Carlisle United’s First Division promotion, 50 years ago
To celebrate the milestone, we reunited three men who were central to the story in different ways: midfield dynamo Les O’Neill, club secretary David Dent, and Evening News & Star reporter Ross Brewster.
Here are their memories of the time the Blues hit their most sensational heights…
HOW VIVID IS IT, 50 YEARS ON?
LES – At the time, it was out of this world…and even now, I cannot believe we did it.
ROSS – I remember the night when Leyton Orient played Villa [the final game where United needed Orient not to win]…and I just couldn’t bear it any longer. I remember going up Latrigg in the semi-darkness with a torch. I was thinking, ‘I don’t really want to come down and find out the result’s gone against us’. My dad had been listening in on Radio Carlisle, and he wrote the result on a piece of paper, which he handed to me. I opened it and thought, ‘He must be winding me up. This can’t be real’.
DAVID – It was a very tense evening in the Cumberland News office, where an event was being hosted for supporters, newspaper staff, Carlisle United staff and players. We were telephoning Leyton Orient for updates. When the news came through, it was incredibly exciting. It was also a bit of a shock, really, because the reality was there was an awful lot of work to do not only on the playing side but the admin and ground side, to prepare for a season in the top flight. But it was exciting times.
HOW WELL WAS THE CLUB EQUIPPED TO CHALLENGE FOR PROMOTION IN ’73?
DAVID – We’d established ourselves as a good Second Division club for a number of years. I was at the club 18 years, and 11 of those we were in the top two divisions of the Football League. That’s an exceptional record, really. We’d finished third in Division Two a few years before. So the idea of us challenging wasn’t the surprise you might think.
LES – I’d played against Carlisle on quite a few occasions before joining the club, and as well as having one of the finest pitches in any league, they were well known for playing good football. So it didn’t just happen by accident. When I started training with the lads, I thought, ‘I’m never going to get into this side’. And Dick Young was unbelievable, the best coach I’ve ever worked with. He used to give you such a rocket if he saw you standing still. You had to pass and move, left foot, right foot. We practised for hours. Simple stuff, but it improved you so much. Alan Ashman, the manager, was quieter, and shrewd. He didn’t get involved in training all the time but he was great at having that quiet word with you, that little piece of advice.
ROSS – I don’t think Dick had a coaching badge or certificate in his life, but he was a genius, really.
DAVID – In terms of the running of the club, I had a secretary, and a young girl as a typist – and that was the admin staff. It was a very, very demanding role. You were working virtually every hour of every day, didn’t get any days off, and were lucky if you got any holidays in the summer. But it was very enjoyable. The directors, particularly George Sheffield, the chairman, wouldn’t let us spend more than we could afford. He was a very shrewd operator who cared a lot about people. When we were in the Second Division we also benefited by the gate-sharing arrangement. Roughly 20 per cent of a club’s gate went to the away team. Our gates in 73/74 were just over 8,000, but many of the teams in the Second Division would be getting 25,000. We would be getting big paycheques and that helped us balance the books.
WHAT WERE THE EXPECTATIONS AT THE START OF THE SEASON?
LES – Over previous years Carlisle had done well, so there was a belief that we were capable. In any winning team, there has to be a great atmosphere, team spirit and togetherness. That’s what drives you to achieve. That group of lads…we had that. We never really spoke a lot about promotion, but we wanted to win. You also need something special, and we had that with lads like John Gorman and Chris Balderstone. If Baldy had had another yard of pace he would never have been at Carlisle. His vision, his passing…unbelievable. We then signed lads like Bill Green and Frank Clarke that summer. Bill was a born leader who would die to keep a clean sheet. And I wish we’d got Frank a couple of years earlier. His hold-up play, his knowledge, his little movements…
ROSS – I don’t think anyone who saw the first away game that season, a 6-1 defeat to Luton, would have thought they were seeing a future First Division team. But all in all Carlisle were a wonderful team to watch. At Luton, I also remember the chairman travelled down by train on the day, and Alan Ashman asked me to make sure that the club knew who Mr Sheffield was and showed him to the boardroom. He arrived at about 2.40pm, I introduced him, the chap on the door showed him through, we knocked on the door…and who should open it but Eric Morecambe, who was a director of Luton Town. Mr Sheffield probably didn’t watch a lot of television and didn’t seem to know who he was. Mr Sheffield said, ‘I left Carlisle in the very early hours this morning…’ And Eric Morecambe looked, jiggled his glasses, and said, ‘I don’t blame you, sir…’
WHAT WAS IT LIKE REPORTING ON THE CLUB?
