporting that the players should have “tremendous confidence in their defence, a sector in which John Talbut and Graham Williams tackled like kamikaze pilots.”

The Baggies could have done without half time because the resumption signalled a turning of the tide as City started to impose themselves on the game more and more. Had Mulhearn not found a good save to deny Krzywicki after 50 minutes the game would probably have been over, but from there, it was all City for a time and, on the hour mark, Lee had them right back in the hunt. Bustling on to a through ball from Cheetham, he struck “an oblique shot which goalkeeper John Osborne should have had covered. As it was, he knocked it one handed against an upright and it deflected into the net.”

With 75 minutes gone, City were level, perhaps deservedly so on their second half performance. The flamboyant Stanley Bowles, the man of whom Brian Clough once said, “If he could pass a betting shop the way he passes a football he’d be an England regular”, crossed the ball into the box and Mike Summerbee drilled in the equaliser. Moments later, Albion’s net came away from the posts and “we had the sight of linesman Gale from Shrewsbury being hoisted on Osborne’s shoulders while he repaired the rigging.”

Some moments can dwarf an occasion, and such a moment followed at The Hawthorns. With Clive Clark strug-gling, he was replaced on the field by Graham Lovett, 367 days after he had broken his neck in a dreadful car accident. The crowd rose as one to greet him, and it might have been a storybook return for Lovett who belted a shot against the bar with two minutes on the clock, John Kaye diving to head the rebound just over.

It seemed that that would be an end to it and that the game would end in stalemate. But if City were sick of hear-ing about Manchester United’s “Holy Trinity” of Best, Charlton and Law, they were about to discover that Albion had one of their own – Astle, Brown and Hope. As the crowd began to think about shuffling home, Hope got free down the left and played in a precise cross to Bomber. He got the ball under control and steered it into the path of Astle who slotted a shot beyond Mulhearn to collect both points for the Throstles. City were clearly rattled and in the dying seconds, after a heavy tackle from Graham Williams, Summerbee lost his rag and went for a spot of retaliation, referee Spittle talking loud and long to him in the aftermath, but taking no action. That particular battle would resume at Maine Road four days hence…

And so we trekked up to Maine Road on the Saturday, grateful to discover that Bell was still missing, Clive Clark passing a fitness test for the Baggies. Unbeaten at home for three months, City had every reason to be confident of getting revenge for Boxing Day, but Albion were growing in confidence game on game and, quite simply, they were the stronger side on the day.

The Birmingham Post preached the importance of the collective in the turnaround in Albion’s season: “Too many teams glorified in success, produce their quota of men who forget it was the team that made them, not they the team. Ashman has, in half a season, welded one of the most effective sides in the First Division without buying a player and without losing those crowd thrilling qualities which were present even in the club’s most inconsistent period.

“At Maine Road, there was little doubt who were the gaffers. They were Albion all the way. In every department, Albion had the men to underline their superiority. Goalkeeper John Osborne never faltered against a series of low

shots which skidded in the mud.

“The back four – full-back and centre-half supplemented by wing-half Doug Fraser – presented a disciplined front throughout, never failing to cover the committed defender. At times, particularly when they were under heavy sec-ond-half pressure, Albion had eight or nine men back, but this never prevented them tearing up the field to make dangerous raids on the City goal.

“The real strength of the side was based on the midfield trio, Bobby Hope, Johnny Kaye and Tony Brown, who also found some time for some lucrative runs up to the centre-forward position. Up front, Jeff Astle, Clive Clark and Dick Krzywicki ran their legs off and a little more sharpness from Clark would have produced more goals.

“What I particularly liked about the whole West Bromwich performance was its calmness, its authority and, as the game developed, the sense of inevitable victory to come.”

That was very much the case from the moment Albion grabbed a 19th minute lead. Hope started things off, col-lecting the ball on halfway, switching play to the right hand side with a raking pass which found Brown. Wasting no time, Bomber shoved the ball in the middle and Dick Krzywicki came racing on to it to thrash the ball in for 1-0. Speaking afterwards, Krzywicki, in the form of his young life, said, “It shows what confidence can do and it all comes from playing in a team in which we all rely 100 per cent on each other. I have never played with this sort of confidence before. It is the result of playing in a good side.”

City were not going to take things lying down however and in Neil Young in particular, they had a player out to reap a harvest of goals. But there was to be no after the goal rush for Young, Osborne redeeming himself for his error at The Hawthorns by producing a string of fine saves.

The old year was going out in a storm of Biblical proportions, thunder, lightning, rain and hail assailing the players, Albion also needing to stand firm against a tide of City attacks, Talbut marshalling the defence superbly in front of the under fire Osborne. But with City pouring forward in ever increasing numbers, they were always vulnerable to a quick break, and so it was that the Throstles completed their victory with two minutes to go. The old combination did the job, Bobby Hope picking out Tony Brown who nipped round Heslop and fired a low shot past Mulhearn.

The year ended with Albion in fifth place, the most improved team in the First Division. What would happen in 1968 as we passed from the summer of love into a street fighting year?

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Chapter 13: BeND Me, ShAPe Me

Rarely have two years had such separate characters as 1967 and 1968. 1967 was characterised by the summer of love, by flower power, by turning on, tuning in and dropping out, by “All You Need Is Love” and wearing flowers in your hair. Zonked out kids were preaching “Peace and love maaan”, and The Beatles were able to get that surreal, psychedelic masterpiece “Magical Mystery Tour” on Boxing Day BBC television at peak time. Like, just, wow.

And then events got ugly. The world was in turmoil. The Vietnam war raged ever more grotesque and out of control, the Civil Rights movement in the United States was met with angry and bloody opposition. Marin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Students rioted in the streets in the States, while in France in May, a student uprising hinted that another revolution might be in the offing.

Enoch Powell made his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, Richard Nixon won the US Presidential election and Basil d’Oliveira was refused entry into apartheid South Africa as part of the MCC touring party. Dayglo psychedelia no longer matched the mood. It was the year of “Sympathy For The Devil”, of “Street Fighting Man”, of “Revolution”, a year of graphic simplicity as evidenced by the sleeves of The Beatles’ “White Album” and the Stones’ “Beggar’s Banquet”. No wonder a team wearing all white went on to lift the FA Cup…

As ever, the turning of the year was a time for resolutions, for dreaming, for looking to the future. As is ever the case, it fell to the club captain to articulate those ambitions on behalf of himself and his side. “I want to win a Euro-pean honour with Albion, and so it’s our aim to qualify for those competitions next season. We have two chances, by winning the FA Cup or finishing in the top four in the league. We probably have left it a little too late to win the league title this season, but that will not stop us going all out to finish right among the leaders. We have had one taste of Europe and we liked it. We want to try again.

“With each result, we grow more confident and this in turn makes us that shade more relaxed and allows us to play better. We obviously couldn’t win much by giving away so many goals as we did and we have tried to tighten up. It looks as if our planning has been partly successful at least. This could be thought to be playing up to the boss, but I must say he has done wonders in a short time.”

With the improved form went a higher profile for the Albion players. Yet we still couldn’t get anybody in the En-gland squad, a situation bemoaned by Ray Matts in his “Inside Albion” column. “When the England manager an-nounced his 35 strong training party to spend three days at Lilleshall in January, there were no Throstles on the list. I don’t believe invitations to an England get-together should be handed out ad lib – but at the same time, I feel there are a couple of Albion players who would not be out of place in such an august gathering.

“Let me make it clear I would nominate centre-forward Jeff Astle and wing-half Tony Brown from Albion’s ranks. Consider the facts. Astle has finished the last couple of seasons with 20-plus goal tallies. Already this term he has scored 14 league goals, so the records show he is no flash in the pan goal getter. And at 25, Jeff is just the right age for international consideration. Experienced, yet still with plenty of soccer in him, he cannot go on being over-looked.”

Astle had played his full part in a fine run of results that had put Albion fifth in the table with 27 points. With nine points taken out of the previous ten, and with Manchester City twice beaten over Christmas, Albion were flying, in the best form of the season by a long stretch. But the First Division didn’t get any easier. Anfield awaited for the first game of 1968, a bit like being chucked in front of the lions at the Colosseum while holding a tin of Kitekat.

With Liverpool five points clear of the Baggies in second place in the table, Shankly’s Red Army needed the points to keep up the pressure on Manchester United at the top of the league and to ensure that the Throstles weren’t

Albion keep Manchester City at bay at Maine Road

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going to suddenly muscle in on the title chasing act. Always one to keep the opposition guessing, Shankly omitted Jeff Astle’s erstwhile Notts County team mate, Tony Hateley, from the starting line up, playing Geoff Strong instead.

Shankly’s masterly understanding of the game came up trumps once again, because it was Strong who was the early difference between the two teams, giving the Scousers a fourth minute lead, banging in a header from an accurate Peter Thompson cross. Roger Hunt very nearly made it 2-0 within a couple of minutes, shooting narrowly wide. Had that gone in, the game would have been up, but instead Albion weathered the storm and, after 15 min-utes, Tommy Smith conceded a penalty after a foul on Astle.

Bobby Hope stepped up to take it and crashed his shot off the bar and away to safety, but with goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence yards off his line, the kick was retaken. This time Tony Brown stepped up and slotted it into the bottom corner. Albion were now looking comfortable and after 26 minutes, they might have had another penalty when the giant Ron Yeats appeared to pull Clive Clark down in the box. But you didn’t get two penalties at Anfield, a fact that was proven once again after 34 minutes when Dick Krzywicki was bundled over by Gerry Byrne. Ian St John then got a lecture for a late whack at Clive Clark, all evidence that Liverpool were rattled by the quality of Albion’s football. John Kaye had headed narrowly over, Hope had had a curling shot scrape the upright and an Astle header had only just been off target.

Liverpool ended on a high, John Osborne making a great save to keep out a long range effort from Emlyn Hughes, but as they trooped back into the dressing rooms, Shankly had work to do. The great man worked his magic and it was a different Liverpool that poured forward after the break and, after 57 minutes, they were 2-1 up, Hunt feeding off a left wing cross, poking the ball into the net after a goalmouth scramble. The game was up 11 minutes later when that wonderful full-back Chris Lawler produced a defence splitting pass to release Hunt once again, the striker advancing into the box and driving in his shot.

Hunt completed a personal victory in the second half, finishing off Albion and completing his hat-trick nine minutes from time. Collecting the ball midway into the Albion half, he swerved past a couple of challenges and then slashed a 20 yard shot in off the post. The goal took Hunt’s Liverpool tally to 216, just one behind their all-time record holder Billy Liddell.

A disappointing day for the Baggies, faint hopes of the title surely gone for good, but Graham Williams was bullish after the game, insisting, “Don’t write us off. We have built too much confidence and team spirit to be thrown out of our stride by this defeat.”

Albion were hoping to prove a point the following Saturday by getting back to winning ways against Stoke at The Hawthorns but heavy falls of snow put paid to that fixture and it was a fortnight before the Throstles could get back on the field for a game at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground. Mid-table Forest had had no such lay off having drawn 0-0 at Newcastle and they perhaps had more rhythm about them going into the game.

