Trailing Clouds of Glory - Welsh Football's Forgotten Heroes of 1976

By Nick Burnell

In two years, Wales went from Home International wooden spoon holders four times running to 1976 European Football Championship quarter-finalists. The book provides the background to qualification, accounts of all matches, examination of the fallout from the campaign's controversial ending, and a 'Where are they now?' section. 30 images.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Y Lolfa
• Release date: Jan 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781784618193

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About the 1976 Wales team

‘We went out in the quarter-finals [so] we get a little peeved that people tell us we’ve qualified for nothing since 1958. We are still the only Wales team to win five qualifying games on the trot. The players who played in that 1976 team know what they achieved.’

LEIGHTON JAMES

‘Because of the set-up of Euro 1976, our qualification is often forgotten. That does rankle, because it was such a big achievement to get to the last eight.’

ARFON GRIFFITHS

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody recognised the Toshacks and Flynns; Mahoney, James, Yorath, Leighton Phillips – all these guys; and just said, You were successful. You got to the finals. You won your group outright. I’d be happy just to stand on the touchline and watch these guys, and Mike Smith, get the credit they deserve.’

DAVE ROBERTS

‘We were a team united by a common bond. It meant the world to me, Dai Davies would have killed to represent Wales and not far behind were people like John Mahoney, Brian Flynn, Malcolm Page, John Toshack, Leighton James and Leighton Phillips. They were fantastic people to be with – not only on the field but off it too.’

TERRY YORATH

‘A team that contained many great players, one that I feel can be classified as amongst Wales’ greatest ever.’

ALAN CURTIS

Trailing Clouds

of Glory

Welsh football’s Forgotten Heroes of 1976

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

Nick Burnell

First impression: 2019

© Copyright Nick Burnell and Y Lolfa Cyf., 2019

The contents of this book are subject to copyright, and may not be reproduced by any means, mechanical or electronic, without the prior, written consent of the publishers.

The publishers wish to acknowledge the support of

the Books Council of Wales

Cover design: Y Lolfa

Cover photographs:

Front cover – Colorsport/Shutterstock

Back cover – Nick Burnell

Photos from the author’s personal collection unless otherwise stated

Picture research: Janet Tomlinson

ISBN: 978-1-78461-819-3

Published and printed in Wales on paper from well-maintained forests by

Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5HE

website www.ylolfa.com

e-mail [e-mail]

tel [phone]

fax 832 782

‘The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.’

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Author acknowledgements

Thanks to my editor at Y Lolfa, Carolyn Hodges, for her technical expertise and increasing interest in Welsh football from the 1970s.

Sincere thanks to: Dave Roberts; Leighton Phillips; Bobby Brown; Dzemal Hadžiabdić; David Ivor Williams at Wales News; John E Morgan; Paul ‘Chips’ Thomas; Norman Epps, Historian at Corinthian-Casuals FC; Stuart Tree and Brian Wakefield at Corinthian-Casuals FC; Ron George and Terry Cartwright at Lancing FC; Alex Jackson at National Football Museum; Mark Gillingham, Bruce Rawlings, Nick Lade and Peter Munro of Brighton VI Form College Past & Present Association; Tim Crane and Matthew Stock at Loughborough University Alumni Association.

To Dad, who set the ball rolling, and Mam, who kept it rolling until the end; and to Janet for her patience. x

Nick Burnell

September 2019

Introduction

Before the unforgettable summer of 2016 and the Euros in France there was one question to which anyone even half-interested in Welsh football knew the answer – namely, ‘When was the last time the Welsh football team qualified for a major tournament?’ The answer was, of course, Sweden in 1958. We all know the stories – Wales trained in Hyde Park with jumpers for goalposts, then John Charles eventually joined up with his teammates in Sweden direct from Turin, in an expensive Italian suit, looking like a Greek god (and, by all accounts, ‘a jolly good fellow’). There were creditable draws with Hungary, Mexico and the hosts, and a bit of a kerfuffle back at the team’s Grand Hotel between Colin Webster, a Swedish waiter and a Welsh peace-keeping squad, inevitably involving John Charles. And let’s not forget Ivor Allchurch’s volley in the group play-off against Hungary – one of the greatest Welsh goals ever. Had goal difference been in operation, Wales wouldn’t even have made it out of the group stage: Hungary’s tally in Group 3 was 6–3 whilst Wales’ stood at 2–2. But it wasn’t, and they did.

