Category: Alan Moore

Don't forget your subs

12/29/2018

Get your heads round this, younger readers: United managers and coaches haven’t always been able to call on benches full of substitutes in their efforts to influence games.

The replacement of players was practised in public school matches as early as the mid-19th century, although only when those selected for a match didn’t turn up, probably because their nannies hadn’t woken them up in time.

And there was consternation at an 1889 Wales-Scotland fixture when home goalie Jim Trainer was absent without explanation. Surprised local amateur Alf Pugh was drafted in until the cavalry arrived in the form of the more experienced Sam Gillam.

Coconuts committee: no, no, no, no, yes

Substitution crept gradually into the game, but it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that the first subs in the English professional game stripped off. Before then, if a player couldn’t continue, you were either down to ten men or you soldiered on with ten and a quarter.

So it was essential to United manager Alan Moore that the eleven men he chose to play at Hereford in November 1962 were fighting fit. This fact seems to have been lost on wing half Mike Bottoms, who had been signed from QPR not long before.

We haven’t got a photograph of Bottoms, so the picture on this page depicts a recent Coconuts committee meeting discussing possible inductions to the Cambridge United Hall of Fame.

An old injury had recurred the previous week but Bottoms told anyone who would listen that he was raring to go, 110 per cent on top of his game, couldn’t wait.

The Hereford game was only a couple of minutes old when, as you have doubtless guessed, he broke down and thereafter had as much effect on the game as would Long John Silver without his crutch. His fellow U’s fought bravely but came away 2-1 losers.

Moore, not a big man but one capable of instilling fear in a fighting-drunk honey badger, was amused neither by Bottoms’ name nor by his deception.

‘I would have suspended him for a month but for the fact he has a nice family and I can’t see them go without any wages,’ he raged. ‘As it is, I have told him that he will never kick another ball for my first team.’

It transpired that U’s trainer Roy Kirk had passed on players’ fears that Bottoms might not last the 90 minutes, so Moore had called him in.

'I prodded all round the injury and there was not a peep out of the player,’ fumed the manager, ‘but within three minutes of the kick-off this old injury recurred and the team was let down.’

Bottoms’ United career was over after just 11 appearances – some of them quite short – and his contract was cancelled soon after.

Cheerio
Harry

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Moore information

12/26/2018

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This article appeared in edited form in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Crawley Town on Wednesday, 26 December 2018.

We’re not announcing the results of the 2019 Cambridge United Hall of Fame vote yet – the process doesn’t even close until the year does – but it’s been interesting to see certain trends emerging.

Among the nominations for pre-1979 players and managers, there’s been a healthy number for the human brick wall that was Terry Eades, for Abbey United legend Harvey Cornwell and for the hugely talented inside forward Len Saward, among other star names.

Another popular nominee is Brian Moore, the Belfast-born forward who, across four seasons in black and amber from December 1956, made scoring goals look like child’s play.

Imagine watching someone score 113 goals in 161 U’s games, including 68 in one astonishing season. Now do your best to imagine that someone scoring all those goals while effectively blind in one eye.

Moore made light of a disability that would have finished most footballers’ careers before they had started. And when he’d finished at Newmarket Road, he crossed the river to become a hero at Cambridge City … and then at Wisbech Town, Boston United and Newmarket Town.

His career would have been very different had not fate, and a heavy leather football, intervened.

As Andrew Bennett related in Risen from the Dust, Moore’s displays for Glentoran and Distillery had attracted big clubs’ attention in 1955, and his early showings for West Ham promised great things to come.

He was only 21 when he was hit in the face during a fixture at Middlesbrough. He managed to play on but it was found that the ball’s lace had so badly damaged the retina in his right eye that he was effectively blind on that side.

Moore, advised that another such blow could deprive him of sight altogether, stopped playing, even though a degree of blurred vision began to return to the damaged eye. Then along came Bert Johnson.

The United player-manager offered him incentives to return to the game in Cambridge that proved irresistible: a job with Pye Telecom and the chance to play for the U’s alongside the legendary Wilf Mannion.

It wasn’t long before he was thrilling supporters with goals and skills galore, with the help of teammates like Mannion and Ron Murchison calling to tell him when their passes were arriving on his 'blind' side.

In his annus mirabilis of 1957/58 he just couldn’t help scoring: he’d racked up 30 goals in all competitions before Christmas and reached 68 in a mere 52 games.

