1950/1-Rooke rides to the rescue

Towards the end of the latest in a run of depressing seasons in 1949/50, the club had seriously considered pulling out of the Southern League. Instead, the committee members took the bold step of forming a limited company so that outside capital could be raised to put the club on a more secure footing. The company, Bedford Town Association Football Club Ltd, was registered on 9 September 1950, although it was not until January of the following year that the fund raising was complete and the company started trading.

The biggest financial issue seems to have been the position of Jack Salsbury (see Commentary season by season, 1945-50). The last chairman of the “old” unincorporated club was easily its biggest creditor, being owed over £4,000 by the end of 1950; he must have largely kept it going out of his own pocket. The original proposals for incorporation called for the Supporters’ Club to be responsible for repaying Salsbury £800 a year for five years, so that the new company could start with a clean sheet and eventually Salsbury would be paid out; but the former chairman eventually accepted £2,250 up front with the balance being satisfied by the issue of 250 shares in the new company[1]. The share issue had raised £3,600 by the start of 1951, from some 600 shareholders. The new company’s articles prevented any shareholder holding more than 20 voting shares; so presumably, although Salisbury held 250 shares he only had 20 votes. Although this was presented as a means of preventing any individual controlling the club, the legal and practical reality was, of course, that anyone who was owed substantial sums by the club would have the power to make its life very difficult. Hence, no doubt, the wish to pay Salsbury’s debt off, but so much of the newly raised capital went straight to him that it was clear that the assistance of the Supporters’ Club would be as vital in the future as Salsbury’s deep pocket had been in the past. Between January and July alone in 1951 they contributed £2,000.

The second major issue to be resolved was the ground, still owned by Charles Wells. The exact terms of the club’s tenure before 1950/1 aren’t clear, but as part of the incorporation process the brewery company agreed to grant a 21 year lease, at a rent of £35 a year for the first seven years, rising to £60 for the next seven and then £80. The ground and fittings were valued, subject to this lease, at £2,212. Everyone doubtless breathed a sigh of relief, but the fact that they were only tenants was to haunt the club repeatedly for the rest of its life. For more background to the share issue, see Incorporation details.

[Photograph by kind permission of Bedford Community Arts ] 

This little group was probably photographed at the start of the 1949/50 season, because it shows two players who joined that summer, but contributed significantly in 1950/1- Frank O’Hagan (fourth from left) and Freddie Hall (fifth). Extreme left is Pat Comerford, who had been around as an amateur since 1947 but signed professional forms that summer, Second from left is the coach, Charlie Bicknell, and far right is trainer Bob Thompson. The young man at the front is unidentified but might be the son of one of the others. 

Although none of these players had long playing careers at The Eyrie, all of them settled in the area and became very long-serving figures with local minor clubs. Comerford had a short spell in League football with Shrewsbury before playing into the 1960s for Eynesbury, Potton, Biggleswade and Bletchley. Hall’s Bedford career got off to an unlucky start since he broke a leg on his home debut, but later he became manager and eventually chairman at Eynesbury Rovers, and is still commemorated in their Player of the Year award.  O’Hagan, who played for Rushden and Kempston among other clubs, was in charge of  Bedford’s  youth teams in the last years of the old club’s existence and was assistant manager to Trevor Gould in its final season, 1981/2. 

In the background is the Long Shelter as it looked before the roof fascia boards were adorned with advertisements.

 

This team group was taken at the start of the 1950/1 season. 

Back row: Charlie Bicknell (club coach), Vic Hayes, Tom Potter, Albert Capstick, Joe Millbank, Fred Allen, Pat Comerford, Bob Thompson (trainer). 

Front row: Horace Wallbanks, Jimmy Cumming, Freddie Hall, George Chapman, Alan Moorhouse.  

Meanwhile, by the time the company started its life, events on the field had given very little encouragement to those trying to secure the club’s future off it. New players in the summer of 1950 included Joe Millbank, a very experienced centre-half from Crystal Palace via Gillingham and Horace Wallbanks, a much-travelled winger from the north east. There were three league wins before the end of September, but only two more by the end of January; by the end of November the league position, second from bottom, was exactly where the club had ended the season before, but in December the club beneath them, Chingford Town, resigned with immediate effect and Bedford duly slithered into bottom place.