Wales played well throughout and went out in the quarter-final (without the crocked Big John) to the first Brazilian goal by a 17-year-old kid called Pelé, then Mel Charles and some of the Swansea boys returned home, unheralded, to Swansea railway station and the indifference of the ticket collectors and porters. The story has become familiar to even the most casual of Welsh supporters.

Mel Charles said, with a degree of understatement, ‘The World Cup wasn’t really a competition we were familiar with.’¹ Plus ça change. The 1958 qualifiers were the usual mixed bag of heroic home victories against the odds and the inevitable Eastern European defeats. The Czechs were beaten by a Roy Vernon strike in Cardiff before Wales lost 2–1 in Leipzig and 2–0 in Prague in a back-to-back double-header. The return match against the East Germans – with their tricky one-handed centre forward, Willi Tröger – at Ninian Park saw Wales take second place in the group thanks to Des Palmer’s hat trick in a 4–1 victory, and was the occasion of Jimmy Murphy’s fabled rousing dressing room call to arms. Keeping it short and sweet, the former army PT instructor and church organist from Pentre in the Rhondda, whose own career was cut short by the outbreak of World War II, is reported to have said something along the lines of, ‘Lads, you know these bastards you’re playing today, East Germany: don’t forget they bombed your mothers and fathers,’ before walking out – leaving the players with barely enough time to contemplate Hitler’s foreign policy and Neville Chamberlain’s response to it. It seemingly struck a chord. Wales were to finish as runners-up to Czechoslovakia. The significance of this victory and the resultant group standings would not become apparent for a while.

Let’s not deny the Welsh achievement here. This Wales team had some top players – some of our greatest ever, known by their Christian names alone: John and Mel, Cliff and Ivor. They performed exceptionally well, did the nation proud, and secured their place in the history of the game in Wales and beyond. They were, however, only there through a bizarre set of circumstances. Israel had walked through to the top of the Africa and Asia qualifying group after the boycott of fellow group members Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Sudan and Indonesia, mainly for political reasons centred around the Arab/Israeli conflict. They had progressed this far without playing a single match. This, understandably, didn’t sit too well with FIFA, who then ordered a play-off between Israel and a runner up from one of the Euro qualifying groups. Belgium had first refusal, but followed the line taken by the other Africa and Asia teams and turned FIFA down flat.

Wales, as runners-up in Euro Group 4 and seemingly the last team standing, were then drawn out of a hat by a blind Swiss lad as ‘lucky losers’ and given the chance to play the underworked Israel over two legs for a place in the summer tournament in Sweden – what Terry Yorath was later to refer to as ‘the back door’ qualification. The FAW had no qualms about the delicacies of wading into the minefield of middle-eastern sporting politics and greedily accepted FIFA’s invitation for a shot at the final stages in Sweden. On 15 January 1958, Wales kicked off in Tel Aviv. They returned with a clean sheet and a two-goal advantage, courtesy of Ivor Allchurch and Dave Bowen. Goals from Ivor, again, and Cliff Jones ensured a similar scoreline three weeks later in the return at Ninian Park. They were showered with gifts of oranges by the visitors and manager Jimmy Murphy had unwittingly avoided Manchester United’s fatal trip to Belgrade, when 23 passengers (including eight United players and three staff) perished in Munich during the return journey on one of British football’s darkest days. Wales were on their way. Somehow, they would be represented at the 1958 World Cup finals.

Since this heroic – if unlikely – showing, Wales has come agonisingly close to qualification for World Cup and European Championship finals. All manner of controversy, bad luck, organisational ineptitude, internal division and even a touch of tragedy have intervened to some degree or another. The net result has invariably been pain and misery, suffering and sorrow for the nation, its team and followers. Former Spurs winger Cliff Jones, in a BBC interview with Jimmy Armfield, wondered if the Welsh mindset, or even national characteristic, hadn’t served them well over the years: ‘I’ve always wondered why Wales has not done so well, ’cos the players, individually, were as good as most other nations. Possibly a bit of an inferiority complex, I don’t know.’