It turned out to be a terrific game of football, both sides powering forwards as the game ebbed and flowed from end to end, but the watching journalists saw in that the seeds of Albion’s downfall. The Birmingham Post reported that, “The heady wine of gay attacking football went somewhat to Albion’s heads and affected their defensive con-centration. They seemed to have gone back on to bottles of sparkling Chateau Hagan after settling down to the sober wines from the Ashman vineyard.”

Ray Matts was of similar mind, saying, “I was surprised at Albion’s dramatic change about in style. Their pre-Christ-mas success away from home was based on rapier like raids from a sound defence. But on this occasion they overplayed their attacking hand with too many players anxious to go dashing off upfield at the expense of solid defensive cover.”

Having lost at Liverpool, Albion were clearly desperate to make up lost ground with a victory, perhaps too desper-ate, though had Winfield not hooked an early Astle header off the line, Albion might have gone on to dominate the game in more controlled fashion. As it was, they slipped behind after 10 minutes and were chasing the game ever after. John Osborne couldn’t handle a shot from Hilley that bounced up over him, onto the bar and into the path of Lyons who knocked in the opener from close range.

Albion were swiftly back in the game though, Bobby Hope’s perfect pass finding Astle, the number nine rolling the ball back across goal to find Clive Clark who slammed his shot past Grummitt in the Forest goal – if only we’d still had Jock Wallace in ours. The Throstles were playing like the home team by now, penning Forest in their own half, yet looking vulnerable to a counter attack, the source of Forest’s second goal after 28 minutes. Hilley was involved again, crossing into the path of Joe Baker whose powerful finish was too much for Osborne to deal with.

After a half-time announcement from the referee, threatening to abandon the game if a “phantom whistler” in the crowd didn’t stop, Albion resumed their pounding of Grummitt’s goal and were back on terms on the hour mark, a move that went from back to front, Williams playing a pass to Dougie Fraser who then released John Kaye down the left. Yorky’s cross reached Astle who, for the second time in the afternoon, played Clark in to finish the move and equalise.

Parity lasted no more than eight minutes though as Forest again seized on another defensive mistake, Baker standing free in the box to convert another Hilley centre and complete the scoring. A 3-2 defeat for the Albion meant the push for a European place via a good league position had gone off the rails.

But there was always the FA Cup, starting with a tricky trip to Colchester United the following week.

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Chapter 14: LIGhT My fIRe

Having slipped up in their opening two games of 1968, defeated at both Liverpool’s Anfield and Nottingham Forest’s City Ground, hopes of a high league finish were receding for the Throstles as they dropped to ninth place in the Division One table. As a consequence, the FA Cup assumed ever greater importance, the real remaining hope of a little glory and of a place in European competition the following season.

Albion’s impressive form in the final three months of 1967 had caused plenty of pundits to push them forward as genuine FA Cup contenders, a position that brought its own pressures as Ray Matts noted in his “Inside Albion” column. “How does it feel to be a red cape waving around in a field of bulls? That’s something Albion are likely to find out as they enter the white hot soccer cauldron, known as the FA Cup. For at 11-1 they are one of the compe-tition’s favourites – the first time they have been so strongly fancied for one of the game’s premier titles in many seasons. In a competition so fiercely contested as the FA Cup, no team can be regarded as “certs” for success.”

Even so, Albion were confident that they could go well in the FA Cup, not least because first up, they were facing Third Division opposition in Colchester United, albeit at Layer Road. As Matts added, “I fail to see how anyone can justifiably argue anything but a win for a First Division club over a Third Division side. Even bearing in mind that United have the advantage of a home draw, the difference in class must tell in the end. My view is that when a side from the premier league fail against lesser opposition, it is because they play badly or underestimate the opposi-tion. Albion have been guilty of both these sins in the past [year] but they will not fail a third time.”

Colchester were certainly up for the cup as a breathless programme editorial made clear: “Today is something of a gala day for the club. It’s the yearly dream of a Third or Fourth Division concern to draw a big name in the FA Cup and our luck this season has changed at last for West Bromwich Albion are the first First Division club since Arsenal in 1959 to visit Layer Road…today’s game should be as memorable as [that one] when in the Fourth Round we drew 2-2 with Arsenal, then top of Division One, and lost the replay 4-0 before a 63,000 plus crowd at Highbury. Indeed these stirring events were enacted nine years ago almost to the day and if this tie lives up to such thrills and high quality football then no one will be grumbling.” Had that bloke got himself a crystal ball or what?

For much of the 90 minutes, the third round tie rested on a knife edge and often looked set to become one of those classic feats of giant killing that fill the history books. Certainly the swaggering Albion side that had twice de-feated league leaders Manchester City over Christmas was nowhere to be seen as the Baggies struggled through a series of errors at either end of the pitch, finding none of the flow that had been so apparent in their good run to the turn of the year.

A huge crowd of just shy of 16,000 threatened to get out of control at Layer Road and six Albion fans were chucked out by Police after a number of supporters climbed on to the top of a stand, forcing Chairman Jim Gaunt and secretary Alan Everiss to come out and appeal for order. They might have made a similar appeal to the team for they came out and struggled from the first whistle to the extent that it was no surprise at all when Colchester took the lead after eight minutes. John Osborne and John Talbut were at sixes and sevens following a left wing cross and while they enjoyed an “after you Claude” moment, Stratton darted in between them and nodded the ball into an empty net.

It was no more than Colchester deserved and they were well on top in the play that followed. It could easily have been 2-0 after 19 minutes when Stratton thumped another header past Osborne, the ball bouncing down off the underside of the bar, Doug Fraser clearing it as it rebounded. Martin put a header wide of the post when he should have scored and midway through the half, Albion were on the ropes.

Gradually though, the storm subsided and the First Division side began to show their mettle, our first chance com-

Tony Brown sends Tommy Lawrence the wrong way

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ing when Jeff Astle headed over from a Clive Clark cross. It seemed we were level after 33 minutes, Dick Krzywicki receiving a pass from Astle as the ‘keeper came out before slotting it in, only to find the referee disallowing the goal.

No matter, five minutes later and we were on terms, Forbes fouling Astle as the King went up for a header, the referee pointing immediately to the spot. Tony Brown put the ball down and rifled it into the top of the net in typical Bomber fashion. With the teams going in level, the Albion support consoled itself with the hope that the worst was over and that the Baggies would now begin to demonstrate their top flight class. Even so, manager Alan Ashman betrayed his nervousness, replacing Krzywicki with Graham Lovett in an effort to add a little solidity to the midfield.

The side looked better balanced, stemming the tide of Colchester attacks with more confidence while starting to carve out opportunities of our own at the other end. To say the second half was all Albion would be an over state-ment, but certainly we were the team in the ascendancy. Astle twice came close with headers as Colchester were doing little more than hanging on but in doing so, they continued to give themselves a chance of an upset.

It seemed to have come as the game edged into injury time and a goalmouth scramble ensued according to Ray Matts’ report. “United were awarded a free kick and from the kick, the ball first appeared to be cleared off the line, then hit the underside of the bar, then banged into the net by Bullock, but the referee disallowed the goal. The game ended with the referee surrounded by angry Colchester players.”

It also ended with a bunch of bewildered Albion players as Graham Williams recalls. “We got away with murder there. John Talbut would have been booked or sent off today because when they scored that late goal, before we knew it was disallowed, he just got the ball and whacked it straight out of the ground! We were fighting amongst ourselves and while we’re doing that, the referee’s given us a free-kick. None of us have any idea why, not to this day. But after that, we were away.

“Away at Colchester, when that goal was disallowed, right from there we started thinking it was going to be our year. We had such a forward line that at home, nobody could live with us. But however good you are, you’re always vulnerable to a giant killing at that stage. I remember going to Lincoln in 1961 and we had a great side with Derek Kevan, Ronnie Allen, Bobby Robson, Don Howe, all these names. We looked at the pitch, looked beautiful, Davy Burnside said, “I’ll be a star on this today!” We got well beat! At Leicester the year before, we lost in the fifth round, and I was in tears afterwards, because that was how much the FA Cup meant.

“We were recognised as a cup side at that time, we had a terrific record. Nobody wanted to get drawn against us and you could pretty much say that if we were drawn at The Hawthorns, we were through to the next round. That was our attitude. We’d shown it in ’66 in the League Cup Final against West Ham. Lost the first leg 2-1 at Upton Park, but we knew we’d turn them over back home. They couldn’t live with us, all those World Cup players they had, but they couldn’t get a kick of the ball. The football we played was fast, direct, the crowd was outstanding, and we were unstoppable. We never talked about defence at home, no stuff about who marked who. It was just, “Right, let’s get at ‘em!” Lots of games, we’d score goals in the first 10 or 15 minutes to put the game away.”

Alan Ashman sounded a note of caution before the replay, saying, “Colchester challenged for everything. If they fight like that for the ball at The Hawthorns, we shall be at full stretch.” As it turned out though, just as Graham Wil-liams says, Albion swept into the attack from the outset and had the game under lock and key inside half an hour, a whirlwind start that Colchester could not live with.

Albion made a couple of changes for the first time in nine games, Rick Sheppard in goal in place of the injured Osborne, while Graham Lovett came off the substitute’s bench to regain his first team place a little more than a year after his horrific Christmas Eve car crash had threatened to end his career for good. He played his full part, journalist Gron Williams reporting, “Combining brilliantly, with Lovett adding a new precision, Albion threatened trouble for Colchester from the start, but it was a goal of individual brilliance in ten minutes by John Kaye which

opened their account. He came steaming through the middle, beat one man, sent another the wrong way, driving right footed from 35 yards between Forbes and Blackwood. Adams failed to hold the shot and it was Kaye’s best goal of the season to date.”

Astle made it 2-0 after 20 minutes, getting on the end of Dougie Fraser’s cross after good work by Bobby Hope set his fellow Scot on his way. A brilliant Adams save denied Tony Brown minutes later but the third goal wasn’t long in coming, Hope and Clark doing the donkey work to create another opening for Jeff Astle. From there, the edge went off Albion’s game as the job was long since done and it wasn’t until the 80th minute that they made it 4-0, Clive Clark getting on the end of a Bobby Hope cross.

Third round safely negotiated, next up was a home tie against Southampton.

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Chapter 15: MeANS To AN eND

These days, the FA Cup is looked on as little more than an irritant by too many clubs, a competition to field a weakened side in so that the full team can be fit and fresh for the altogether more important matter of league games. Forty years ago, it was a very different story. The FA Cup was still the glamour competition, the one that ever club, player and supporter wanted to win, above and beyond what was termed the “bread and butter” of the league.

Of course, these were not days when being in the top division was the be all and end all, when top flight football was the sole route to riches beyond the dreams of avarice, to multi millions and all that goes with it. Instead, it was a time when the money cake was more evenly sliced and, while playing at the top level was everybody’s ambition, failure to do so did not mean that financial extinction was about to place its icy grip upon your shoulder.

In that climate, the cup competitions could thrive and be seen as something that thoroughly enlivened the season. With fewer European places up for grabs too, many clubs looked at a decent run in the FA Cup as the best way of maintaining the supporters’ interest – very often, defeat in the FA Cup would spell the meaningful end of that particular campaign. And so, rather than dismissing it as a nuisance, a good FA Cup run could become central to a team’s efforts, blotting everything else out, such that league form could fall away alarmingly as all efforts were concentrated on the road to Wembley.