New manager, new rules: for the 1960/61 season his namesake gaffer Alan Moore, who had followed Johnson and Bill Craig, decreed that his squad would all be full-time footballers, placing his star striker in a quandary.

Not wanting to lose his job at Pye’s, he left for Milton Road and a new chapter in an amazing career.

Cheerio
Harry

Above, Brian Moore scores at the Corona End. Below, Moore (second left) with two Charlton players and United player-manager Bert Johnson (right) inspect an inscribed ball presented to Moore to mark his 68 goals in 1957/58. Photos: Cambridge Daily News

Above, Brian Moore (left) leaves the Newmarket Road ground with teammate Jimmy Campbell during the 1958/59 season. Below, Moore with wife Pamela and newborn son Peter James. Photos: Cambridge Daily News

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Sam the slam

10/6/2018

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An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Coventry City on 16 September 2017.

If you ask any of the old-timers who were around in the early 1960s about the most skilful men they’ve seen in amber and black, the name of Sam McCrory will crop up as often as not.

He wasn’t the speediest thing on two legs – he was once described as ‘a deliberate moving but highly gifted inside forward’ – and he was getting on when he arrived at the Abbey in the summer of 1960 – but the fiery Sammy had a trick or two up his sleeve.

Ask the England team of 1957.

Sam McCrory (second from right) pictured ahead of Northern Ireland's 3-2 win against England at Wembley on 6 November 1957.

At Wembley on November 6 of that year, the Southend schemer and marksman won his only cap for Northern Ireland against an England side boasting the formidable likes of Duncan Edwards, Billy Wright, Tommy Taylor and Johnny Haynes.

The fact that McCrory was 33 years old at the time was not lost on the English lads, some of whom delighted in pointing out his geriatric status.

Sammy had the perfect answer to the uncharitable and unwise chirping: his country’s second goal, with a ‘glorious drive’, in a 3-2 win. The English were forced to swallow their taunts.

Sam McCrory had worked long and hard for that delicious moment.

Born in Belfast, he had played in the same Scouts team as the boy who would go on to skipper the Irish to that Wembley victory: Tottenham legend Danny Blanchflower. He won two Irish Cups with Linfield before crossing the water to ply his trade with Swansea, Ipswich and Plymouth.

But it was at Southend that he achieved hero status: among his 91 goals in 200-odd games was the first at the Shrimpers’ new Roots Hall ground, in 1955.

Manager Alan Moore persuaded McCrory to sign for the U’s in the face of a player-managership offer from a League of Ireland club. The club certainly got its money’s worth over the next two seasons.

With the exception of his first Ipswich match, McCrory had scored on every debut throughout his career, and he duly netted United’s Southern League Premier first goal of 1960/61, against Hinckley.

He followed up with a hat-trick in a 7-3 FA Cup trouncing of March Town United, but then came the first in a series of sendings-off that would set a U’s record.

Dismissal at Hinckley in December 1960 was followed by another in October 1961 at home to Romford; both were for protests at the refs’ failure to recognise handball when they saw it.

Top, Sam McCrory in Cambridge United colours. Above, McCrory scores from the penalty spot at the Allotments End – the first goal in United's 9-0 victory over Tunbridge Wells United in the Southern League Premier Division on 21 January 1961. Photo: Cambridge Daily News.

On 27 January 1962, a kicking incident at Cheltenham saw him become the first United player to be sent off twice in one season, and three times in all.

But in between the dismissals there were sublime moments like the winner in a 3-2 East Anglian Cup victory over the Norwich second string in November 1961: after mesmerising his marker with sleight of foot, he hammered a ferocious drive into the top corner.

Having scored 27 U’s goals in 98 games – goodness knows what he would have achieved if he hadn’t incurred six weeks of suspensions – McCrory went home in the summer of 1962 and player-managed Crusaders for a while.

He and wife Rita later ran the Port O’Call bar in Donaghadee, welcoming a certain George Best to perform the opening ceremony in 1969. He died in 2011, leaving many a United supporter staring wistfully into his beer.

Cheerio
Harry

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Small man, big reputation

7/13/2018

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Settle in for a long read on the brief Cambridge United career of England winger Johnny Hancocks, and the even shorter stint of fellow wide man Bobby Langton.