Until France in 2016, Wales were the ‘nearly men’ of International football. Stellar players like Ron Davies, Terry Hennessey, Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, Neville Southall, Ryan Giggs and many other distinguished foot soldiers had missed out on tournament football with their country and been able to book summer holidays way in advance. Sports journalists have bored the Welsh rigid by listing worthy players who have ‘never graced the final stages of a major tournament’.

But what about the team that was emerging in the mid 1970s? The team of Terry Yorath, Leighton James, Arfon Griffiths and Leighton Phillips. The team of Dai, Tosh and Josh. Mike Smith’s surprise appointment as manager saw a squad low on confidence and expectation transformed into a confident, cohesive unit, playing attractive, attacking football and – more importantly – getting results. Rarely has the togetherness in the squad been as strong.

Why, then, has their achievement in topping their European qualifying group in 1976 been ignored, forgotten or even dismissed for so long? This was an accomplishment that has hardly been cheapened by conspicuous success in the years that followed. Were they just unfortunate to be playing football in an era when rugby, at a time like no other, ruled the back pages and TV coverage in Wales? Were the controversial circumstances of their eventual elimination too difficult to deal with? Detractors have questioned the validity of this Welsh effort, insisting it was not a ‘proper’ qualification – yet, to date, this is the only time that Wales has finished top of their qualifying group in any competition (although they did, of course, finish top of Group B at the final stages in France 2016), and one of only three occasions when they have reached the quarter-final of any major tournament. This team is clearly regarded as the poor relation to the achievers of 1958 and 2016. The black sheep in the smallest of flocks. Many remain oblivious to the achievements of Mike Smith’s squad, which kicked off this tournament in Vienna as the sun was setting on the summer of 1974. These players, and their manager, remain largely unheralded. With the passing of time, their achievements become more distant, faded and forgotten. Why would this be? For a country that has achieved so little on the field of play, why has this particular group been seemingly airbrushed from history?

This story details a two-year period during which Wales went from being also-rans and, it hurts to say, sometimes whipping boys to European quarter-finalists – from wooden spoon-holders in the Home International table for four years in a row to within an ace of reaching the semi-finals of the continent’s top International competition. An all too brief, glorious moment in time over a mere 15 games, when things – for the first time in a while – were going well. Very well. This is the team of my childhood. My team. It’s a look back at a less complicated era, before the onset of 24-hour saturation coverage and millionaire journeymen players. A time when football kicked off at 3.00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday evening, unless you were Newport County (who always seemed to start at 3.15 p.m. – something to do with shift patterns at the steelworks, I think), Tranmere Rovers or Stockport (who sometimes kicked off their home games on a Friday evening to avoid clashes with their noisier neighbours). A time before football was ‘invented’ in 1992, where television and radio closed down when there was nothing more to say, and when footballers looked to the future by doing their coaching badges or searching for local pubs that needed new landlords. A time before VAR, podcasts and the gaudy vulgarity of the Premier League, when you’d stand and watch the game in front of you for 90 minutes rather than film it on your mobile phone. A time before personal injury lawyers, PPI claims, cordless vacuum cleaners and European river cruises. How on earth did we survive? It’s a reminder of the players and people in and around the scene who restored pride in the Welsh football jersey and gave the football public of Wales a reason to believe. A reminder of a good time to be a soccer supporter in Wales.

The playwright Harold Pinter has written that ‘There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened’, a variation on the more famous theory of Marcel Proust that ‘Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.’ Some internet sites I’ve come across in the research for this book have already fallen into this trap, distorting the past with inaccurate detail and statistics surrounding these games – and, hey, who cares about little old Wales? Hopefully, this account – which whilst tinged slightly by nostalgia and a distance of 40-odd years, is based on extensive research, going back to contemporary press reports and surviving TV match footage as well as the recollections of the protagonists themselves – will give a fairly accurate account of a forgotten team and some forgotten players in a forgotten time – at least, the way we LIKE to remember them.

