Magpie Miscellany Part 13
When Busby & a Lisbon Lion played at York Road
“Maidenhead can be very proud of its ground and accommodation. It is a credit to the club and its supporters. Many a football league club would be pleased to have such fine facilities”. This was the verdict of Matt Busby at the conclusion of his 1948 GB Olympic team training camp at York Road.
75 years ago, Britain was preparing to host the Olympic Games for the second time. What became known as the Austerity Games was the first Olympics since the notorious event in Berlin in 1936.
The games had originally been awarded to London in 1944, and despite concerns that there were insufficient resources to host the event following the end of World War II, it went ahead albeit with no new facilities being built. The Wembley Stadium complex was the focus of the games, although events took place throughout London and across the south of England.
This was particularly true of the football tournament which was played at 9 London venues including Lynn Road (Ilford FC) and Green Pond Road (Walthamstow Avenue FC), as well as the Goldstone Ground (Brighton) and Fratton Park (Portsmouth).
Football has always been one of the biggest Olympic sports, regarded seriously in most of the world outside Great Britain. This was exemplified by Uruguay at the recent World Cup in Qatar when they wore two gold stars on their shirt to represent their Olympic Gold medals from 1924 and 1928. Of course Team GB always had the problem of consolidating the four home nation teams into one eleven, not to mention an arcane attitude to amateurism which occasionally crossed the line into hypocrisy.
Nevertheless as host, just as in 2012, it was deemed necessary to field a team capable of winning the competition, especially as it was to be the first ever football tournament to be broadcast live on BBC TV.
Thus Matt Busby, fresh from winning the FA Cup and leading Manchester United to a second consecutive Football League runners up spot, was appointed manager/coach.
Following a trial match at Blackpool in May, an FA committee selected a 22 man squad of registered amateurs. After mixed fortunes in two friendly matches, beating The Netherlands and losing to Basel, the squad arrived at the Grove Hall Hotel, Twyford in mid July for their pre tournament training camp. The squad consisted of 10 Englishmen, 7 Scots, 3 Welshmen and 2 from Northern Ireland. All the Scots played for Queens Park and included the future Lisbon Lion goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson. The captain was Bishop Auckland’s Bob Hardisty. There was local interest in the form of right back Jack Neale who played against the Magpies for Walton & Hersham in the Corinthian League, and Reading based forward Bill Amor.
Amor, a wartime Royal Marine, had joined Thames Valley Police in peacetime and was spotted playing for Spartan League Huntley & Palmers by Third Division Reading earlier in 1948 for whom he went on to play 68 matches on the left wing. He came to the attention of the Team GB selectors after scoring a hat trick for an FA XI against Queens Park who were then playing in Scotland’s top ‘A’ Division.
Busby’s squad started 10 days of intensive training at York Road on July 15th. They arrived by coach from Twyford twice a day for a morning and afternoon training session. Busby joined in the sessions which included running, exercises, ball control, 5 a side and tactics. One afternoon they played a cricket match for a change.
On July 20th the squad played a Reds v Whites trial match in hot weather. Busby lined up in midfield for the Reds. Maidonian Harry Distin refereed.
The Magpies did everything they could to help the squad prepare. This included daily hot baths, cold showers and afternoon tea. The Conservative Club also offered hospitality. Full cooperation was given by the Borough Surveyor’s department to get the ground in to condition.
On July 24th the squad travelled to Nantes to play France in a friendly which they won 3-2. Described by Busby as a “rough” game with six French subs required, Queens Park’s David Letham injured his knee and subsequently missed the tournament.
The squad had a final training session at York Road on July 27th, then transferred to their tournament quarters at the Olympic Centre in Uxbridge.
Busby described himself on leaving Maidenhead as “optimistic” about his team’s chances. This proved well founded as three days later GB won their first round tie by the odd goal in seven after extra time against The Netherlands at Highbury. This set up a quarter final against France at Craven Cottage when Hardisty scored the only goal midway through the first half.
The tournament then moved to Wembley for the final stages. A general lack of interest in the competition was reflected by a crowd of only 40,000 for GB’s semi-final against Yugoslavia. Despite this being the biggest attendance GB had played in front of that summer, it was still only marginally better than the previous season’s Football League First Division average of 36,137.
The Yugoslavs took the lead through Stejpan Bobek in the 19th minute but within seconds Pembroke’s Frank Donovan equalised for GB only for Franjo Wolfl to restore the Eastern European’s lead four minutes later. The tie was settled just after half time when Rajko Mitic doubled his team’s advantage. This left GB with a final match against Denmark which they lost 5-3 to miss out on a Bronze medal.
In the tournament final Yugoslavia were comfortably beaten 3-1 by Sweden whose famous Gre-No-Li forward line of Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm would go on to have great success with AC Milan in the 1950s.
Of the Brits, Busby would go onto greatest fame, eventually being knighted for his achievements at Manchester United which concluded with 1968’s European Cup triumph. However Ronnie Simpson beat Busby to the ultimate European club title a year earlier when he kept goal in Celtic’s 1967 final win in Lisbon. This ended a glittering career which included 2 FA Cups with Newcastle, 8 domestic trophies for Celtic as well as playing for Scotland at Wembley when they inflicted the legendary first defeat of Alf Ramsey’s English World Cup winners. Bob Hardisty went to become a triple Amateur Cup winner with Bishops Auckland and rejoined Busby in 1958 to help United out as a player following the Munich air disaster.
Sources:
100 Reading Greats, David Downs
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, Mark Smith, 2011
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