The news travelled fast round the workplaces, homes and pubs of Cambridge on 11 January 1960: United had signed two more Wilfs!

It was not much more than two years since the great Wilf Mannion's last game in Cambridge United colours. Now it seemed player-coach Alan Moore had compensated for the loss of the legendary inside forward by snapping up two fellow England internationals.

Johnny Hancocks, an FA Cup winner with Wolves and the possessor of three England caps, looked destined for the outside right position at Newmarket Road, while Bobby Langton, capped 11 times while playing for Blackburn, Preston and Bolton, was a powerful left winger with a terrific shot.

Their international careers had been overshadowed by those of the peerless Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, but their reputations were safe.

Working against them was the fact that neither could claim spring-chicken status: Hancocks was 40 when he arrived at Newmarket Road (although the Cambridge Daily News generously knocked two years off that figure) and Langton was a year and a bit older.

The latter had not come far, having been released by Wisbech Town after three years' service when the seriousness of a knee injury became apparent.

Further misfortune followed when, on his way to Cambridge for his debut, Langton's car skidded off a road near Derby. It was an eerie echo of a similar accident in a nearby location two years before, when Langton was travelling with Northern Ireland winger Johnny McKenna. The Irishman never played again.

Langton also failed to make the following Saturday’s league game at home to Sittingbourne – the club agreed that he should stay in Bolton while his daughter was in hospital after breaking a leg.

Supporters were beginning to wonder if they would ever see their new outside left. A few days later, they got their answer: no, they wouldn't.

Moore informed the press after a 4-1 loss to Guildford that the Langton transfer was off. The boss, concerned by the player's knee problems, had wanted him on a month’s trial, whereas Langton had been holding out for a contract until the end of the season. 'I couldn't risk that,' said Moore.

Meanwhile, Hancocks had turned out three times for the U's, scoring twice. Supporters must have been pleased, although some were wondering if they were really watching a player who had played for his country and was sufficiently famous for his name to adorn a range of football boots.

Johnny Hancocks, born on 30 April 1919 in the Shropshire town of Oakengates (later swallowed up by the new town of Telford), was, to use the term favoured by journalists of the time, diminutive.

Just 5ft 4in tall, he had proportionately small feet, and these anatomical features have been the subject of as much debate and myth-making as his playing abilities.

Estimates of Hancocks's shoe size have ranged over the decades from a relatively substantial six-and-a-half to a truly minuscule two. For the truth of the matter, we can turn to an authoritative source: his niece Sheila, who told the Shropshire Star in 2008 that, while his mother took a size one shoe, her uncle Johnny was a size four.

From top to bottom: Johnny Hancocks pictured in a Wolves Hall of Fame video; posing with fashionable centre parting to the fore; Johnny Hancocks signature leather football boots from the 1950s, sold on eBay in September 2017 for £105.53; Bobby Langton in the colours of Blackburn Rovers.

Whatever their size, the Hancocks feet possessed astounding qualities, not least the ability to kick a football very hard. Sheila was sure she'd heard that one of her uncle's shots had broken the net, and Moore was in no doubt about his signing's shooting power.

'He was a little, round fellow,' he would recall in later years, 'about five foot nothing in height, going on 12 stone and with the tiniest feet I've ever seen … but could he hit a ball! Anything 35 to 40 yards out from a set piece would scream into the net.’

It’s said that, while most footballers would use two pairs of boots over the course of a season, Hancocks hit the ball so hard that he would get through five pairs.

It was the 'round' part of Moore's description that was worrying United fans in 1960, but it had not always been a cause for concern.

Hancocks was just 15 when he first appeared for Oakengates Town in the Birmingham League. Walsall, then playing in the Football League's Third Division South, signed him up in 1938 and he played a full season at Fellows Park before World War II intervened.

Still only 20, he joined up in 1940 and found his niche as a physical training instructor while turning out in representative games for the army and guesting for Wrexham and Shrewsbury.

The war carved a large chunk out of Hancocks's football career, but Wolves thought highly enough of him to fork out £4,000 for his signature in the summer of 1946.

He had joined one of English football's fastest up-and-coming clubs and, over the next 11 years, achieved stardom at Molineux, helping them to an FA Cup win in 1949, their first Football League title in 1954 and pioneer status with a series of floodlit friendlies against international opposition.