1 – Bowen nowhere

‘The best of times and those less memorable’

Welsh football will rarely be able to afford a ‘clear-out’ of players – there simply aren’t enough of them. However, this, to a degree, is what fate presented to the squad that kicked off the Euro ’76 trail in Vienna, Austria in September 1974. Previously automatic choices like Peter Rodrigues, Ron Davies, Terry Hennessey, Alan Durban and Wyn Davies – any of whom would have walked into the team a year or so earlier – were, for one reason or another, no longer around. Their time as Internationals had passed. Injury, age and indifference had all played their part. Former teammates Gary Sprake, Mike England, John Roberts and Gil Reece would soon follow them into the ranks of ‘former Welsh Internationals’, playing only early cameos in the campaign. These were all Dave Bowen’s men, but now there was a chance to rebuild.

Under Bowen, the recent 1974 World Cup qualifiers had witnessed a couple of promising performances at a time which the more optimistic might describe as ‘lean’. Goals from Leighton James and Trevor Hockey had seen off a strong Poland side in Cardiff. Poland were reigning Olympic champions. They would go on to finish third in the World Cup final stages in West Germany and are remembered as their country’s greatest ever team – Deyna, Lato, Gadocha and Gorgoń among them. In another Group 5 qualifier, at Wembley, John Toshack’s tap-in from Leighton James’ cut-back and an inspired performance from Gary Sprake looked like securing 2 points for Wales, until they were undone by an unlikely thunderbolt from Norman Hunter to level things up. This dropped point would scupper England’s passage to West Germany and the final stages every bit as much as the more famous, agonising 1–1 draw with Poland later in the campaign – the one featuring Jan ‘The Clown’ Tomaszewski, Hunter’s missed tackle on half-way and Domarski’s opener through Shilton – a game that felt like the end of the world for England, and Sir Alf Ramsey in particular. He was asked to step down some six months later. Unfortunately, Wales had succumbed to a sole Colin Bell goal in Cardiff and been crushed 3–0 in the brutal decider in Poland. This was their lot just then: the odd inspired moment, combined with the occasional lapse – or, indeed, collapse.

After the 1974 Home International tournament witnessed disappointing, mundane 2–0 defeats to both England and Scotland and a single-goal victory over Northern Ireland at Wrexham, the FAW had decided – or were forced – to get serious and appoint a full-time manager for the first time in its history. Something had to change. Wales had had a variety of ‘managers’ prior to Bowen’s appointment in October 1964. Ted Robbins was a diligent and successful Secretary (and the term ‘Secretary-Manager’ was not an uncommon one at the time) for the FAW in the interwar years, something of a boom-time for Wales. He oversaw six Home International Championship titles in Wales’ successful period from 1920 through to 1937, but his role was largely administrative, with tactics then generally devised by the senior players. Former Arsenal full back Walley Barnes could stake a claim to be the first Wales manager, taking up the reins for the 2–0 defeat in Vienna in 1954. Barnes, however, had no say in team selection, which was still done by committee, so maybe ‘manager’ is pushing it a little. Next up, in 1956, was Jimmy Murphy, who divided his time between coaching Busby’s Babes at Manchester United and the country he had represented 15 times whilst also playing as a half back with West Bromwich Albion. Most history books refer to him as Wales’ first proper manager, and he would have his moment with the squad in Sweden in 1958.

However, when Trevor Morris sat in to deputise for the Northern Ireland game in 1964, the writing was on the wall. The demands of the ‘modern’ game, and age, were catching up with Murphy, who left to concentrate on his role at Old Trafford. Former Wales skipper Dave Bowen was appointed on a part-time basis before their next fixture against Scotland. Twelve months later former Spurs legend Ron Burgess filled in for one game when Bowen was unavailable due to his involvement with Northampton Town. In a clear sign of the power wielded by the Football League clubs, particularly over the smaller ‘home’ Associations, the senior Wales team were dancing to Northampton’s tune. When one remembers that Jimmy Murphy had only swerved United’s fatal trip to Belgrade (in the quarter-final of the European Cup, no less) because the Wales team were playing on the same afternoon against Israel, the reduced status of the national team becomes clear.