ROSS – You were part of it. You travelled on the team coach, and you formed a bond. You didn’t just sit there in the press box dispassionately. I was a biased Carlisle supporter trying to present the match reports as fairly as possible. In those days we had the sports pinks…or in our case the sports beige. They wanted two pages every week in the Sports Special about Carlisle, as well as the day to day stuff. So I’d always be on to David, asking for ideas. I must have been a real nuisance to him.
DAVID – He was a past master at using long words…
LES – Ross was one of us.
ALONGSIDE THE LEAGUE SEASON, THERE WAS A MEMORABLE FA CUP RUN, BEATING THE HOLDERS SUNDERLAND BEFORE FACING LIVERPOOL…
DAVID – At the end of the replay, which we won at Roker Park, I remember Bob Stokoe, the Sunderland manager, not being very happy with Pat Partridge, the referee…
LES – I was right behind that. There was a narrow tunnel at Roker Park and, as we went off, for some reason one of the doors was closed. I was talking to Bob, then he saw Partridge, and he didn’t even say cheerio – he just shot off. Pat was on the side where a door was closed, so had to come across to go through the other one, and just as he did, Bob went into him with his shoulder and Partridge went ‘bang’…and Bob sprinted off. We played Liverpool next. The atmosphere at Anfield was the biggest thing. Holding them 0-0…a result like that makes your belief grow a bit more.
DAVID – Traditionally we had a record of doing well in cup competitions. Three years prior, we played seven cup ties at home in the one season, averaged 17,000 spectators in them and we got to the semi-final of the League Cup. That had helped us to feel confident when we were playing bigger teams in future years. We felt we could go to Liverpool and give them a game, which we did. We lost the replay but had performed very well.
WHAT WOULD THE REPORTER’S DAY BE LIKE?
ROSS – If we were staying away, perhaps in London, it would be the same routine as the players. Get up, breakfast, go for a walk – I’d perhaps walk with one of the directors. We’d have lunch about 12pm: it was steak on its own, or fish, or some players had toast. Brian Tiler had cornflakes, somebody else had baked beans. You’d get to the ground in good time, and now and again I’d give a hand with the kit. Particularly at Liverpool, that was a great treat to be the assistant kitman – I got onto the pitch and had a wander around.
The actual coverage of the game bore no relation to today: no mobile phones or laptops, it was telephone and we had calls booked. Most of the time the copytakers at the other end couldn’t spell the players’ names, so it became a bit annoying if you had to keep spelling ‘Balderstone’ if he was having a good game.
The Sports Special was on the street by 5.30pm, and was the first opportunity a supporter had to find out how the team had got on. The away games saw sales better than the home games and, if it was a win, sales would go up a couple of thousand. Our sports editor Bob Wood, who’d covered the team for many years, would invariably have to be taken home with a migraine after dealing with my match report…I remember a game at Millwall when they played about ten minutes over time, because of a couple of bad injuries, and I think Bob was willing me to shout to the referee, ‘Blow your whistle…’ And Millwall’s the only place where I had to have a police escort. Carlisle won with two late goals, and this bobby from the Metropolitan Police came up and said he would give me an escort after the game. The Millwall supporters had obviously heard me getting excited with the second goal…
WAS IT DISAPPOINTING THAT HOME CROWDS ONLY AVERAGED AROUND 8,000 THAT SEASON?