Having only just got past the first hurdle of Colchester United in round three, thoughts of a day out in the capital were all a little bit premature in mid-February and it was important that on their return to league duties, the Thros-tles got the First Division show back on the road with all due despatch. Successive defeats at Liverpool and Not-tingham Forest had taken the gloss off things, but a home game against newly promoted Coventry City offered up a real chance to set things straight. It was also a chance to atone for possibly the worst league result of the season, a 4-2 beating at Highfield Road that had seen Albion slip to 20th place.

That had actually been the wake up call the side needed, the season turning around from there, while for Coven-try things had been a struggle thereafter, winning just one of 17 subsequent league games, coming to The Haw-thorns rock bottom of the First Division and looking set for a quick return from whence they’d come.

Picking up your programme at The Hawthorns, you would have been greeted with an editorial that gently took sections of the support to task for the disturbance at Colchester the week before. “Officers of the club had occasion to visit our supporters behind one of the goals at Colchester where a little trouble had broken out. The Chairman asks us to thank those concerned for their co-operation but we did all wonder why anyone would want to travel all those miles to get himself put out of the ground before the game started! Surely the idea of going was to see the match. Calm yourselves gentlemen – the name of your club is at stake.”

Far from calming themselves, Albion’s players needed to rouse themselves for they put in a lacklustre display that made a mockery of the league table, not least because the Sky Blues were playing with a makeshift defence following a series of injuries and should, in theory, have been there for the taking. John Tudor – later to find fame as the strike partner of Malcolm MacDonald at Newcastle United – was pressed into service at centre-half, man marking Jeff Astle out of the game.

It was that tenacious attitude that served Coventry well, as Gron Williams reported in the Birmingham Post: “Marking as tightly, man to man, as any American College football squad, Coventry made nonsense of Albion’s accustomed speed and space theories of soccer. When the pass came to a West Bromwich player, he found a Coventry man arriving with it. It was like getting a rate demand in the same post as a salary cheque.”

Tony Brown’s penalty salvages a replay

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Albion started in reasonable heart, but as the game wore on, Coventry further and further blunted the attacking edge, such that it was little surprise when they grabbed the lead just short of the hour mark. “Albion full-back Col-quhoun failed to clear, centre-half John Talbut got his foot to the ball but it beat him and goalkeeper Rick Sheppard advanced from his line. The only man who kept his head was Hannigan who slid the ball into the net.”

Thereafter, the Baggies huffed and puffed, but with Coventry goalkeeper Bill Glazier in particularly good form, there were few real scares and the home side fell away to a disappointing 1-0 defeat, the Post recording, “Albion have struck a bad patch after their great sequence up to the New Year. Their remedies must include the purchase of players to fill three positions, goal, right-back and outside-right. Their run of success, with its emphasis on run-ning and covering on a team basis, masked these weaknesses; but they are still there, as they have been since last season.”

A trip to Sheffield United was next up on the following Saturday, John Osborne still missing in goal, while in mid-field, the 17 year old Scot Asa Hartford was given his Albion debut in place of Graham Lovett. Hartford made an inspirational impact just 23 minutes into the fixture, finding a perfectly weighted pass from which Jeff Astle gave his side the lead in what was a greatly improved performance from the Throstles.

From back to front, Albion were in much stronger shape, reports noting that, “Albion’s back line, with John Talbut in excellent form, played so soundly that Rick Sheppard only had one really difficult shot to save. But Sheppard was always confident in handling the many high crosses that proved the chief danger to his goal.

“In the first half, Albion’s midfield trio, Bobby Hope, John Kaye and Tony Brown, set up a midfield superiority that Sheffield could not match. Brown showed himself the best marksman on either side with a tremendous free kick which hit a post and another great shot which Hodgkinson did well to save for a corner. Had either found the net, it would have made Albion’s position impregnable.”

But one goal is never enough and so it was to prove. “Albion were only seconds from victory when Colin Addison managed to turn Alan Woodward’s corner kick over the line to save Sheffield United a point. It was rough justice for Albion.” The Baggies remained in ninth place in the First Division as a result, with 28 points from 27 games.

That late disappointment was hardly the best preparation for the return to the FA Cup the following week when Albion were set to entertain Southampton at The Hawthorns, not exactly a draw to set the pulses racing given Albion’s record against the Saints earlier in the campaign – a 4-0 drubbing at The Dell and a desperately dull 0-0 draw just before Christmas. Southampton were one of those teams that always seemed to cause the Throstles trouble, so it seemed especially important that the job was done first time at The Hawthorns without recourse to a replay trip to the south coast.

Dick Krzywicki replaced Hartford on the right and Dennis Clarke was the next to try to fill the troublesome right-back berth, but the problem Albion faced was precisely the one that had they had encountered in the game in De-cember – Southampton came to The Hawthorns resolutely determined not to concede a goal and perfectly happy to make few real attempts to find one of their own. A replay was their sole objective from the first whistle and, in a thoroughly dreary first half where Albion could find no fluency, nor the imagination required to break down the Southampton rearguard, they looked set to get it.

Then things turn a turn for the disastrous as the game entered first half stoppage time, Clarke penalised for a foul on Sydenham. Former England winger Terry Paine took the free-kick, clipping it to the back post from where Davies headed the ball back across the face of goal, Frank Saul darting in to head beyond Sheppard and in, the half coming to a close almost as soon as the visitors’ celebrations had died down.

From there, it looked like it would be a long haul to get back on terms for the Throstles, but just as it had at Col-

chester when the opposition’s late goal was chalked off, luck came calling once again for Albion when Tony Brown smacked in one of the less impressive of his record number of goals, just two minutes after the restart. Shooting from 25 yards after collecting a pass from John Kaye, “Goalkeeper Eric Martin stooped to gather the ball with plenty of time to spare…but at the last fraction of a second, a small bump in The Hawthorns pitch foiled him.

“The ball bounced up over a startled Martin’s right shoulder and Albion were back in a game which had been slowly slipping away from them after their energetic, bustling start.”

Reinvigorated by the equaliser, Albion began to lay siege to the Southampton goal, although for the most part, the lion’s share of possession did not translate into a slew of golden chances. Even so, the Baggies had their moments and there were times when Southampton were hanging on for dear life, not least when Dick Krzywicki struck a good shot against the post and then Jeff Astle “flicked in a header only to see Martin make the best save of the match.”

When the dust finally settled on the 90 minutes, there was nothing to choose between the sides once again and Albion were faced with getting into the fifth round the hard way, via a trip to The Dell, a ground where they had hitherto won just once in twelve visits, away back in 1946/47. Not only that, the previous two trips to Southampton in the FA Cup had seen the Baggies beaten on both occasions. The Albion programme noted that in the event of a Wednesday night replay, the Club would receive an allocation of 1,500 seats. On the basis of that record, those that did travel would do so more in hope than expectation.

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Chapter 16: WhITe LIGhT WhITe heAT

On the recent occasions when Albion have been given away cup draws to lower league sides such Hartlepool, Peterborough and Bristol Rovers, those trips have opened an eye or two among our more youthful supporters. Passionate crowds, crammed into heaving terraces, feet away from the pitch, they are a little like the bear pits of yore, the football grounds of old England in the days before the Taylor Report, in the days before health and safety became words that carried legal power behind them.

Yet even then, those grounds lower down the scale don’t really convey the way it used to be, not at the top level. When people say that there’s a great atmosphere at Newcastle or Everton these days, maybe there is. But com-pared with 40 years ago, it’s like going to a croquet match in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Especially under floodlights, terraced football grounds were an intimidating place to be, especially if you were away from home. And while the obvious suspects such as Old Trafford and Anfield could put the wind up even the most experienced players, there were others that could whip up an extraordinary intensity, the kind of fervour that allowed teams to punch above their weight for years on end. Such a place was The Dell in Southampton.

Although the Saints lacked the financial clout in the ‘60s to ever make a really concerted push for anything be-yond First Division survival, that tight little ground and its raucous support meant they could regularly accumulate enough points at home to keep themselves afloat. But if you threw in the drama of an FA Cup tie, the voltage that ran through the place just got higher and higher.

That was the setting Albion walked into in February 1968 for a fourth round replay in front of a crowd of 26,000. All the euphoria of surviving that late scare at Colchester in round three was rapidly evaporating, because this was going to be a huge test of Albion’s resolve, all the more so given that the teams now knew the identity of their fifth round opponents – Portsmouth.

Ten minutes into the game, the Throstles looked to be in trouble, Terry Paine angling a 35 yard pass into the path of Frank Saul who was beyond the defence, the striker crashing a shot into the net, his follow through whacking into the face of goalkeeper John Osborne, the Daily Express reporting that, “he received attention for four minutes. When he resumed he reeled around like a drunken man groping in a thick fog.”

In true sporting fashion, Southampton responded to the injury by putting Ossie under as much pressure as they could, pumping high balls into the box for the powerful Ron Davies to challenge for, Davies soon leaving Osborne in a heap in the goalmouth. Albion were keen to take get Osborne out of the firing line, but in those days of a sin-gle outfield substitute, Osborne was just as eager to keep going as long as he could. The compromise came with Stuart Williams, Albion’s newly appointed coach, standing behind the concussed ‘keeper’s goal and advising him as to where the play was coming from.

It’s some measure of Albion’s quality and their determination that in spite of that, they went in at the interval hav-ing turned things around to lead 2-1. The equaliser came after 16 minutes, Bobby Hope lifting a pass into Jeff Astle who chested the ball to John Kaye. Kaye returned the ball to Astle and he drove his shot into the net to ensure Southampton’s supremacy was short lived.

The pace of Albion’s attacking, from Clive Clark in particular, was a thorn in the Southampton side and the dis-array in their back line enabled the Throstles to get their beaks in front just before the half hour, Graham Williams’ cross into the box seemingly simple for the ‘keeper until defender Jimmy Gabriel got in his way, nodding the ball into Tony Brown’s path. 2-1.

Albion were utterly on top by now, Martin producing a string of fine saves before the break, three from Brown Jeff Astle denied for once

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and another from Ian Collard. But when the whistle went, it was Martin’s opposite number that was the centre of attention. Alan Ashman reported later that, “When Osborne came in at half-time, I could not even talk to him. He did not know what was going on. How he survived the first half I don’t know, but he clearly could not face the second.”

Graham Lovett was to come on as substitute, but who was going in goal. One of the big lads – Kaye, John Talbut, Astle? No, not quite.

“When Ossie couldn’t carry on, I had to go in goal”, recalls Graham Williams. “I had to wear his shirt. He’s 6 feet 2, the sleeves were too long, I had to tie them up. The gloves were too big. I was in goal at the end where all the dockers were, they were throwing stones and fag ends, hitting me in the back of the head. They had Ron Davies up front, he started laughing when he saw me in goal.

“I’d started as a goalkeeper at school, I was a gymnast as a schoolboy for Wales, and I only got moved out be-cause I was left footed. Typical schoolteacher, “We need somebody to play on the left, Graham, you do it!” I came to the Albion as a left winger, but I was never going to make it. I’m the only guy who dummied in a straight line! My body swerve was straight on.”

It was all change for another Albion stalwart too, John Kaye dropping back to help out in the centre of defence. “When Ossie went off and Graham went in goal, it didn’t look great, but I suppose you pull that bit more out to try and cope with it. Graham fancied himself as a ‘keeper but I went back to help out with John Talbut, so we won most of the stuff in the air and in the end, we found our way through. It was like the Alamo, but if you keep on battling, you never know what you might get out of it in the end.