In the FA Cup, they had reached the fourth qualifying round, with comfortable wins against junior opposition until the third round when they had won narrowly at Hitchin thanks to a late goal described as a fluke even by the Bedford Record’s reporter; but even the earlier progress had not exactly been straightforward, because in the preliminary round against Potton in September they had been two goals down after 16 minutes before putting six goals in at the other end.

The first match of the season produced an unexpected 4-2 home win against Headington in the League Cup, watched by 5,200 on 19 August.  Here Alan Moorhouse (11) bursts through to net the second goal, with Freddie Hall backing up on the left.

 Photographs above and below by kind permission of the Surrey Advertiser

Defensive walls are nothing new, and above Bedford’s defence attempts to block a free kick by Guildford City’s Eddie Passmore in the goalless draw at Josephs Road in the FA Cup fourth qualifying round on 11 November 1950. Albert Capstick is number 4 and Freddie Hall at the far left hand side. 

 Bedford went down 1-2 in the replay on 16 November, when Guildford’s late winner was allowed by the referee although a linesman had flagged it offside-provoking crowd trouble at the end. Here Joe Millbank (left) and Vic Hayes fight it out in the air with Eddie Passmore, watched by Passmore’s team mate John Baynham. 

The fourth qualifying round produced a goalless draw at Guildford, a creditable effort considering that defender Vic Hayes caught an opponent’s stud early on and collapsed in pain. At half-time the trainer, Bob Thompson, borrowed a half-crown (£0.125) coin from the chairman, which was placed on the injury and firmly bandaged in position, enabling Hayes to complete the match. He was taken to hospital at the end but was still able to rejoin his team mates for tea before the homeward journey. However, at The Eyrie the following Thursday afternoon, the visitors won the replay 2-1 thanks to a late goal which was flagged offside by the linesman, who was then overruled by the referee. This caused so much crowd trouble that the club had to post warning notices, and the local paper claimed that “one hooligan (unidentified) even struck the Bedford trainer as he was leaving the field”. 


In the light of these disappointments the formal launch of the new company at the end of January could perhaps have been better timed, and many may have thought that the new directors were being unrealistic in announcing a five year plan to improve the ground (see The Eyrie in photographs ) which aimed at a capacity of 12,000 and called for new dressing rooms involving showers, a gym and “proper sanitary accommodation”. The existing dressing rooms behind the small stand, which had been installed in 1930, must have been fairly primitive, and some pre-war players recalled in The Eyrie Roar (1999) that if you weren’t lucky enough to be one of the first into the bath you might as well go home and get cleaned up there, because there was never enough space or hot water to go round.

But then came a surprise. The home match against near neighbours Kettering (who had only that season rejoined the Southern League after many years elsewhere) on 27 January 1951 was used as an occasion to launch the new regime by inviting several guests, such as league and county football officials, but one of them was Ronnie Rooke, the former Crystal Palace, Fulham and Arsenal centre-forward, now out of work since an unsuccessful return to his old club at Selhurst Park as player-manager had ended in dismissal the previous month, and was reputed to possess the hardest shot in football. The new chairman, William Hobkirk, a foundry owner whose father, John, had been chairman before 1914, introduced Rooke to the crowd and the players before the kick-off, and afterwards confirmed that the directors had discussed a possible contract.

 This interesting picture shows the real beginning of Ronnie Rooke’s first spell at the club. Before the league match against Kettering at The Eyrie on 27 January 1951, the players were introduced, in front of the old main stand, to Rooke by the chairman, W T Hobkirk (far right). The day marked the formal launch of the new limited company, and toasts were drunk to its success by an array of guests. Officially, Rooke, who had been out of work since being sacked by Crystal Palace the previous October, was just one of those guests, but the very public nature of this scene makes it clear that he was being courted by the directors-even though Charlie Bicknell was still in charge. The Bedford Record coyly said that afterwards “Rooke discussed a possible appointment with the Bedford directors”, although he “has other offers under consideration”. He didn’t bring the players a change of fortune, with Kettering winning 2-1 to inflict a sixth defeat in seven matches, but he did draw out the winning ticket in the club raffle-for a bicycle worth £20. The winner immediately donated the bike to the Supporters Club! Rooke was actually appointed player-manager on 8 February. 

