Bill Nicholson. Brian Scovell
game is that there are few wingers. We had Sonny Walters on the right and Les Medley, who only played 150 games in six years before he went to Canada, on the left. He could beat opponents in great style and put over inch-perfect crosses. He was much quicker than he looked and his specialty was to appear suddenly in the inside right position, shout for the ball and thunder it into the back of the net. Few players can do it. In post-war football there was no one capable of surpassing the pinpoint accuracy of John White.’
Born in Edmonton, Medley was the top scorer, converting 18 of the 81 goals Tottenham scored. When he shot, it was with bullet-like ferocity – ‘Cec Poynton, our trainer, used to say, “I never saw him. Where did he come from?”’ The amateur George Robb took over, but he wasn’t as quick and he too had knee trouble. Bill considered his inside forward Les Bennett to be the exception to the rule about push and run: ‘He liked to hold the ball and run with it. He shaped to pass and then dummy his opponent, and he had what all midfield players need: stamina. Though he gave the impression of not tearing about, he was always on the move.’
Unlike some of their successors, few of Burgess’s players were heavy drinkers. ‘They drank a pint or a lager, but weren’t big drinkers,’ said Bill. ‘But some of them were heavy smokers – Les Bennett, Arthur Willis, Ted Ditchburn, Sonny Walters, among others. Later, there was hardly a single smoker left in the squad. They were more health conscious.’ In that period, Bill was earning £8 a week. ‘We didn’t worry about money,’ he continued. ‘You were in the team: that was enough. Like most of groups of young men, we liked a laugh and a joke and practical jokes were common.’ Good-quality winning football attracts spectators and Tottenham averaged 54,405 in the 1949/50 season: 3,024 more than Arsenal. They topped 50,000 in 15 matches and on 25 February, 70,305 watched the match against Southampton, which they won 4-0. The crowd was tightly packed, almost crushed in some parts, with most of them standing. Segregation hadn’t been heard of and boys, accompanied by their fathers, were handed over the heads of men ahead so they could see down at the front. It was rare to see any women.
‘Hooliganism, tribal fights and exchange of insults were practically non-existent. There was no thuggery in our game,’ recalled Rowe. ‘We did it in style, no jealousies, all pals together. The roar of the crowd keyed the players on and it was stimulating, enthralling entertainment.’ Around 1.5 million spectators turned up that season and that record has never been beaten.
The 1950/1 season started with a 1-4 defeat by Blackpool, but six successive wins put them on the way to winning their first championship of the First Division. There was an unusual happening on 9 November when half of the first team beat Cambridge University, coached by Bill Nicholson, 2-1; on the same day the other half drew 0-0 with Oxford University, whose coach was Vic Buckingham. The impression to be drawn was that University football was of a much higher standard then.
Nine days later, a full-strength Tottenham beat Newcastle, that season’s FA Cup winners, 7-0, with Medley and Baily scoring hat tricks. Rowe admitted: ‘When it was flowing like that, I would sit there transfixed. I was jealous for them, anxious that they should do justice to themselves. That was the only pressure, the rest was sheer pleasure.’
Seven of the players came from a short radius to White Hart Lane, a tribute to the excellence of the work of chief scout Ben Ives. The win bonus was just £2 and only two of the players, Ditchburn and Burgess, had cars. Rowe lived in Clapton and he was 34 before he owned a car. Often he caught a bus to Tottenham High Road and most times he had to stand. Fans would ask him about the prospects for another victory; also the likelihood of a Double. But there was no chance of a Double because they lost 2-0 to their bogey side, Huddersfield, in the third round of the FA Cup. Bill Nicholson played 41 out of the 42 matches, scoring one goal.
In those days Christmas was a busy time for footballers. On 23 December Rowe’s side beat Arsenal 1-0, then drew 1-1 at Derby on Christmas Day and on Boxing Day beat Derby 2-1. The championship was won in their 41st League match: a hard-earned 1-0 victory over Sheffield Wednesday who were relegated. Matt Busby’s Manchester side were runners-up, for the fourth time in five seasons.