“That changed my career really because all of a sudden, I was a defender. Playing at centre-back did seem to come just natural to me, I just slotted into it straight away. John Talbut was a good talker throug a game, great friend of mine and still is, we got to know each other very well, and I think that helps as well because you get to know each other’s character. I got a reputation for being hard but I don’t think I was ever dirty, over the top. Maybe I just looked aggressive! We did pretty well as a back four with Ossie behind, we never used to give a real lot of goals away, especially in the cup games.

“Ossie was a great character, always nervous about playing. He had to strap two of his fingers together all the time because of the problems he had with his knuckles. If the game was quiet, he’d nip behind the goal and get a fag off one of the crowd and have a swift drag – couldn’t do that now, neither!

“Graham was a terrific captain, great competitor, and that was how we were across the back, all real competitors, Dougie was never shy of tackling either, and neither were me and John Talbut. I think that rubs off on the other players in front of you, if they see you getting stuck in, they feel like they have to have a go. And we could play a bit because I’d started up front, and Dougie had come here as a wing-half. He liked to play out from the back. Mind, sometimes he liked to play a bit too much! He had a good touch on the ball, good control.”

That team spirit is crucial on nights like that one at Southampton when the chips are really down. As skipper Gra-ham Williams says, that side was bonded like brothers, and that was the extra ingredient that made the difference.

“It was just the whole thing of being involved with the club, we were all so proud of that. It wasn’t about being captain, I didn’t have to be captain because they were such an easy bunch to work with. They’d do anything. The only meetings we ever had were about who was going to which charity do. You’d end up with half the team going, because that’s what they were like, you were just proud to be West Bromwich Albion, we were part of the commu-nity. We won together and lost together. If one of us got in a fight, we were all there.

“The only time it wasn’t like that was in South America. I’d been away with Wales in South America, we played

Mexico and Brazil, so I joined up a bit late with Albion, in Argentina, where we were going to play a testimonial. I got there, I could see the lads all waving at the airport, I thought, “They’ve come to meet me, isn’t that nice?” So I get through the double doors, first words, “We want you to see the chairman!” Great!

““We’re not having this Willy. We’re having to pay for our laundry!”

“So I said, “I’ve just had mine done with Wales, it’s clean, why get on to me?!” so we had a meeting and they were upset they were spending most of their daily allowance on laundry. So I went and saw Jimmy Hagan who was manager then. “What’s the problem?”

““I haven’t got one, I’ve just arrived, but the lads are up in arms about having to pay for laundry and the other little bills”.

““They’ve got a contract, they’re stuck with it”.

““Ok Mr Hagan, I want to see the chairman”.

““What?”

““I want to see the chairman”.

“So we knock on Jim Gaunt’s door. “Yo’m a trouble mekker Williams. Yo’ve ony bin here five minutes!”

““It’s not me Mr. Chairman, I’ve come here as captain on behalf of the players”.

““Right, get ‘em in the room upstairs and we’ll sort this out”.

“So we’re in this room on the top floor, I get up and say, “Mr. Chairman, Mr. Hagan, the players want to ask you a question. Ok lads, away you go.”

“I look round. Nothing. Not a word. “Look, you’ve got me up here to talk about the laundry, tell them what you’ve told me”. Silence. Thanks lads!”

There was a bit of laundry to do after the Southampton game because the second half was all about 11 players putting their bodies on the line to use the modern parlance. As Kaye said, it looked like being a long 45 minutes, and things weren’t helped just eight minutes in when Southampton got level, Hughie Fisher’s snapshot flashing past Williams, though the Express reported that “a regular ‘keeper would have been lucky even to reach it”.

Thereafter, with Kaye and Talbut in magnificent form, the Throstles dealt with everything Southampton could throw at them, and the game looked set for a 30 minute period of extra time. Lovett had different ideas though and in the dying seconds, he set off on a marauding run deep into Southampton territory before letting fly with a shot that beat Martin but not the post. The ball rebounded to Clark who fed the ball to Astle for the King to make it 3-2 and send Albion into the last 16 of the competition. Wembley was just that little bit closer.

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Chapter 17: CRoSSToWN TRAffIC

As Albion made their merry, but weary way back from their epic fourth round cup replay win at Southampton, it was becoming ever more clear that all the season’s eggs were being placed in the basket marked Football Association Challenge Cup. With the Throstles ninth in the First Division, the likelihood of the qualifying for Europe via a high league placing was looking increasingly remote, and though a top half finish would still represent progress based on the previous campaign, Alan Ashman was looking to make a rather bigger splash in his debut season at The Hawthorns.

That said, there was to be no relaxing in the league, for the Throstles wanted to maintain the cup fighting momen-tum. After a hard fought win in midweek though, there could be few better sights than to look down the fixture list and see that Saturday was offering up a home game, and one against Fulham, busily digging an escape tunnel all the way into Division Two, marooned at the foot of the table.

After eight games without a win, Fulham had rallied to beat Burnley 4-3 the previous week, but still they looked doomed and Albion opened the game in best bullying mood, picking on the weedy kid at the bottom of the class, chucking his satchel over the fence and bunging his head down the nearest toilet as we simply took them to pieces in the early exchanges. Macedo saved well from Tony Brown, then did even better to tip a John Kaye drive over, Graham Williams ending a torrid few minutes of early action by lobbing an effort onto the roof of the net.

Fulham simply had no answers to the onslaught early on and after 14 minutes, the inevitable first goal duly ar-rived, Jeff Astle accelerating through the middle beyond the defence before flicking his shot past the advancing Macedo and in. It didn’t take long for the Albion to double the lead either, goal number two coming after 21 minutes, Clive Clark chopped down in the penalty area, Tony Brown stepping up to fire home the resultant penalty.

That was how the scoreline remained until the interval, but it was a different Albion after the break, more sluggish as perhaps they began to feel the effects of their exertions on the south coast earlier in the week. Certainly they slackened the pace and allowed the former England maestro Johnny Haynes to get on the ball and begin to offer the Cottagers some hopes of finding a way back into the game.

On the hour, they pulled a goal back, Allan Clarke missing his kick from close range, the ball rolling into the path of Les Barrett behind him who whacked the ball past John Osborne.

From there, Fulham enjoyed the bulk of the play, but it was a case of huffing and puffing without blowing the brick like defence down, Albion mopping up the attacks without any great problem, moving serenely enough towards a 2-1 win and two more points, points that moved them up to eighth in the table.

Next up was a trip to sixth placed Tottenham Hotspur, a tricky fixture, but something of an experiment too. As “Albion News” recorded, “The League Cup Final, Arsenal v Leeds at Wembley, has caused an alteration in our fixtures. If two out-of-town sides had won their way to Wembley we would have been able to play our match at Tot-tenham. Arsenal however are just a short space away from Spurs and it has been thought advisable for our game to be played on the Friday night. That’s the date then: Friday 1st March, at Tottenham for our match.”

Friday night football proved to be every bit as appetising then as it is now, which is not very appetising at all, not least because the two teams served up a 0-0 draw, a “deadlock of despair… a dull and dismal duel” as one news-paper reported it. That in itself was a surprise because traditionally, Albion against Spurs was one of those games that generally served up fine entertainment, but perhaps both sides had their eyes fixed on cup duty a week later, the holders, Spurs, set for a clash with Liverpool while Albion would have to travel to Portsmouth.

Goalkeeper Graham Williams, hero of the hour at Southampton

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The Throstles produced their best football early on, forcing five corners in the first quarter of an hour, clever play by Tony Brown creating an opening after 12 minutes, Pat Jennings making a brilliant save to push his effort over the bar. At the other end, John Osborne was in equally magnificent form to keep out a series of efforts from goalscorer supreme Jimmy Greaves, in search of the 300th league goal of his career. Ossie clearly upset the home faithful because at one point, as bottle was hurled from the crowd and whizzed dangerously close to his head, police sum-moned to patrol behind the goal thereafter.

In a game where defences were utterly in charge, the Birmingham Post’s Gron Williams put his finger on the real problem: “What this match did prove is how much of a game of incentive soccer is. Both sides are comfortably in the top half of the First Division but neither has much chance of getting into Europe by occupying the top League positions. Next Saturday they have testing FA Cup assignments. Small wonder then that neither side pulled out their full repertoire.”

The best news to come out of the Tottenham game for the Throstles was the fact that there were no injuries and a full squad could travel down to Southsea to prepare for the Portsmouth tie. Ahead of the game, Alan Ashman said, “We will be out to repeat the sort of form we showed in the fourth round replay against Southampton at The Dell. That game did us a lot of good because the team showed some character and played a lot of good stuff. The side generally have been showing some improvement again lately and other teams are finding it harder to get goals against us. We go in confident mood.”

Having won well at Fratton Park in a pre-season friendly, Albion had every right to be confident as they travelled to take on the Division Two outfit, a side lying second in the table and pushing for promotion. After John Kaye had had a header well saved after a couple of minutes, it was Portsmouth who tore into the early stages of the game, John Osborne making a terrific save to parry a ferocious McCann shot and he then scrambled to get hold of the rebound under intense Pompey pressure.

Gradually, Albion’s greater quality started to exert itself and after 29 minutes, the Throstles fashioned the first goal after Jeff Astle was hauled down on the edge of the box. Bobby Hope flighted in a perfect cross, Astle timing his run across the face of the defence to perfection to guide a guide glancing header into the corner of the net.

The game was there to be won for Albion as Portsmouth were rocked on their heels and we seized the moment four minutes later following good work by John Kaye and Doug Fraser, the Scot drilling a low cross towards the near post, Clive Clark darting in fearlessly to clip the ball past goalkeeper Milkins and give Albion a real cushion. Another good save by John Osborne just before the break preserved the lead, but this was now an Albion outfit oozing confidence. Astle had a fierce shot cleared off the line by Ley and then had another effort disallowed after he finished off a fine pass from Clark.

But what was looking like a cakewalk was turned into a nervy finish when 15 minutes from time, Osborne could only parry a Trebilcock header towards Hiron who headed in from close range to make it 2-1. The goal came just moments after John Talbut had been felled by a missile thrown from the crowd, which was clearly something of a fashion at the time. This followed a strange incident where a police constable walked on to the pitch to remonstrate with Talbut after he had sworn at a Portsmouth player who had just give him a kick. Reporter Ray Matts, legendary for his refusal to use any form of foul language under even the most extreme provocation, was incredulous, writing that the officer, “Should have been more concerned with controlling an excitable home crowd who were bombard-ing the Albion goalmouth with a number of objects including small change. Surely the officer exceeded his duties by walking on to the pitch.”

In spite of the assault from all corners, Albion withstood the late pressure and progressed to the last eight of the competition with a well deserved 2-1 win, although Pompey boss George Smith was not wildly impressed. “Albion showed themselves a good side, but I don’t think they will win the Cup”. Says you.

The Throstles did collect their first trophy of the season just 48 hours after dumping Pompey out of the FA Cup when they won the final of the BBC’s Quiz Ball, John Osborne starring as the team’s mastermind. “I have become better known as the man who is on “Quiz Ball” and also keeps goal for Albion on a Saturday. Perhaps this is the wrong way round but I don’t mind really, although goalkeeping is the only trade I know. The important thing is that life at the top as a professional footballer is short and you have to make your name when you can, how you can. A football career can take a sudden twist and next week I could find myself knocked right off the top.”

