1957/8-a title thrown away

 Here is the 1957/8 pre-season squad as photographed at the public trial in August. 

Back: Dougie Gardiner (trainer-coach), Jim Smillie, Gwyn Hughes*, Colin Gill, Colin Morhen, Terry Pope, Alan Thompson, Andy Easton, Des Quinn, Terry Murray, "Paddy Watson" (assistant trainer). 

Middle: Tim Kelly (manager), Brian Moule, Liam Coll, J.F.Taylor*, Ben Marden, Sid Asher, H.L.Miles (director), Ron Smith, Felix Staroscik, Alan Norman, Reg Cornelius (secretary), Johnny Crichton. 

Front: Jim House (director), Gordon Hepple, F.C.Reynolds (director), Harry Yates*, Harry Cosford (vice-chairman), Bob Craig, Ted Ashdown (chairman), Micky Bull, J.A.England (director), Len Garwood, Len Noble (director),George Stobbart, Cyril Symes (director). 

* Unfortunately the original photograph occupied a double page and could not be copied from the bound volumes at the British Newspaper Library without partially  “losing” these players. Taylor was an amateur who never appeared in the senior team. 

Terry Murray (left) challenges Worcester keeper John Kirkwood in the first home match of the season on 31 August 1957. The Eagles went down 0-2 in an indifferent display, and would not find their feet for a few weeks more. Murray spent most of this season as an inside forward, scoring ten goals, but in 1958/9 he made a succesful transition to left-half. 

In a rather uncertain start, the team only won two of its first seven league and league cup matches and Kelly was faced with more problems than he had been used to so far. Crichton missed the start of the season through injury and, in fact, was never to regain his regular place; Len Garwood, in his testimonial season, would play more first team matches than ever before to plug the gap. Kelly turned to Bela Olah, a young Hungarian refugee who turned out to be a very promising winger or inside forward, Syd Asher, a striker who had already played for many clubs and would play for many more, and Ben Marden, ex Arsenal and Watford, to fill in gaps, but by about the end of September the team started to stabilise. The team lost only once in the league between 7 September and 7 December-that being a bizarre 2-7 defeat at Cheltenham in which Stobbart was sent off for the second time in a few months and the Bedford players complained that objects were thrown at them by spectators-and by Christmas they were sitting in pole position in the table. 

 Andy Easton (9) about to score Bedford’s third goal in the 4-2 defeat of Gloucester at The Eyrie on 5 October 1957. At that stage Easton, signed from Weymouth in the previous summer,  had not really established himself in the team but he soon became a fixture and went on to score 76 goals in 111 senior appearances over the next two years. Perhaps at his best when acting as Len Duquemin’s strike partner in 1958/9, he had a good eye for a half-chance but rather like Arthur Adey a few years earlier, he also had a fiery temper which tended to make him a target for referees and opposition supporters. Tracking down his numerous clubs has proved to be one of the hardest tasks of my researches-his career included at least three clubs for whom he appeared in two separate spells (Weymouth, Yeovil and Clacton), and towards the end of it he was more often at centre-half than centre or inside forward.  4,772 watched this match which maintained a decent recovery by the team after an indifferent start to the season, which had seen only one win in the first four league matches. 

 Bedford’s forwards put the Exeter City Reserves defence under pressure in their 6-0 victory at The Eyrie on 19 October 1957, watched by 5,300. Goalkeeper Alex Bell advances to help out his defenders against Felix Staroscik (11), who scored four of the six goals, Terry Murray (centre) and the emerging Hungarian youngster, Bela Olah (far right); concealed behind Staroscik is Harry Yates who is about to beat Bell for one of his two goals.  Exeter were the last Football League club to play their reserve team in the Southern League, and were to drop out after 1959/60 because of traveling costs;  before the war, the competition had been dominated by such teams.   

There was to be no repeat of the previous two seasons’ excitements in the FA Cup in 1957/8. Walthamstow Avenue avenged their heavy defeat of two years earlier with a 1-0 win in a replay at their Green Pond Lane ground on 7 November 1957, after a 1-1 draw at The Eyrie, watched by just over 9,000, the previous Saturday. In the top picture Felix Staroscik heads Bedford’s late equalizer at the Eyrie, and below, in the replay, Des Quinn (left) and Bob Craig have joined the attack in a final desperate bid for the equalizer, supported by Andy Easton (far right), but home keeper Denis Wells has the ball under control. 3,300 saw the replay, played on a Thursday afternoon. 