Players seen above, left to right: 

??(at back), George Chapman, Jimmy Cumming, ?? (partly hidden), Freddie Hall, Albert Capstick, Joe Millbank, Pat Comerford, Sid Coleman.  

Charlie Bicknell, described usually as the “coach” since April 1948, was never mentioned in these reports, even when, twelve days later, Rooke was officially appointed player-manager of the club, but he was effectively replaced by the new man. Two days later Rooke made his first appearance as a player, but not for the first eleven; having not played since October he decided to give himself several reserve matches to reach full fitness, and 3,200 people turned up to see him score a hat-trick against the possibly not very demanding opposition of Woolwich Polytechnic in the London League at The Eyrie. Meanwhile the first team won their first match for over a month with a remarkable 4-0 success at Hereford. The following week over four thousand people saw Rooke’s second match, against Guildford Reserves; these extraordinary figures (larger than several first team gates earlier in the season) suggest that he was seen as a dream figure, someone who would single-handedly drag the club out of the mire.

However, things were not quite so simple. While Rooke was enjoying his reserve matches, the next two Saturdays after the win at Hereford brought defeats at Kidderminster and Llanelly, and the third, in a bizarre sequence of away fixtures, produced an horrendous defeat by ten clear goals at Penydarren Park, Merthyr Tydfil, the home of the strongest team in the league who had won two championships in the last three seasons and would win three more in the next four. The full story of this match is told in graphic detail in The Eyrie Roar, but in brief, the team’s coach broke down near Brecon, forcing the players to change en route and go straight on to the field when they arrived; their amateur goalkeeper, an otherwise unknown young soldier called Thompson, was still recovering from travel sickness, and the playing surface was ankle deep in mud, having hosted a rugby match in the morning. The referee wanted to abandon play at half-time but the Bedford players begged him to carry on because they knew that the club’s finances couldn’t support a second journey to the valleys.

Matches often seem to have gone ahead in conditions that would be unacceptable now: for the league match at Guildford in December 1950 there was a three-inch carpet of snow on the pitch, and at the home match against Weymouth, on a gloomy Saturday in November, the light was so bad that the referee insisted on an early start (annoying those who turned up on time) and made the players change straight round at half-time without a break. 

This advert encouraging supporters to subscribe for shares in the new limited company appeared in the programme for the SL match v Cheltenham on 6 January 1951. The company did not start trading until the following month. In the summer of 1953 chairman William Hobkirk attacked his fellow-directors for not taking up enough shares themselves-a quarrel which led to his resignation.  (For more on the share issue see Incorporation details).

 The first of Ronnie Rooke’s 96 senior competitive goals for the Eagles, on 3 March 1951 during his first team debut, against Tonbridge. It came after half an hour, “and was a gem”, according to the local paper’s report: “he shot from 25 yards or thereabouts and the ball flashed into the net with goalkeeper [Ted] Hankey helpless. It was only half a chance”. It wasn’t enough for two points, since Tonbridge equalized in the second half, but it must have encouraged the 4,790 who saw it.  Rooke had one of the most powerful shots in the game at the time, and stories abounded of him breaking goal nets. I only saw him play once, during his second spell when he was nearly 50 years old and officially retired but would occasionally appear for the reserves. That day they won 3-0, two of the goals coming from Rooke piledrivers delivered from the edge of the penalty area with minimal backlift; he walked through the match and did little else. 

Rooke realised that he couldn’t put off his own selection any longer, and now also brought in several new signings. Against Tonbridge on 3 March, in the first home match for over a month, he scored Bedford’s goal (from the regulation 25 yards) in a 1-1 draw and also introduced Frank Boulton in goal and Bill Butler and Louis Delaney at full back; by the end of the season he had added two forwards, Johnny Holland and Vivian Woodward and a wing-half, Cyril Trailor. All these players were London-based, as most of Rooke’s signings were to be, and Boulton, Delaney and Holland had all been on Arsenal’s staff at one time or another, though Boulton had left before Rooke’s time there. Such a large influx might be thought to require time to gel, but they outweighed the existing staff in experience and of the remaining sixteen league matches, ten were won and only one lost, to hoist the team up to seventeenth place. Attendances rose into the 5,000s and 6,000s several times and the team’s revival culminated in the final league match at The Eyrie on 10 May. This was an evening match, with absolutely nothing at stake for Bedford or their opponents, Merthyr, who had already secured another championship, yet 7,349, a new ground record, turned up and saw a 2-0 home win to crown Rooke’s efforts. Even more remarkably, over 15,000 watched three friendly matches over the next few days. A new era had dawned. 