No wonder he was a favourite in the Black Country: his 378 games in the old gold yielded no fewer than 168 goals, no mean achievement for a wide player. The fourth highest goalscorer in the club’s history, he was the leading marksman for two consecutive seasons in the mid-50s.

He first played for England against Switzerland in 1948, scoring twice, but, as we’ve seen, his appearances were limited by the prodigious performances of Matthews and Finney. Niece Sheila Del-Manso believes other factors – a hatred of travel and his mother’s housekeeping eccentricities – also limited his impact on the big stage.

‘He could not travel,’ she explained to the Shropshire Star’s Toby Neal. ‘This held him back terribly. On the bus he would be sick.’

Sheila continued: ‘Johnny was held back because he could never bring the “big” people home … because of my grandma, Jane. If you put a carpet down she would take it up and hide it under the bed because it had to be kept. So there would be newspaper on the floor.

‘My grandmother was very clean
but such a funny lady.
That broke Johnny's heart.
He could never bring anybody home.’

‘Stan Cullis, the [Wolves] manager, wanted to come. My mum got the parlour sorted out and beautiful. After they had gone, granny whipped all the carpets out and put them under the bed.’

‘My grandmother was very clean but such a funny lady. You must never put anything on the floor on show. You must hide it. That broke Johnny's heart. He could never bring anybody home.’

Was Cullis so offended that he cut Hancocks’s Wolves career short? Probably not, but we do know that, after the gaffer signed West Ham forward Harry Hooper in 1956, the winger’s days were numbered. After seeing out a season in the reserves, he left to take up the role of player-manager at Wellington Town.

He had resigned that post and spent five weeks neither playing nor training when he agreed to ply his trade in Cambridge. It’s possible those weeks of inactivity exacted a drastic toll on his physique.

Hancocks made his U’s bow on 13 January 1960, at home to Norwich CEYMS in an East Anglian Cup first round tie, and won the game with a trademark blaster from distance in the 50th minute. The CDN was impressed by the goal, the new man’s ‘keen footballing brain’ and his ability to split defences with precise passes.

The following Saturday, he scored from the penalty spot in the course of a 3-1 Southern League Division One win at home to Sittingbourne.

By now, a few Abbey regulars were passing jocular remarks about Hancocks’s generous girth and unimpressive fitness level, but a CDN journalist, writing the day before a trip to Guildford City, reported: ‘… Alan Moore assures me that he is at present only three pounds overweight as compared with his Wolverhampton days.’

That visit to Guildford ended in a 4-1 defeat, and Moore must have been thinking about eating his words. The Surrey club’s supporters at Joseph's Road were royally entertained (United fans and management less so) when Hancocks, having failed to get to his feet following a tumble, had to roll over on to all fours in order to rise to the vertical.

When Sudbury Town visited the Abbey in the second round of the East Anglian Cup, Hancocks was in prime form, whacking home two free kicks and a penalty as the U’s won 6-1. But he was dropped when the team travelled to Trowbridge on February 13, and Barnwell tongues were wagging again.

Moore told the CDN that the star signing would address his problems by moving into lodgings in Cambridge and making strenuous efforts to get match-fit. But an announcement on 3 March 1960 made it clear that Hancocks was no longer a Cambridge United employee.

In seven weeks at the club, he had played six times and scored five goals.

Few supporters fell for the official line: that the player had been unable to shake off the effects of an ankle injury and felt it was in everyone’s interests if his contract was cancelled.

Moore was able to reveal later that his decision to end Hancocks’s association with the club had had its roots in the January incident that had amused so many at Guildford. Faced with a player who was loath to lose a fairly lucrative wage, however, he had had to think hard about how to achieve the desired outcome.

‘Suddenly it came to me,’ said Moore. ‘I rang Hancocks in Wolverhampton where he lived, and told him that he would have to come to training twice a week. He didn’t fancy having to travel to Cambridge an extra two times a week and he hadn’t trained for years and wasn’t intending to.

‘I told him that he was suspended for two weeks without pay, unless he agreed to train.’

Hancocks wasn’t a happy bunny but realised he might go without pay for the rest of the season unless he agreed to terminate his contract. Reluctantly, that’s what he did.

He wasn’t quite finished with football, playing the following season for Oswestry Town and GKN Sankey in the Cheshire County League. He was 42 when he called it a day in 1961, seeing out his working life at the Maddock iron foundry in his home town and retiring in 1979.