This time there was to be no FA Cup success; Walthamstow Avenue came to Bedford in the fourth qualifying round but gained revenge for their heavy defeat two years earlier by winning a replay 1-0 after a 1-1 draw in a disappointing performance. Kelly dropped both wing-halves, Hughes and Crichton, after the first match but it failed to do the trick and for the first time in his career at the club the manager’s judgement started to be questioned in the press. Wing-halves were regarded as the key positions in a team in those days, their role being to link defence and attack and ensure a plentiful supply of ball for the forwards. People wanted tough-tackling players in these roles and tended to barrack anyone who dwelled on the ball too long or passed sideways instead of forwards. “Stop tip-tapping it about !”, was a common cry from the terraces. 

Harry Yates (9) about to put Bedford ahead in the first few minutes against Poole Town at The Eyrie on 11 January 1958, with Andy Easton looking on. Yates was nearing the end of his time at the club, which produced 90 goals in 130 senior appearances. Poole’s first visit to Bedford produced an entertaining 5-4 home win. Next to their goalkeeper, Kirk, is their player-manager Stan Rickaby, formerly of WBA and England. This success kept up Bedford’s challenge for the championship after the FA Cup disappointments.

 Note the original appearance of the main stand, without the entry tunnels or fascia boards added in the following summer. Spectators at this stage had to walk along the touchline and reach their seats via the stairs such as the one just the left of Easton.   

However, the team’s league form remained the best answer to Kelly’s critics and despite a bad stumble at home in December which saw successive defeats by Gravesend and Lovells (the latter match marking the end of Staroscik’s first team career), Christmas was celebrated by putting 14 goals past the unfortunate Hastings in two days; 9-1 at home in what proved to be the last Christmas morning match at The Eyrie, and 5-2 at Hastings next day. Smillie made his first team debut in the home match and scored four times. In the middle of this sequence came a 3-3 draw at Chelmsford which appears to have ended in a series of running fights between players as Bedford fought back from being three down at the interval; reading between the lines, the combustible presence of Arthur Adey in the home side may have been a factor in this, yet nobody appears even to have been booked, let alone sent off, and journalists seem to have taken the line that “incidents” such as these were best kept veiled. 

Tom Ritchie (far left) heads for goal as Bedford attack the Guildford City defence in the Southern League Cup third round tie at the old Joseph’s Road ground on 12 February 1958. Guildford were a “bogey” team at the time and true to form, won 5-2 in this weekday afternoon encounter, two of their goals coming from Sid Asher, who had been released by Bedford earlier in the season because of traveling problems. Ritchie was an Ulsterman who had started his career at Manchester United and had been signed from Dartford the previous month but moved on in the following close season, scoring six times in 16 appearances.  The League Cup was not a competition that brought Bedford much success over the years, until, ironically, the penultimate season before the extinction of the “old” Eagles, 1980/1, when they finally won it with a 3-1 aggregate win against Bognor Regis. 

 The 5-0 defeat of Barry Town on 1 March 1958 at The Eyrie was a personal triumph for Terry Murray, seen here (far right) scoring one of his three goals past goalkeeper Peter Isaac, with Andy Easton on the ground and Tom Ritchie behind him. Four of the goals came in the final 20 minutes before a crowd of 5,300. After this win Bedford were six points clear at the top of the table with ten games left, but they won only one of their remaining five home games, losing three and drawing one, which in the end cost them the title. 

Although they had gone down 2-5 at Guildford in the third round of the League Cup in mid-February the team were still favourites for the long-awaited title when March came round; after beating Barry 5-0 at home on St David’s Day they were six points clear of Cheltenham, in second place, with ten games left to play, although Gravesend lurked menacingly in sixth place with four games in hand, nine points behind. But now the problems began. Some criticised the manager for discarding Yates, who had been a regular scorer for the previous two and a half seasons, in favour of Tom Ritchie, an Ulsterman signed from Dartford in January in part-exchange for Stobbart, while others pointed to the growing fallibilities of Pope in goal, but the real problem was clearly the fact that only one of the final five home matches was won. Of the ten defeats in the season, in fact, six were at home. Panic started to set in at Easter, when on Good Friday 8,800 saw a point dropped against Kettering, who were in mid-table and not expected to prove awkward, and the following day came a 1-2 defeat by lowly Dartford. Pope had made a bad handling error that led to Kettering’s equaliser and the Dartford defeat marked the end of his first team career; Morhen, who had deputised ably when needed, took over for the rest of the season. Bedford came back to win their next three away matches, the return match at Kettering on Easter Monday and then at Yeovil and Dartford, but they could no longer afford further slip-ups. 