To continue the story go to 1951/2 -big money, big crowds

To see results and teams for this season go to Results and teams, 1950-67

The climax of Ronnie Rooke’s honeymoon period in charge came at The Eyrie on 10 May 1951 when his new team beat the very strong Merthyr Tydfil side, newly crowned league champions, 2-0 before a new home record crowd of 7,349, which was quite an achievement for an end-of-season evening match with nothing but pride at stake. Here Rooke challenges Merthyr goalkeeper Davies, with Vivian Woodward, making his debut, in the background. Below, over the same weekend Rooke made a celebrity appearance at a local fete, but was he upstaged by Ramon’s Canine Wonders?  

This is the line-up for the County Cup final against Luton at The Eyrie on 7 May 1951, when a strong visiting line-up won 5-0 to puncture the euphoria that had developed since Ronnie Rooke’s arrival a little, although the crowd of over 6,700 would have pleased the directors. 

Back row: Bob Thompson (trainer), Freddie Hall, Billy Butler, Frank Boulton, Joe Millbank, Louis Delaney, Cyril Folkes (secretary).

Front row: Frank Faulkner, Horace Wallbanks, Ronnie Rooke (player-manager), Frank Penn, Johnny Holland, Pat Comerford. 

Boulton, Butler, Delaney, Penn, Holland and of course Rooke himself had all arrived since the end of January, and between them the newcomers had  lifted the club from a seemingly doomed position in the league to 17th place with a run of 14 unbeaten games from Rooke’s debut on 3 March.

 

LEAGUE TABLE 1950-1951

  1. Merthyr Tydfil                    44  29   8   7  156   66   66

  2. Hereford United                44  27   7  10  110   69   61

  3. Guildford City                     44  23   8  13   88   60   54

  4. Chelmsford City                  44  21  12  11   84   58   54

  5. Llanelly                                 44  19  13  12   89   73   51

  6. Cheltenham Town              44  21   8  15   91   61   50

  7. Headington United             44  18  11  15   84   83   47

  8. Torquay United Reserves   44  20   6  18   93   79   46

  9. Exeter City Reserves            44  16  12  16   90   94   44

 10. Weymouth                           44  16  12  16   82   88   44

 11. Tonbridge                            44  16  12  16   79   87   44

 12. Gloucester City                    44  16  11  17   81   76   43

 13. Yeovil Town                         44  13  15  16   72   72   41

 14. Worcester City                     44  15  11  18   69   78   41

 15. Bath City                               44  15  10  19   65   73   40

 16. Dartford                               44  14  11  19   61   70   39

 17. Bedford Town                    44  15   9  20   64   94   39

 18. Gravesend & Northfleet     44  12  14  18   65   83   38

 19. Kettering Town                    44  13  11  20   87   87   37

 20. Lovells Athletic                     44  12  13  19   81   93   37

 21. Kidderminster Harriers      44  13   9  22   58  103   35

 22. Barry Town                           44  13   7  24   54  104   33

 23. Hastings United                   44  11   6  27   91  143   28


The League had lost two clubs in the summer of 1949 when Colchester United and Gillingham had been elected to the Football League. They were replaced by Kettering Town (from the Birmingham League) and Llanelly (Welsh League), but the withdrawal of Chingford reduced the competition to 23 clubs.

[1] Salsbury was invited to join the board of the new company but declined. When he died in 1964, his obituary recalled that before the formation of the company “ he was as much proprietor as chairman”, and that although he initially opposed the incorporation, “agreement was reached on terms which showed that Mr Salsbury had the club’s interests at heart” (Bedford Record, 29 August 1964). The detailed rules about the restricted number of voting shares became important much later, in the mid-1970s when George Senior, the then chairman, was trying to attract new money, but they effectively rescued the club from falling into the hands of a potential investor later convicted of fraud-see 1973/4 to 1977/8-Upward path with Walker, into the fire with Fry, as regards 1974/5.