The Baggies beat Nottingham Forest 2-1 in the final of the quiz programme, Osborne joined by Alan Ashman, Doug Fraser and guest celebrity, motor cyclist Jeff Smith. Ossie chose to see great omens in Albion’s victory: “Arsenal won “Quiz Ball” last year and they reached the League Cup Final this time; we hope we can better that double”.

The draw for the sixth round did Albion few favours though. While Leeds were set to play Sheffield United, Ever-ton would travel to Leicester or Rotherham and Arsenal or Birmingham would entertain Sheffield Wednesday or Chelsea, the Throstles were pleased to be drawn at The Hawthorns. That their opponents would be Liverpool or Tottenham was less welcome news.

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Chapter 18: heLTeR SKeLTeR

Having progressed to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, it was back to more mundane chores for the Throstles the following Wednesday when they entertained Stoke which is, let’s face it, far more than Stoke have done in recent times. With the Potters struggling around the foot of the First Division and with Albion casting an eye towards that impending cup duty, Stoke’s greater need for the points might have been expected to prove decisive, not least because Alan Ashman was confronted by some real selection problems.

Tony Brown was confined to his sick bed with flu, while both Bobby Hope and Clive Clark were ruled out with knee injuries. That meant a debut for summer signing Dennis Martin on the wing, while Kenny Stephens got his first start in four months, Graham Lovett getting his second since his horrific car crash fifteen months earlier.

You can only assume that, back in 1968, God was paying a lot more attention to the football scores because in those far off days, we used to beat Stoke quite regularly, and this game was no exception, the Throstles easing quite comfortably to a 3-0 win in front of a crowd of just short of 21,000.

Albion were by far the better side, Ray Matts noting that only, “A classy display by England goalkeeper Gordon Banks and Albion’s own ineptitude in front of goal prevented them from turning all-round superiority into goals against a shocking Stoke outfit.” It took the home side 70 minutes before they could finally find a way past Banks of England, relief flooding across The Hawthorns when Graham Lovett was hacked down in the box by Conroy. Jeff Astle picked up the ball, placed it on the penalty spot and beat Banks to register goal number 22 of the season.

Twelve minutes later, Albion wrapped up the game, Banks only able to punch a cross out to the edge of the box where Ian Collard drove a first time shot through a crowd of players and into the far corner of the net, Banks beaten. His defence had descended into a ragged shambles by that stage and in the final minute of the game, Albion made it three, John Kaye playing a beautiful pass into the run of Astle who had the freedom of the penalty area, sliding the ball past Banks and pushing Albion to the heady heights of sixth place in the first Division, back on the fringes of the fight for a place in the Inter-Cities Fairs up the following year.

Following the game, Albion headed into the transfer market in a big way, smashing the club record to pay £65,000 for Coventry City’s Welsh international winger Ronnie Rees, Alan Ashman saying of his first major signing, “I have always liked Rees. He can operate on either wing and, though I’ve seen him at outside-left, he prefers to play on the right wing.”

Rees himself added, “I feel on top of the world. It’s great to be at The Hawthorns. One of the reasons I am glad to have moved to Albion is because I have this opportunity of being converted to the right-wing position.”

Rees was straight into the action as Albion welcomed fellow FA Cup quarter-finalists, Everton, to The Hawthorns, Rees replacing Martin in the only change to the side that beat Stoke. He’d probably have been better off having an afternoon in the stands watching with the other injured players because the Baggies endured a nightmare of a day against an Everton team that implemented every one of the lessons learnt at Goodison’s “School of Science” under the watchful eye of manager Harry Catterick. Everton were well respected as a footballing side and on that mid March day, they showed just why that was, Alan Ball in particularly imperious form as the Merseysiders simply took Albion to the cleaners – and this with a side who included four teenagers, collectively the youngest team that Everton had ever fielded.

Youth certainly had its day, though it took the visitors 24 minutes before they grabbed the lead. It came after Ian Collard was dispossessed in the Everton half, Everton swarming forward through Jimmy Husband who picked out Ball in the penalty area, the England international guiding the ball beyond John Osborne and in.

John Osborne denies Portsmouth

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It was 2-0 within three minutes, Alan Whittle finding ball in virtually the same position with his left wing cross, Ball driving the ball back across goal and in off the post. Albion held on to the coat tails of the Toffeemen until the break and were back in the thick of the game not long after the interval after Graham Lovett had a cross cleared by the Everton defence. John Kaye was quickest on to the loose ball, driving in a shot which thumped back off the post, Ian Collard pouncing on the rebound to slot it past Gordon West.

That lifeline was quickly whipped back off the Baggies though, largely thanks to great work by Joe Royle who cut past three challenges before Doug Fraser hauled him down in the penalty area. Up stepped Alan Ball to complete his hat-trick from the penalty spot after 56 minutes as Albion were effectively put out of the game.

There was worse to follow after 67 minutes, Johnny Morrissey making it 4-1, then a minute later, Morrissey almost scored again, his effort from distance striking the woodwork before Royle was onto the rebound to shovel the ball past Osborne. And still it wasn’t over for with 10 minutes still to go, Alan Ball scored his fourth and Everton’s sixth, his second penalty, won after Lovett and Collard had sandwiched Whittle.

Albion earned minor consolation in the dying minutes with perhaps the best goal of the game, Collard carving his way through the midfield before unleashing an unstoppable 25 yard drive that flashed past West and in. A nice end to the day but it could hardly disguise the fact that the Throstles had been thoroughly outplayed and their hopes of that high league finish had taken a savage blow at the hands of one of their big rivals who fully deserved their 6-2 win.

A trip to Filbert Street and a game with Leicester City was next up, City enduring a middling mid-table season that was gradually winding down to its close, no threat of relegation to haunt them, but little chance of breaching the top half of the table either. Like Albion, they were readying themselves for an FA Cup battle the following week, but giv-en that Leicester were facing Everton, they can’t have been too confident about their chance of success. Though John Osborne was missing, with Tony Brown, Bobby Hope and Clive Clark all restored to the team, the Throstles looked in far better shape, but once again, defensively they were a shambles and very nearly put themselves out of the game before it had really started.

Albion were behind after just eight minutes, Rick Sheppard parrying a Tewley shot straight back at him, his cross eluding Fern but finding David Nish who tapped in with not a challenge to be seen. Doug Fraser kept the arrears down to a single goal by clearing off the line but just before half time, Leicester did finally, and deservedly, grab the second goal of the game, Tewley collecting a headed pass from Large before depositing the ball in the back of the net.

Nish had a goal disallowed for offside and then saw Fern miss an absolute sitter as Albion looked likely to ship a hatful of goals for the second successive Saturday. Significantly though, Colquhoun was forced to go off injured, Doug Fraser moving to replace him at right back, Ian Collard coming in at wing-half, Albion slowly starting to look more secure and beginning to take the game to Leicester.

With 16 minutes left, a Tony Brown free-kick found its way to John Kaye who threaded the ball into Clive Clark’s path, the winger striking it confidently past Peter Shilton. Eight minutes later and the scores were all square, Jeff Astle’s pinpoint cross finding Clark rising at the far post to head down and in to give Albion what looked an improb-able point.

We weren’t finished against a shell shocked Leicester though. With just five minutes to go, a long, raking ball out from the back from Graham Williams found Clark in space down the left. He cut inside, Shilton making a good save to deny him a hat-trick, but there was Astle to follow up and steer the ball into the waiting net and complete a remarkable recovery for the Throstles.

It was certainly a confidence booster ahead of the meeting with Liverpool in the cup. With Shankly’s Red Army still pushing for the double, well in contention for the league title, it was expected to be the toughest possible tie, a situation not helped by the absence of Bobby Hope with a recurrence of his knee injury, Dick Krzywicki depu-tising for him. The Liverpool line up had its usual ring of invincibility – Lawrence, Lawler, Hughes, Yeats, Strong, Callaghan, Ross, St John, Thompson, Arrowsmith, Hunt, some of the biggest names in the domestic game, even without the injured Tommy Smith.

There’s been no manager cannier than Bill Shankly and, safe in the knowledge that at Anfield his team were well nigh unbeatable, he came to The Hawthorns perfectly happy to avoid defeat as the first job, then to win the game if they possibly could.

That meant that for the first 45 minutes, it was Albion who were territorially on top, Ian Collard having the first chance of the early exchanges, driving in a snapshot from distance that went just wide. Krzywicki almost put Albion in front after a good move involving Kaye, Brown and Collard, Ross making a superb saving block to deny him, very much the tale of the first half – Albion playing well, engineering half chances but Liverpool’s well marshalled rearguard snuffing everything out.

Growing in confidence, it was a different Liverpool after the break as they started to give as good as they got as an attacking force. Just four minutes into the half, a slip by John Talbut let Arrowsmith through, John Osborne flying out of his goal to deny him. Past the hour mark, it seemed that the visitors were ahead, Geoff Strong rattling a 30 yarder off the crossbar with Osborne completely beaten, a huge let off for the Throstles.

From there, the game descended back into stalemate, the Baggies battering away against the red wall but with-out the guile to find a way beyond the colossus of Ron Yeats and on towards Tommy Lawrence. March 1968 closed with the Albion still very much in the FA Cup but faced with the most daunting task in the game – going to Anfield and beating Liverpool in their own back yard in a cup replay. In April, only a fool would have bet against the Reds.

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Chapter 19: LoNG, LoNG, LoNG

April 1968 was one of the most intense footballing periods in Albion’s history, in terms of both the number of games played and the importance of those fixtures. Before the month was out, the Throstles had played 10 games in 28 days, including three huge FA Cup ties.

With return trip to Anfield for the FA Cup sixth round replay on hold because of an England game and the number of Liverpool players involved in it, Albion entertained themselves in the immediate aftermath of that first game with the visit of Sunderland in a First Division encounter that by now had little riding on it except pride, the Baggies’ real-istic hopes of winning a place in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup receding quickly. For Sunderland however, still in with a chance of dropping out of the top flight, the game carried a lot more importance, and they were delighted to come to The Hawthorns and find that Bobby Hope was still sidelined, Ray Matts writing that, “Albion, without the midfield generalship of Hope, were once more a pale image of their usual selves.”

The first half was a total non event, Albion mustering two shots on goal against a Rokerite side that were intent on escaping back to Wearside with a point intact, Albion’s appetite for the action not helped any by a raging blizzard that enveloped The Hawthorns at one stage.

There was better fare on offer in the second half, John Kaye hitting the post and Ian Collard highly unfortunate not to be awarded a penalty kick when he was hauled down in the box, but a goalless draw was the eventual outcome, one that had looked very much on the cards from the off, though it was only achieved thanks to a spectacular save by John Osborne in the second half.

The Throstles warmed up for the Liverpool replay by heading for the north west that Saturday, taking on Burnley at Turf Moor. When the Clarets had come to The Hawthorns earlier in the season, they’d been sent packing with an 8-1 beating. After back to back goalless draws for Albion, surely this was going to be a real goalfest?