In those days the players’ gear was much more conservative – no advertising, only a simple, small motif of the cockerel on a plain white shirt, long sleeves (usually rolled up), medium-length black shorts and the distinctive socks, almost half-white and the rest black. The tough leather boots and hard toecaps gave much more protection than modern footwear and all the players used white laces. There were rather small baths to wash in, hardly bigger than today’s Jacuzzis, and up to eight players squeezed into them. Arthur Rowe made some money from designing a new football boot – ‘The Arthur Rowe’ – and everyone was buying them.
Eddie Baily recalled how they trained in those days: ‘We hardly ever saw a football, but plenty of medicine balls to build our stomach muscles. We wore old sweaters to make us sweat and we did 18 or so laps, two laps running and two walking in succession, punched the punch balls and finished up skipping. Often we brought a ball ourselves and played 18-a-side matches by a pub. Bill was the first manager to use the football nearly all the time when he took over.’
Bill missed five League matches in the 1951/2 season and scored his usual one as Tottenham were pipped by Manchester United for the championship. He said it was a wet season and the White Hart Lane pitch resembled a morass for much of the winter. The directors decided to put in a new pitch and 3,500 tons of earth was taken away and dumped on Hackney Marshes. In its place 2,000 tons of new topsoil was put in, with 25,000 turfs laid on top.
But the pitch was never a good one until recent years, mainly because of the lack of circulating air through the absence of gaps in the corners. As the season ended, the club started a series of 12 friendlies, the first one held in Paris on 3 May and the final one on 18 June in Quebec. During the voyage, most of the players were seasick but Denis Uphill, one of the reserve players, recalled: ‘We travelled across the country by train and usually stayed in big log cabins. Canada was terrific, very different to post-war Britain, much more open.’
Despite the amount of travel, Bill thought the series was well worth it, but Rowe’s artists were losing their bloom: Bill made just 31 League appearances and failed to score his usual goal in the following season when the club finished tenth. At 33, he was thinking about a career as a manager.
In 1953/4, Tottenham ended sixteenth and Rowe brought in new players, some of them unable to play the type of football he required. He was harshly criticised for being too loyal to his older players, the strain was affecting his health and his doctor advised rest: he was heading for a breakdown. Jimmy Anderson, a former groundstaff boy who joined the club in 1908, but never made a senior appearance, became stand-in manager. He had filled most jobs, including secretary. Now 65, he celebrated 50 years with Tottenham. Bill explained: ‘I was asked to take over the coaching because Jimmy was more of a desk manager.’
Earlier in the season, Bill had told Rowe: ‘I’m not as fit as I used to be. Perhaps it is time you put someone else in my place.’ It was a remarkable thing to say. Hardly any player would volunteer to drop out – they all want to play as long as they can. ‘I felt it was an honest way of going about it,’ he revealed. ‘By speaking up, I was making it easier for him. As a manager later on, I had to leave many players out and it was not a pleasant task.’
In fact, Rowe was such a nervous man by this time that he didn’t like confronting players with bad news. Nicholson had helped him out and he was grateful.
At the end of the season Bill saw the club doctor about a sore knee and was referred to a specialist, who recommended ‘to remove some floating bodies’, as the dreaded phrase goes. Today’s specialists still say the same thing, except they have the equipment to do the work without cutting open the skin and leaving a scar.
Often the operations of 50 years ago went wrong, but Bill was lucky – although he had a scare in the close season while walking in Bridlington during his two-week summer holiday in North Yorkshire. ‘The knee suddenly seized up and I couldn’t move,’ he recalled. ‘I was taken to Scarborough Hospital, but the tests could find nothing wrong and I spent a month in hospital before discharging myself. Back at White Hart Lane, I walked on sticks for a while before full movement was restored.’