Still a Molineux legend and a fondly remembered bit-part player at Newmarket Road, he died at Oakengates in 1994.

Read more about Johnny Hancocks, Bobby Langton and other players of their era in Risen from the Dust, the second volume of Andrew Bennett's Celery & Coconuts history of Abbey/Cambridge United, available from the CFU online store and the CFU caravan on match days.

A noticeably portly Johnny Hancocks, on his Southern League debut, closes in on Sittingbourne goalkeeper Round during United's 3-1 win at Newmarket Road on 16 January 1960.

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Graham Atkinson 1943-2017

1/6/2017

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100 Years of Coconuts was saddened to hear of the death, at the age of 73 on January 5, after a brave battle with cancer, of Graham Atkinson.

The lesser known of the two footballing Atkinson brothers – Ron managed Cambridge United on his way to fame as the boss of Manchester United and other top-flight clubs – inside forward Graham passed a highly influential 20 months at the Abbey in the mid-1960s, scoring 32 goals in 62 games. His time at Newmarket Road punctuated a 15-year Oxford United career during which he scored 107 times, and his 77 League goals is a club record.

Born in Birmingham on 17 May 1943, Graham started on the ground staff at Villa Park and played for Aston Villa and Birmingham City junior teams. The Atkinson brothers signed for Oxford, then known as Headington United, in 1959. Graham made his Southern League debut against Chelmsford City at the age of 16 years and 108 days, becoming the club’s youngest player and goalscorer. When Oxford were elected to the Football League in 1962, he scored the club’s first goal at the higher level.

A friendship between Oxford manager Arthur Turner and his Abbey Stadium counterpart Alan Moore led to Graham returning to the Southern League in April 1963; his confidence had been affected by the barracking of a section of Manor Ground fans. The deal was effectively an open-ended loan: Graham signed a contract with Cambridge but Oxford retained his Football League registration. The clubs had a gentleman’s agreement that Oxford could re-sign him when they wished.

He made his Newmarket Road debut on Easter Friday 1963 in a 4-0 defeat by Chelmsford City. He also played the following day in a 1-1 draw at Worcester, but was stretchered off with concussion and spent the night in hospital. After missing the next game he took part in every remaining match that season, scoring twice in nine starts.

The following season Graham was plagued by injury and illness. In December 1963 he overturned his car near St Neots and was again detained in hospital. Having lost his left ear, he did not return to the first team until the end of February but then played in every league game until the end of the season.

Graham Atkinson: goalscoring inside forward

Graham Atkinson is pictured front row, fourth from left in this 1964/65 Cambridge United squad photograph. Back row from left: manager Roy Kirk, Derek Finch, Jimmy Gibson, Rodney Slack, Terence 'Bill' Kelly, Andy Smith, Billy Welsh, Graham Lawrence, Bryan Boggis, Dai Jones, Brian Doyle (trainer); front: Jackie Scurr, Billy Day, Johnny Haasz, Graham Atkinson, Dennis Randall, Peter Hobbs, Matt McVittie, Gerry Greene. Click on the image to enlarge.

Graham came into his own as a goalscoring inside forward during 1964/65, embarking on a fine scoring run that included two hat-tricks and attracting the attention of Oxford manager Turner, who stated his intention of recalling the player under a new contract. ‘I am very happy here,’ said Atkinson, ‘and feel that I am playing better since I joined Cambridge United. Naturally, I must listen to Arthur Turner’s offer before deciding, but it will have to be an attractive one to make me leave Cambridge.’

The lure of the Football League and the prospect of being reunited with his brother proved decisive. Graham’s last Cambridge game was a 3-1 win at Bedford Town on December 5. United’s season then took a dip that was partly attributed to the absence of Atkinson, who finished the season as top league scorer with 13 goals.

He returned to Cambridge United colours for John Gregson’s testimonial in January 1972, and the U’s provided the opposition for his testimonial at Kettering Town in April 1976, by which time his brother was managing the hosts. He had joined the Poppies in 1974.

Graham and wife Jenni lived in Oxfordshire for most of their lives but moved to Pembrokeshire in 2004.

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Don't forget your subs

Moore information

Sam the slam

Small man, big reputation

Graham Atkinson 1943-2017

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