Not as such. Another 0-0, although a slightly more entertaining game than the bore draw against Sunderland. The first 45 minutes was pretty even fare, both sides having half chances, Albion coming closest when Jeff Astle hit a swerving shot just over the bar from distance, Ralph Coates shooting as wide as his hair parting for the home team after a defensive scramble.

In the second half though, it was much more Burnley’s game as Albion were forced further into a policy of con-tainment, yet the home team still created plenty of opportunities, the Express & Star reporting that, “The star of the show was without doubt John Osborne who produced a string of great saves in the final 15 minutes.”

That draw left Albion solidly placed in eighth, but it also left them 48 hours away from their replay with Liverpool which was to take place on the Monday night ahead of the busy, three game Easter period which started on the Friday – Arsene Wenger would be doing his nut if Arsenal were confronted with that fixture list today, but Albion and Liverpool simply got on with things.

Playing at Anfield, in front of the Kop, was not the relatively gentrified experience it is today. Back in 1968 it was like playing in front of a blast furnace, a raw, rare white heat of intensity that evaporated the belief and the hope of team after team who trotted up the tunnel, already withering under Shankly’s gaze, only to be shrivelled to nothing by the sound and the fury which signified everything. Nowhere on earth was like Anfield.

The replay went the full, exhausting two hours, into extra time, and still these two teams, desperate for a place in the semi-finals and a game against Birmingham City, could not be separated. In some senses, it was Albion’s finest hour in the whole cup run, because on the big occasion, you simply never got anything out of Anfield. Eddie Colquhoun clashes with Liverpool’s Roger Hunt

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But Albion emerged unscathed with a 1-1 draw as Alan Williams explained in the Daily Express: “They richly de-served to carry this tremendous sixth-round tie to a third meeting at Old Trafford [sic]. Albion were outpowered for an hour but never outskilled.

“They have never fought a more noble or disciplined battle and they came agonisingly close to victory in the last quarter of ordinary time. It needed courage – raw Black Country courage – to withstand the pressure that Liverpool flung at them in the first half and then throughout a tense extra time period. But Albion, with every player playing his heart out, possessed those qualities.”

It also took courage to come back from being a goal down, Liverpool nosing into the lead after 25 minutes, Ian St John flighting a free kick into the box, Ron Yeats getting on the end of it to put his effort against the bar, fouling Osborne in the process. As Albion stood appealing for a foul, Tony Hateley collected the rebound to hook it past John Osborne and give Liverpool the lead. A Jeff Astle shot was the sum of our attacking exploits in the first period but after the interval, we were a far stronger unit and, according to Williams, “The equaliser was richly deserved as Astle headed in from a fine move by Doug Fraser and the tireless Tony Brown”.

One hundred and twenty minutes of football could not separate the two teams, and club officials met after the game to agree that the second replay, to be played on neutral ground, would take place in Manchester. Manchester United initially agreed to host the game at Old Trafford but after further consideration, and the probable intervention of Matt Busby, United withdrew the offer as they were concerned about the heavy workload placed on their pitch by their successful European Cup campaign. As a consequence, Maine Road stepped into the breach, the replay taking place there ten days hence.

Before that, the busy Easter programme, beginning with a trip to Tyneside on Good Friday for a meeting with mid-table Newcastle United. Tony Brown recalls that one of his colleagues caused a little consternation on the train journey up thee: “We went up to Newcastle the one time on the train, and we were playing cards to pass time like we normally did. Jeff was having a terrible time with the cards, effing and blinding he was, these passengers walking past wondering what was going on. We were in a carriage, but Alan must have heard what was going on, so he flung the doors open and said, “Jeff, if you don’t stop that language, you’re going home on the next train!”

“Jeff looked up and said, “Alan, if you’d got these **** cards, you’d be swearing as well!” Alan closed the door and walked off. You wouldn’t have done that with Jimmy Hagan, but for all that, it was Alan who got the best out of him.

“That was typical of Jeff, and typical he was playing cards. Jeff liked a bet and every day, he’d park on these dou-ble yellow lines outside the bookies in the High Street in West Bromwich. Every day, he’d get a parking ticket and then he’d go and see the police and get it torn up - the traffic warden nearly get chucked in the canal for upsetting Jeff!”

Skipper Graham Williams has his own Astle story, of similar vintage: “I remember Alan Ashman saying to Jeff the one time, “Jeff, you either call me boss or Mr Ashman”. So Jeff said, “Ok, that’s fine Alan”, and carried on walking! Actually, Jeff and Alan had a great relationship. Alan understood how important he was on the field but knew he was just as important off it because of his jokes and his antics, that he kept the spirits high.”

Williams also had some memories of previous Newcastle battles to take into the game as he recalls: “A couple of years before, we played at Newcastle at the start of the season and they kicked seven bells out of us, kicked us all over the place. Trevor Hockey was a winger, but he kicked lumps out of me and Dougie. The return match was a week later, so as we were coming off the pitch, we grabbed hold of him and said, “Make sure you’re at the Albion next week”.

““No problem, I’ll be there”.

“So the game’s on and their goalkeeper kicked this high ball out, coming down and towards Hockey. So I’m think-ing, “This is it!” On the other side of the ball, Dougie is thinking the same thing! Trevor Hockey’s thinking, “This is it! I’m getting out the way”. So he jumped out of the way, I caught Dougie in the back of the head, he whacked me and split my lip. We’re lying on the floor looking at one another and Trevor Hockey is standing over us!”

It was a disastrous start to another Newcastle game that Good Friday, Albion two goals behind inside 13 minutes. The first goal came when Jim Iley drove a shot home from the edge of the box, then 60 seconds later, Tommy Robson back-headed the ball to Jim Scott who stumbled, but was still able to poke his shot past Osborne and in.

Things got worse with a 27th minute injury to Eddie Colquhoun, his season effectively finished as he ended up watching the second half with his leg in splints, but with Ray Fairfax replacing him, the Throstles were better in the second period, Clive Clark setting the tone when he had a shot kicked off the line after 52 minutes, goalkeeper Marshall then magnificently saving an Ian Collard header.

Albion were in with a shout again on 62 minutes when Astle’s cross reached Ronnie Rees who hammered the ball in. It was Rees again after 70 minutes, Collard’s corner reaching him in the box from where he lashed it past a couple of defenders to score.

The long journey home was embarked upon in the knowledge that there was another game to play the following day, against relegation haunted Sheffield Wednesday. It was the proverbial game of two halves, Albion utterly on top in the first half and fully deserving the lead they took through a trademark Jeff Astle header from a Ronnie Rees free-kick on the stroke of half time.

Wednesday were on terms after 47 minutes, Ford latching on to John Kaye’s poor back pass, Ford racing towards goal and forcing Osborne into a superb diving save, but John Ritchie was on hand to nudge the rebound over the line. Thereafter, Wednesday rallied and perhaps shaded second half matters as Albion’s European hopes – via a league placing anyway - went the way of all flesh with this deeply frustrating draw.

Easter wasn’t over yet though, and then there’d be Liverpool to boot. Hard work if you can get it….

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Chapter 20: hAPPINeSS IS A CLARK GoAL

Easter Monday, once upon a time one of the great traditional days in the football calendar. A day when so often decisive blows were struck in the title race or in the promotion and relegation battles, a day close enough to the finishing post that two points won or lost could prove utterly crucial.

Yet for the Throstles, the Monday fixture at home to Newcastle United could hardly have been any more inconse-quential with the Magpies floundering in mid-table and eighth placed Albion with their eyes very firmly on a game 72 hours hence, the third of those titanic meetings with Liverpool to decide on the FA Cup semi-finalists.

A third game in four days looks pretty exhausting fare from this viewpoint, but there was no squad rotation back in 1968. Nine Albion players took part in all three games and eight of those would also go on to play against Liverpool three days later, Ronnie Rees only missing out because he was cup tied.

More significant perhaps than those nine though was the fact that against Newcastle, Bobby Hope was back in the fold after injury, and back to his very best in the first half before a lack of match fitness began to catch up with him after the break. Given that Bill Shankly’s assessment was that Albion were only half the side if Bobby was missing, his Red Army was going to have twice as much difficulty in beating the Baggies at Maine Road as they’d had at Anfield. For their part, Liverpool welcomed Tommy Smith back into the fold after a nine game absence.

But first things first and the hunt for a morale boosting win over the Toon to round off a good holiday programme. The result was rarely in doubt truth be told, not once Tony Brown had given the home team a 14th minute lead, firing in from close range after Jeff Astle had got up highest to head down a cross from Graham Williams.

It was the Bomber who pretty much made the points safe after 36 minutes when, after an interchange of passes with Kenny Stephens down the right hand side, he “cracked over a cross cum shot which Gordon Marshall, the Newcastle ‘keeper, misjudged. The ball swerved into the far corner of the net”.

The second half was something of a damp squib, Albion keeping Newcastle at arm’s length without ever really exerting themselves, trying to keep plenty in reserve for that upcoming cup tie. Ultimately, the game ended 2-0 to the Throstles, thus ending a sequence of six straight draws, extending Albion’s run to an impressive one defeat in sixteen games.

They needed all the confidence they could get going into the game at Maine Road for few sides could come off best over three games against the mighty Liverpool, even if the side was showing the very early signs of having passed its peak. They were still chasing the double and in a game played on neutral ground in Manchester, they were much closer to home than Albion were, the Throstles still taking an impressive following of nearly 20,000 for the midweek game amid a crowd of 56,139.

After beating Newcastle at home, Albion headed north to get ready for the game on which their season hinged, as Tony Brown remembers. “We prepared well, we went up to Southport beforehand, but it turned out to be the wrong place on matchday because travelling to the ground, we got caught up in all the Liverpool supporters on the East Lancs road! It was horrendous, we were getting dog’s abuse from the fans, they were all signalling it was going to be 2-0 or something! Actually, it wound us up a bit, it probably helped.”

Having had to battle every inch of the way to this showdown game, there was a steely determination in the Albion ranks that they were not going to be stopped, while Liverpool were world renowned as a side that simply never knew when they were beaten. The ingredients were there for this one to be a classic and after two relatively disap-pointing games in terms of spectacle, this one lived up to its potential. It was “A match that will command glorious Ossie makes another desperate clearance at Anfield

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recall in days to come” according to journalist Ken Jones.

“From the start,” Jones continued, “Albion employed a simple strategy to which Liverpool are always vulnerable. They sought to pierce the acre of space that Liverpool leave behind themselves in an effort to compress the game into midfield. And in the seventh minute, the tactic paid off when, from Ian Collard’s through ball, Jeff Astle sprinted clear to slot a left foot shot between Tommy Lawrence and his near post.”

Another tactical shift for Albion was to once again employ John Kaye in a central defensive role, paying particular attention to Roger Hunt. Kaye played a huge role, but also a painful one as he remembers: “I ended up with a big bandage round my head because I nutted John Talbut! The ball came across and I went for a header, missed it and caught him!” The injury was so severe that it needed ten stitches to staunch the bleeding, but so pivotal was Kaye to Albion’s plans that as soon as he was patched up, he was back out on the pitch.