The successful candidate for the full-time post in 1974 would have responsibility for the full International team, the Under-23s and Youth sides, as well as coaching and development of the game in Wales. Incumbent part-time manager Bowen had given sterling service over the previous ten years. In his day, the boy from Nantyffyllon had been a cultured wing half with Northampton Town and – more famously – Arsenal, as well as winning 19 caps for Wales. At Highbury, alongside Derek Tapscott, Jack Kelsey and Wally Barnes, he had been one of four Welsh Internationals who were fixtures in the first team squad in the mid Fifties. His International teammate Mel Charles recalls his skipper’s influence: ‘Dave Bowen was a great player and a fantastic leader, really good at lifting those around him whenever the chips were down.’² Qualities that would have marked him out as future management material. He would die in 1995, aged 67, and is remembered at Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium, where a stand carries his name, and in the Duston area of Northampton, where Dave Bowen Close was named in his honour. His son Keith (a Welsh Schoolboy International) would go on to play professionally for Northampton and Brentford before being signed by Cyril Lea at Colchester. A car crash put paid to his professional career and prompted a move to non-league Barnet in their push for Football League status in the 1987/88 season. Ivan Ponting’s touching obituary for Dave Bowen in The Independent pays tribute to the man who gave so much: ‘Through the best of times and those less memorable, the cause of Welsh football had no more devoted, passionate and inspirational champion than Dave Bowen... He was a storming, passionate performer – teammates reckoned he made more noise on the pitch than any dozen fans.’

The Sixties were a somewhat underwhelming time for the national team, regardless of the best efforts of the manager and some of the talent available. Despite the odd spirited performance or worthy victory, the annual Home Internationals had become an exercise in wooden spoon avoidance and tournament qualifying campaigns were soon reduced to a series of ‘dead rubbers’: meaningless fixtures with starting XIs sprinkled with journeymen professionals from the lower leagues – always up for the fight – but devoid of their more influential players, who were happily obliging their club managers by feigning injury and getting some rest.

Gary Sprake remembers the problems faced by Bowen: ‘Poor old Dave, it was a very difficult job for him as on many occasions we could only put out the bare eleven, and under those circumstances a disciplinary management style was impossible.’³ Sprake’s name would regularly crop up amid rumours that players were being paid their match fees by their clubs in order not to show up for International duty, as he relates in his book, Careless Hands: ‘It was expected of you as a Leeds player that you put the club first; it was the unwritten law.’⁴ Only 37 caps for a keeper who made his debut as a 16 year old with Leeds, and at 19 with Wales, tells its own story. His understudy, the ever-willing Tony Millington, who spent his career mostly in the lower reaches of the Football League, would pick up 21 caps in the same period. Sprake’s club colleague Terry Yorath confirms: ‘Don (Revie) always hinted that he didn’t like his players going away on International duty – he actually said that he would rather we stayed at Elland Road and the rewards would be better if we did.’⁵

Bowen was powerless against the might of the Football League clubs – not just Leeds United – who decided that club, invariably, came before country. ‘It’s no use moaning about our hardships. We just make the best of things, and get on with the job,’ he reasoned. Looking back on it all, he regarded the 1–1 draw at Wembley in the 1974 World Cup qualifiers as one of his greatest moments: ‘No match sent me home happier... Beating Poland in the first game (in the same group) was another tremendous moment, so was beating Russia at Cardiff in the qualifying rounds of the 1966 World Cup; and then there was the 1–1 draw against West Germany in Frankfurt in 1969.’ The disappointments must have been many and various, but Bowen picked out the 3–0 defeat against Poland at the Stadion Śląski, Chorzów, which snuffed out Wales’ 1974 World Cup qualification hopes: ‘We were so near.’

Dave Roberts, on the bench that night in Poland, sympathised with the man who had introduced him to the U23 set-up, suggesting any blame may have lain elsewhere: ‘Dave did as well as he possibly could with the time he was afforded, the facilities he was afforded and the players available. Maybe the FAW needed to be brought into the twentieth century.’

Roberts, who signed his first pro contract for Bobby Robson at Fulham on the same day as future England centre forward Malcolm Macdonald, had every reason to be grateful as he was one of Bowen’s original clutch of ‘Anglos’, drafted in following the parental qualification rule where a parent’s birthplace was, quite reasonably, deemed sufficient entitlement to wear the International jersey. Previously, one’s own place of birth had been the sole determining factor. Roberts’ parents were Welsh-speakers from the village of Talwrn on Anglesey. ‘We had some great guys: people like Ian Evans, John Phillips the goalkeeper