As in 1956/7, Kettering included some Bedford portraits in their programme for the match on Easter Monday, 1958, won 1-0 by Bedford. The ones shown here did not appear in the 1956/7 programme. Downwards from top left : Bela Olah, Alan Thompson, Gwyn Hughes; Roy Davies, Jim Smillie, Andy Easton. This includes two Scots (Smillie and Easton), a Welshman (Hughes), a South African (Davies) and a Hungarian-Olah, who came to England as a refugee after the Budapest uprising in 1956.  He had to play as an amateur until he had been in the country for two years under the FA regulations of the time, and was soon capped by Bedfordshire. In 1958/9 he moved to Northampton and although his League career never really got started, he later played for several other Southern League clubs. Davies achieved the probably unique double of playing football for a South African representative XI as well as cricket for Bedfordshire, while all five of Smillie’s goals for the club came in two days, four on his debut in the 9-1 home thrashing of Hastings on Christmas Day, 1957, and the other against the same opponents at Hastings on Boxing Day. 

There was a brief break from the pressure of the league title race on 14 April 1958, when 5,700 on a Monday evening saw Bedford put up a decent fight against a strong Luton eleven before going down 1-2 in the final of the County Professional Cup. Here Luton keeper Ron Baynham is about to save a left wing cross watched by Andy Easton (right), and his centre-half, Terry Kelly, son of the Bedford manager.  

The day it all went wrong, Saturday 26 April 1958. Despite their stumbles in the final weeks, with home defeats by Cheltenham and Dartford and only three points out of six at Easter, Bedford were top before their final fixture, at home to Chelmsford, with 57 points, four more than their nearest challengers, Gravesend. A win would have made the title almost certain. Here Tom Ritchie (left) heads them ahead after 18 minutes, while Andy Easton (right) possibly obstructs Chelmsford keeper Jack Parry and Terry Murray (centre) looks on with Chelmsford right-half Lyall Bolton.  But a disputed retaken penalty and a late winner by Chelmsford’s former Bedford player Arthur Adey were to dash the 7,200 crowd’s hopes.

Everything now depended on the final league fixture, at home to Chelmsford on a very bright but chilly 26 April 1958. Bedford started the day four points clear of Gravesend, who had gathered points steadily as they caught up with their fixtures, and a win would, despite all the falterings of the previous month, make the title almost certain, which encouraged 7,200 to turn up. Ritchie gave Bedford an early lead but hopes were dashed 14 minutes later when Chelmsford were awarded a much-disputed penalty for handball which Jimmy Jones initially missed, but a re-take was ordered for encroachment and he succeeded with the second attempt. A fractious second half saw Arthur Adey net an 83rd minute winner against his old colleagues, and the referee was given a police escort at the end. To my nearly eight-year old eyes, he appeared to have been arrested for bad refereeing.

When disappointed supporters bought their “Pink’Uns” that evening they learned that Gravesend had won one of their three matches in hand, at Exeter, but they still had another two matches left and needed at least three points from them, so there was still hope, but Gravesend beat Headington on the Monday and Hastings on the Wednesday -their eighth win in a row- to win their only title, having never been top until after their final match. Even so, had Bedford beaten Chelmsford they would have been champions on goal average. Sixteen points in all had been dropped at home. “Write the whole team off except two”, was the headline of a disgruntled letter from a fan calling themselves “Fair Play [name and address supplied]” printed next to the Bedford Record’s report of the Chelmsford match-the two excused being Craig and “one of the wing men”, Smillie or Bull. 

How the Pink 'Un's cartoonist saw the Chelmsford defeat in his round-up; the "pensive Eagle" attempts in vain to hatch out the Southern League championship after eight long months of trying (thanks to Mike Crisp for this) 

 Photo by kind permission of  Colin Morhen  

This first team photo was taken on 5 May 1958 before the end-of-season friendly against Sheffield Wednesday. 