And Albion sorely needed him as Liverpool’s power and precision slowly brought them back into the game, though frustration was often near the surface too, Ian St John getting booked for a rash tackle midway through the first half. John Osborne had to produce a couple of top class saves in that first half to keep Albion in the lead, but even Ossie couldn’t hold back the red tide indefinitely and he was left exposed after 39 minutes as Liverpool levelled the scores. “Hunt retrieved a right wing corner as the ball bobbed out on the left and slipped it back to Callaghan. Holding off a determined challenge by Brown, Callaghan swung the ball across to the far post where Hateley had time and space to pick his spot before beating Osborne with a header”.

When the teams came back out for the second half, the restart was delayed as the remnants of a broken bottle were cleared from one of the goalmouths, but once play did resume, it was the turn of Albion to get back on top in this cup tie that swung one way and then the other, though Liverpool did manufacture two early opportunities, Hunt and Callaghan both shooting wide.

Nonetheless, it was the Throstles that were playing the surer football by now and they got themselves back in front after 61 minutes following a sweet flowing move that involved Bobby Hope and substitute Kenny Stephens, the ball eventually reaching Tony Brown. “I got it in the D and I just helped it into the path of Clive Clark. He went tearing in, struck it as he was being tackled, so brave, and scored.”

The Baggies looked to have made it 3-1 when Stephens converted a Clark cross only to have it disallowed, a decision that kept Liverpool right in the game. According to Jones, “Liverpool were forced to summon up the full range of their great stamina and powers of recovery. But they needed ideas and inspiration against an Albion side who were in no mood to surrender when they were so close to success.

“It was ideas and inspiration that Liverpool lacked as they thundered forward, hurling players in on crosses from both flanks. But although goalkeeper John Osborne was once battered to the floor by centre-half Ron Yeats, Albion hung on to win.”

It was a famous victory against Shankly’s team, and one that had been achieved fully on merit according to the watching Manchester United boss Matt Busby: “They played well and deserved to win a really hard Cup tie. It was a fine performance.”

There were a mere nine days between Albion winning through and the semi-final against Birmingham City taking place at Villa Park, a logistical headache for the authorities who had to sell out the all-ticket game, 61,000 set to pack the ground for the local derby. But in those days, people were content to just get out of bed early and queue, as was the case the following Sunday when tickets would go on sale simultaneously at The Hawthorns, St An-drew’s and Villa Park, where Villa season ticket holders were entitled to buy tickets for the game.

Albion worked on the basis that each season ticket holder was entitled to tickets at a particular value, the rest of the fans able to buy at different values, the ticket prices ranging from 7s 6d (38 pence) to a faintly shocking £2.

The day before that all took place, Albion’s immediate reward for beating Liverpool was to have to go to Elland Road and take on a side that perhaps offered an even more ferocious physical challenge, Don Revie’s Leeds Unit-ed. Already having collected the League Cup, they were ready to face Everton in the other FA Cup semi-final and had battled their way through to the last four of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup where they would face Dundee. In the league, they were sitting second, one point behind leaders Manchester United but with a game in hand.

With Albion sporting all kinds of bumps and bruises after the Liverpool game, there were plenty of changes to the side, Ray Fairfax, Dick Krzywicki, Ken Stephens, Graham Lovett and Ronnie Rees all coming into a team missing the likes of Astle, Hope, Clark and Kaye. But with cup final places to play for, Albion were energetic and enthusiastic against their illustrious opponents in a frantic game against a Leeds side at near full strength – Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, Lorimer, Madeley, Jones, Gray, Greenhoff. Only John Giles was missing, a measure of how desperate Leeds were for the points.

Both goalkeepers made early saves but it was Leeds who seized the initiative, Jimmy Greenhoff putting in a dangerous corner that Jack Charlton headed beyond Osborne and in after 18 minutes. Without a recognised cen-tre forward in the team, the Throstles were finding it hard to relieve the incessant pressure, but they were still in the game at the break, thanks in no little part to a magnificent save from Osborne who somehow kept out a fierce Lorimer volley from close range.

There was no holding Leeds at the start of the second half and it was 2-0 after 54 minutes, Bremner’s cross evad-ing Greenhoff but bouncing through to Madeley who drove the ball in despite protests that he was offside. Still, we got our own back for that decision three years later. We also got back in the game five minutes later, a good cross from Doug Fraser picking out Graham Lovett in the middle, his glancing header flashing past Sprake and in for 2-1.

But Leeds were a pretty relentless unit in those days and there was no way they were going to let the points slip. When John Talbut upended substitute Belfit in the penalty area after 68 minutes, Eddie Gray stepped up and smacked in the spot kick to win the game.

Disappointing, but not disastrous. Seven days later, there would be bigger fish to fry.

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Chapter 21: STReeT fIGhTING MeN

Eight games, including three titanic ties with Liverpool had brought the Throstles to within a game of Wembley and their first FA Cup Final in 14 years. Only Second Division Birmingham City stood between Graham Williams, Jeff Astle, Tony Brown, Bobby Hope et al and the most prestigious trophy in the game. And with a full week without a fixture in which to prepare properly for it, Albion were able to approach their date with destiny at Villa Park with some confidence.

A pre-match stay in Southport enabled the players to get away from it all and particularly from the feverish hype that was building up around the West Midlands in anticipation of the big local derby, the re-run of the 1931 FA Cup Final itself when the Baggies had triumphed over the Blues by two goals to one, though Blues were just a shade too far off the pace in the promotion race to harbour any hopes of emulating Albion’s cup and promotion double of that year. Stan Cullis’ team came into the tie after disposing of Arsenal and Chelsea in the previous rounds, but their league form was erratic with just two wins in the previous eight league fixtures although they’d actually remained unbeaten through that spell.

There was little doubt that Blues would be tough opponents, although that well known tale from folklore that at that point still decreed that Birmingham shall never win a competition that matters lest the world come to an end meant that Albion were very clearly the favourites for the tie. As a consequence, Cullis dropped the policy of all out attack that had served Blues so well that season and instead packed his midfield in an effort to nullify Albion’s strength in the centre of the park, leaving Fred Pickering a lone figure up front.

That wasn’t wildly dissimilar from Albion’s approach though, with Astle really the only out and out forward as Tony Brown explains. “It was never a strike partnership between me and Jeff, because I wasn’t a striker in that sense, but we did have a real understanding between us. We only had Jeff up front in the cup winning year after John Kaye moved back to centre-half. We had five in the middle, and I was the one who was more advanced and went to join in with him.

“You knew that if the ball was in the air on its way to Jeff, he’d get it. If I made a run, I knew it was coming off his head and I just had to get in the right place. It was instinctive. I took the free-kicks, and we took them quick because I knew Jeff would go in a particular area and get on the end of it and he scored a fair few headers like that. It was a bit unique the way we played it because I wasn’t a midfielder, but I definitely wasn’t a striker. I remember Alan Ashman saying he was amazed that teams hadn’t spotted how I used to play, how we got away with it for so long. But it was a new idea then.”

What wasn’t a new idea was that Astle should get himself on the scoresheet and, after 13 minutes, the King main-tained his record of scoring in every round of the competition by giving the Throstles a crucial lead after an opening phase that had swung from one end to the other. Astle was awarded a free-kick following a high boot from Foster, Bobby Hope rolling the ball into the path of Tony Brown. His shot flew past the wall, Blues’ ‘keeper unable to hold it, Astle on the spot to angle his shot into the net and send the Albion supporters into raptures.

Birmingham dug in and upped their already frenetic work rate to try to get back into the game, but Albion suc-ceeded in holding them at arm’s length for much of the first half, John Talbut in particularly commanding form, the game ebbing away to the half time whistle with the Baggies still a goal to the good.

That lead should have been wiped out just three minutes into the second period though, Page picking out Vowden in the box with a good cross, Vowden directing his shot straight at John Osborne who saved comfortably. Vowden almost atoned for that miss just short of the hour mark when he put a good pass into the path of Pickering, the centre-forward cracking a fierce goalbound shot that Osborne saved magnificently, tipping it onto the post. Doug Fraser and Peter Lorimer in an Elland Road ballet

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That was to prove a key moment for after 67 minutes, the Throstles doubled their lead, Bobby Hope’s perfectly judged through ball finding Tony Brown down the right hand side, Bomber unleashing a low drive across the face of goal, past Herriot and into the far corner.

From there, Birmingham simply poured forward, Talbut having to kick one clear off the line after Pickering finally got a shot past Osborne, but as the minutes ebbed away, Albion were happy to see time out and claim their place in the club’s tenth FA Cup Final, a game against Everton who had defeated Leeds United 1-0 at Old Trafford thanks to a Johnny Morrissey penalty.

Reflecting on the game more than 40 years later, Tony Brown recalls, “The semi-final was a hard game, local der-by. They had some chances but Ossie was incredible, in the form of his life. He was magnificent, produced some great saves. Then at the other end, we just tucked our chances away.

“You look at the cup run, we were hanging on, hanging on. I know Jeff got a goal in every round, but really, Os-sie won us the cup. He was fantastic in that cup run. He got us to Wembley, some of the saves he made against Liverpool in that replay at Manchester City, and then against Birmingham in the semi-final at Villa Park. He was in incredible form that year. He was very intelligent, a clever fella, but he hated playing football. I’ve never known anybody like him. He had artificial knuckles in a couple of fingers and on cold nights, he’d been crying with pain, he’d stick his hands under hot water to try and loosen them up, but he would be in ansolute agony.”

John Kaye’s memories of the ‘keeper area little more prosaic: “Ossie came to the pub with us the one night and, saying he was a goalkeeper, he was so clumsy! He put his hand in his pocket to get his money and he dropped the lot on the floor. So me and John Talbut scooped it up, slapped it on the bar and said, “As many pints as you can get out of that please!” It was the only way you could get him to pay!”

For all that, it was Osborne who made a telling contribution to the game, and his manager was quick to pay tribute to him afterwards. “The turning point was that great save John Osborne made from Frank Pickering. Birmingham played very well and fought bravely when they were down, but they did not take their chances and we did.”

The FA Cup Final was a mere 21 days away, but there were four league games to play between times, Albion having to play three in a manic week that stretched before them after beating Blues – Manchester United at home on the Monday, West Ham at The Hawthorns on Wednesday, then a trip to Sunderland on the Saturday. Ashman refused to take his eye off the ball in those games: “We shall be going all out to win our last four league matches. If we can play well in these games it will build up our confidence and morale for the Final. I want to maintain the momentum and keep the players tuned up. Not only that, but I should like us to finish higher in the First Division.”

Manchester United arrived in town with their own Wembley cup final to dream of, having just defeated Real Ma-drid 1-0 in the first leg of their European Cup semi-final, ten years after the Munich disaster. With United level at the top with Manchester City, but with a game in hand, this was a key opportunity for them, and eight people short of 46,000 wedged themselves into The Hawthorns for the Monday night fixture to watch a game that was to assume legendary status.

It only took the Throstles nine minutes to put themselves in the lead, a mistake by Tony Dunne putting Astle in the clear to hammer a left foot shot beyond Alex Stepney. Ironically, that had come against the run of play after Osborne had made a superb save from Brian Kidd in the opening minutes, but once in front, Albion started to ooze confidence against a slipshod United defence, Hope forcing a good save from Stepney while at the other end Denis Law, George Best and Kidd all had decent efforts on goal.

The Throstles put their stamp on the fixture after 39 minutes though, going 2-0 ahead, Francis Burns dithering on the ball, Ronnie Rees darting in to rob him of possession then sticking the ball into the back of the net. Law missed

a sitter, putting the ball over the bar from all of a yard out in the 44th minute, but the game might have turned again in the opening minute of the second half when Law was clean through, but Osborne was the star of the show once more, finding a superb save to deny United’s King.

Nobby Stiles presented Albion with the chance of a third goal, hauling down Rees in the penalty area after 55 minutes, Brown having his first penalty saved by Stepney, retaking it after the referee said the ‘keeper wasn’t on his line, and making no mistake with the second attempt. Astle made it 4-0 by scoring his 30th goal of the season, heading in a Hope free-kick, a real trademark effort to put United well and truly out of the game and on the way to humiliation, but the Red Devils pulled a goal back just past the hour mark, Fraser fouling Kidd in the area, Law converting the resultant penalty.

Albion weren’t rattled by this reverse and after 65 minutes, the post-semi celebrations just got more raucous yet, Hope’s cross headed on by Astle, 17 year old Asa Hartford dashing into the six yard box to bundle the ball over the line and make it 5-1. Astle wasn’t finished yet though and our King wrapped up his hat-trick after 68 minutes, powering yet another past Stepney. The Baggies took their collective foot off the gas thereafter, Kidd registering two late consolation goals for United, but the 6-3 win remains one of the more remarkable scorelines in the Albion history books. Fully deserved it was too, Albion living up to Ashman’s demands that they give the league games their all.

They couldn’t have done much more 48 hours later either, West Ham washing up at The Hawthorns and getting sent back to London after a 3-1 thumping, and this after the Hammers had taken a third minute lead, Martin Peters nodding in a Trevor Brooking cross. Albion were level after 28 minutes though, the old reliable move of a Hope cross being headed in by Astle. The King was at it again eight minutes later, rising majestically to get on the end of a Hartford centre and power it past Ferguson in the West Ham goal. Astle showed he could finish with his feet as well in the 55th minute, a low Hope cross causing confusion, Astle darting in to steer the ball into the net to com-plete a second hat-trick in three days and take his season’s tally to 34.

He was unable to add any to that up at Roker Park as Albion completed a momentous week with a 0-0 draw against Sunderland, although the quality of the game belied the stalemate of the scoreline, both sides creating a plethora of chances. The final league game, a week before Wembley, gave the Throstles an early view of north London as they trekked to Highbury and played pretty much at walking pace, careful not to pick up any pre-final injuries. As a result, Albion slipped to a 2-1 beating, Bobby Gould and Frank McLintock putting the Gunners into the lead with goals after 35 and 52 minutes respectively. Doug Fraser scored a neat solo goal ten minutes from time, but Albion ended the league season on a low note, ending up eighth in the table.

But a chance to finish on the highest note possible was just seven days away.

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Chapter 22: Why DoN’T We Do IT IN WeMBLey STADIUM?

And so the climax to the 1967/68 season was almost upon us. The FA Cup Final, Albion’s tenth in a long and proud history largely shaped by our performances in that competition. Reaching Wembley had been a long, arduous, occasionally tortuous business, plenty of replays, some tumultuous battles, some good football, some narrow escapes, but ultimately a successful journey.

But all that would stand for nothing if the Throstles failed to finish the job underneath Wembley’s twin towers – those were the days – by beating Everton and completing the demolition job on both sides of Merseyside. Liver-pool’s Bill Shankly was a sixth round victim of the Baggies, but nobody put it better when looking forward to a cup final. Quoting Jimmy Cagney, Shankly would tell anyone who wanted to listen, and plenty who didn’t, “Foist is foist and second is nowhere”. For the cup run to count for anything, the Throstles would need to put one over on Ever-ton, the “School of Science” and, in particular, their terrific midfield triumvirate of Howard Kendall, Colin Harvey and the World Cup winning Alan Ball.

Everton were very much the coming side in English football, manager Harry Catterick rebuilding after the previ-ous team had reached their peak by lifting the title in 1963. An FA Cup win in 1966, coming from behind to defeat Sheffield Wednesday, had bridged the gap, but it had been something of a last hurrah for that outfit too. The trip to Wembley in 1968 was heralding the arrival of the new team that was going to create its own history. They would go on to finish third in the First Division in 1969, then reclaim the league title again in 1970, prior to making the semi-finals of the European Cup the following year.

Having finished fifth in ’68, they were clearly a big threat to Albion and were installed as favourites for the game, but further investigation of the season suggested a chink of hope. All but invincible at Goodison Park – 18 wins, a draw and two defeats – they were far less impressive on their travels, having won just five times. One of those came at The Hawthorns, a 6-2 thumping with Ball in unstoppable mood, but as Graham Williams pointed out, even that was seen as something of a good omen. “They’d done the double over us but in the run up to the final, we’d just keep reminding ourselves that it was very, very rare that a team beat you three times in a season.”

In the last few days ahead of the final, the big decision was, of course, to decide the Wembley line up. Over the preceding few weeks, the bulk of the team had pretty much selected itself. John Osborne had no challenger in goal. Graham Williams was skipper and left-back, Doug Fraser had emerged as his partner on the right while the centre-back pairing was suddenly John Talbut and erstwhile centre-forward John Kaye who had dropped back into defence after injury to Eddie Colquhoun and had looked a natural there.

Jeff Astle was the leading man up front, with Tony Brown looking to get forward and join him from the midfield. Clive Clark was as exciting and effective as any winger in the First Division, while Ian Collard had made himself indispensable in the midfield with a string of accomplished displays. Then there was Bobby Hope, the team’s play-maker, able to tear a defence to shreds with one telling pass and the fulcrum of so much of Albion’s football.

Which left one shirt up for grabs out on the right side of the midfield, as Tony Brown recalls. “Kenny Stephens was a right winger, a Bristol lad. Good on the ball, close dribbler, didn’t have great pace but he had good feet. He wouldn’t go by a full-back and cross it, he’d be in the build up all the time, get it, pass it, have it back, and he was a bit unlucky not to play more games. He played in the semi-final, then missed out at Wembley. It was a toss up between him, Graham Lovett and Nicky Krzywicki as to who was going to play at Wembley, the rest of the team picked itself.

“One of the last times I spoke to Alan before he died, he said that that was his biggest headache, and eventually he went for Graham to do a job on their left-back, Ray Wilson. Ray was a great player, he’d won the World Cup with

Astle on target against Birmingham in the FA Cup semi-final

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England, got forward really well, and in the end, Alan reckoned that Graham was best at nullifying him.

“Alan always used to joke that he’d picked Nicky to play at Wembley and that when he was announcing the team to the press, one of them asked how they spelt his name. So Alan said, “It’s Kzrw.. Krizz… Kwryz. Oh stuff it. I’ll play Graham Lovett instead!”

“It worked, Graham did a smashing job on Ray, and it was a bit of a fairytale for him because he had those horrific injuries from his car accident and he’d only just really got back. I think he was shocked how well he did, because he was never the same as he had been, he had a bit of a limp. But on the day, he did a great job for the side.”

As Graham Williams points out, it was all about doing a job for the side, because this was an extraordinarily close knit bunch of players. “Because we spent so much time together, we’d always be talking about the game. We’d discuss our faults, we’d talk about how we were defending. We’d talk about the game that was coming up, we’d talk about how to make this player go inside or whatever, and we’d do a lot of coaching of ourselves rather than the manager doing it.

“A few of the lads lived in Great Barr and a on a Friday night, John Kaye, John Talbut, Alan Ashman, Clive Clark, they’d all go to this pub, The Hamstead, have a couple of pints, just so they could pay their thrift money for Christ-mas! Saving up for Christmas, imagine it! They wouldn’t go mad and get drunk, just a couple of drinks, then be out the following day, no bother.

“It is hard for modern players to live a life like that because the spotlight is so completely different, you can’t get away with anything. We’d even get tip offs about where the speed traps were going to be so we didn’t get caught speeding!”

With the team selected, late in the week it was time to head down south to their base before the game, a change from the hotel they’d used a year before when a 2-0 half-time lead against QPR was transformed into a 3-2 beating in the League Cup Final. Nobody was in any hurry to return to the pre-match scene of the crime as Tony Brown points out.

“We were staying at Selsdon before the game – the year before, we’d stayed in Brent somewhere so we wanted to change our luck. The day before the Cup Final, me and Jeff went shopping to buy a suit each for Wembley – we didn’t get a club suit. So Jeff went in, “I’m Jeff Astle, West Brom and England. This is for Wembley, do we get a discount?” So we bought a suit in Croydon for Wembley.”

Appropriately suited and booted, Brown and Astle made the traditional inspection of the Wembley turf along with

the rest of their colleagues and then prepared for the game of their lives against Everton. Not an FA Cup winner amongst them, a team with bad memories of Wembley, this was their chance to exorcise those demons and to become legends.

Torrential overnight rain had left the Wembley pitch heavier than anticipated and that contributed to the game being far less of a spectacle than most had hoped. It was also a game where the two teams were incredibly closely matched and where so many of the players simply cancelled one another out.

Tony Brown had the first opportunity of the game after good work by Doug Fraser, crashing a shot from distance just over the bar as Albion made a lively start, but for a period thereafter, the game settled into stalemate with nei-ther side able to fashion a really clear chance on goal. Everton’s best chance of the half came shortly before the interval, Morrissey drifting in from the left hand side to fire off a shot, Osborne diving to make a good save and send the sides in level after a tense first 45 minutes.

During the break, Fraser had a strapping put on his left knee but more serious was the injury to Kaye’s right ankle

which was clearly impeding him as he limped heavily through the game.

If Everton were perhaps just the better side in the first hour, as time went on the Throstles became a bigger and bigger force in the game, yet perhaps the biggest chance fell the way of the Merseysiders just five minutes from the end, Morrissey helping the ball on to Husband with the goal gaping, but he somehow contrived to put his header over the bar when it was easier to score.

And so it was extra time, and barely had the game restarted than Albion were ahead. Astle picked up the ball midway in the Everton half, went past Kendall and unleashed a shot from the edge of the box which cannoned into a defender and fell back into Astle’s path. Barely breaking stride, he hit the returning ball with his left foot and it flew across the face of goal, beyond Gordon West and nestled in the far corner. Astle had scored in every round of the competition and Albion were on their way to glory.

From there, Everton looked a beaten side, energy drained by the punishing Wembley turf, hope sapped by Astle’s goal. Albion could have made it 2-0 in the dying seconds of the game, Osborne sparking a swift breakaway, Albion having three against one, the ball coming to Lovett who, like Geoff Hurst in ’66, let fly with a shot from distance. Unlike Hurst, Lovett missed, but it didn’t matter, it really was all over, the final whistle going almost as soon as his effort sailed over the bar.

Albion had won the FA Cup by the solitary goal of the game. John Osborne, Doug Fraser, Graham Williams, John Kaye, John Talbut, Graham Lovett, Tony Brown, Bobby Hope, Ian Collard, Clive Clark, Jeff Astle, substitute Dennis Clarke and manger Alan Ashman. Men who set the standards for this club, who realised their dreams and ours in 1968 and who give us dreams to aspire to every season that passes, every time we think of those names or see their pictures. Men who will never be forgotten as long as there is a football club here. It’s how it should be.

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The FA Cup winners 1967/68

the joy of - west bromwich albion f.c. the joy of ‘68 the story of albion’s fa cup winning...

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