Back row: Tim Kelly (Manager), Len Garwood, Alan Thompson, Colin Morhen, Des Quinn, Phil Frost, Dougie Gardiner (Trainer/Coach). 

Front row: Jim Smillie, Andy Easton, Tom Ritchie, Harry Cosford (Vice-Chairman), Bob Craig, Ted Ashdown (Chairman), Terry Murray, Micky Bull. 

The trophies are the Southern League runners-up shield and the Hunts Premier Cup, of which Bedford had won a half-share by drawing 1-1 at Peterborough the previous week.

Nobody could complain about goals-Bedford had hit no fewer than 112 in league matches (though Cheltenham, who finished sixth, managed 115), but this was a bitter disappointment in a season without Cup excitement, and after the team had held the leadership for virtually half the season. Kelly decided to swing the axe, releasing Pope, Yates and Crichton from his original 1955 signings as well as Smillie and Hughes. During the summer he also lost Ritchie, who preferred the chance to return to League football with Grimsby, and the promising Olah, whom he had been unable to sign as a professional because of his immigrant status; as soon as Olah had been in the UK long enough to turn professional, Northampton swooped for his signature. Financially, the average attendance dropped very slightly to 5,206, amid nationally declining gates. There were fears that after three seasons of getting ever closer to the elusive title the club was at risk of slipping backwards. 

1958/9 would pose different problems because the Southern League was to be split into two regional sections, North West and South East, in preparation for the creation of a Premier and First Division in 1959/60. A number of new clubs from the midlands and west country had been elected members[1], and a large influx of clubs had been expected from the Kent League, but they fell foul of their league’s regulations about resignations and were forced to carry on where they were for another season. The two new Southern League sections would, therefore, be quite small, with only 18 teams in the North West section and 17 in the South East. 

Since the excitements of 1955/6 the club had applied each summer for membership of the Football League, though for any non-league club this was a pretty hopeless task because there was no automatic relegation from the Third Division (North) and (South) and applicants thus had to take votes away from the bottom two clubs in each section who had to apply for re-election. This summer was no different, with Bedford collecting just two votes. Peterborough received 15, but even this was well short of any chance of admission. This was to be a recurring theme of the next few years.

To continue the story go to 1958/9-Kelly's men make it at last

For full results and teams go to Results and teams, 1950-67

LEAGUE TABLE 1957-1958

  1. Gravesend & Northfleet             42  27   5  10  109   71   59

  2. Bedford Town                             42  25   7  10  112   64   57

  3. Chelmsford City                            42  24   9   9   93   57   57

  4. Weymouth                                     42  25   5  12   90   61   55

  5. Worcester City                              42  23   7  12   95   59   53

  6. Cheltenham Town                       42  21  10  11  115   66   52

  7. Hereford United                          42  21   6  15   79   56   48

  8. Kettering Town                            42  18   9  15   99   76   45

  9. Headington United                     42  18   7  17   90   83   43

 10. Poole Town                                 42  17   9  16   82   81   43

 11. Hastings United                         42  13  15  14   78   77   41

 12. Gloucester City                          42  17   7  18   70   70   41

 13. Yeovil Town                               42  16   9  17   70   84   41

 14. Dartford                                     42  14   9  19   66   92   37

 15. Lovells Athletic                          42  15   6  21   60   83   36

 16. Bath City                                    42  13   9  20   65   64   35

 17. Guildford City                           42  12  10  20   58   92   34

 18. Tonbridge                                 42  13   7  22   77  100   33

 19. Exeter City Reserves               42  12   8  22   60   94   32

 20. Barry Town                               42  11   9  22   72  101   31

 21. Kidderminster Harriers          42  10  10  22   60  101   30

 22. Merthyr Tydfil                          42   9   3  30   69  137   21

[1] The new clubs in the NW section would be Boston United, Corby Town and Wisbech Town (all from the Midland League), Burton Albion, Nuneaton Borough and Rugby Town (Birmingham League) and Wellington Town (Cheshire League); and joining Bedford in the SE section would be Cambridge City (Athenian), Cambridge United and Clacton Town (Eastern Counties), King’s Lynn (Midland), Trowbridge Town (Western) and Yiewsley (Corinthian). Cambridge City and Yiewsley (later Hillingdon Borough) had both been amateur clubs which now turned professional.