DAVID – It was just at the time where there were one or two occurrences on the terraces that weren’t particularly savoury. The behaviour of fans was getting criticised and clubs didn’t do all they could to encourage people to attend matches. We only got 14,500 in the First Division, so I think 8-8,500 in Division Two is what you’d expect. It would be bigger today because facilities for fans are better, and you get more young people in.
LES – As players, getting to the ground at times was frightening. Crowds would sometimes throw things at the bus.
WHO WERE THE BIG PERFORMERS IN THE PROMOTION PUSH?
LES – They all contributed, they all stood up when we needed them. It wasn’t about individuals. We were a team.
RB – Chris Balderstone was always the artist of the team, and a great character within it. And John Gorman’s the finest full-back I’ve seen, as an attacking player going down that side in front of the Scratching Pen…
WERE THERE NERVES GOING INTO THE PENULTIMATE GAME AT OXFORD, WHICH CARLISLE NEEDED TO WIN?
ROSS – It didn’t seem like that. I think the feeling at that stage was we were going to miss out on promotion, just. But it was one of those nights when everything seemed to come together. It was a wonderful performance and although the goal took a long time in coming, Bobby Owen got it.
LES – After the previous game, a 4-0 defeat at Blackpool, Dick Young got us together and gave us a rollocking. He said: ‘All season you’ve played great, are you gonna blow it now? Do you just want to throw it away?’ Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, one or two lads had a go back at Dick. We thought, ‘We’ll show him we care’. And the Oxford game was a massive game. It was a hard game. But when we got that 1-0 win, I fancied our chances. Bill Green was suspended, but Tot Winstanley came in for him. Tot was a very good defender. The other part of his game might not have been as good, his use of the ball…but he would defend with his life. In a game like that one at Oxford, he was ideal.
HOW WAS THE BUILD-UP TO THE FINAL GAME AGAINST ASTON VILLA?
DAVID – It was a very, very exciting time. I remember it building up during the week, everyone wondering how big a gate we could get, whether we could get enough goals to put us on track. But I don’t think there were any doubts we were good enough to be able to win the game.
LES – The Villa game was tight early, but once we’d got the first goal, I don’t think there was any doubt.
ROSS – The goals, by Joe Laidlaw and Frank Clark, are there in my mind, rooted in the mists of time.
DAVID – My most vivid recollections of the whole period are of that day – because it’s when my second daughter was born. The gynaecologist saw my wife at about 2pm in the city maternity hospital and said to her, ‘I don’t think there’s going to be any activity here before about 6pm, so I’m going to the match’. He came to the match, and at about 5.30pm, just after he’d got back, he rang me to tell me that I’d got a daughter! Those were the days when men didn’t normally attend births of babies, and my wife didn’t ask me to be there, and I didn’t volunteer to be there; I was working.
YOU THEN HAD TO WAIT SIX DAYS FOR ORIENT TO PLAY VILLA…
ROSS – It certainly dragged, that week. Everything was dependent on this game 350 miles away. At the end of the day, Carlisle had done the best they could, they’d had a really good season, a good finish, and it wasn’t really in their hands any more. It was down to this game which mysteriously was stuck on the end of the season, and involved Villa again. It seemed unreal. You couldn’t get a handle on it until it was decided.
LES – Come the day of the Orient-Villa game, some lads went down to watch it. Bill Green went, so did Allan Ross, but not me. After all the travelling we’d done over the season, I thought, ‘I’m not going to change the result by going there’. So we went to the Cumberland News office instead.
WHAT WAS THE REACTION WHEN THE NEWS CAME THROUGH THAT ORIENT HAD ONLY DRAWN AND UNITED WERE UP?
DAVID – Total elation. The club was doing something it had never done before. It was a new adventure. And the history books will show that Carlisle were promoted as Manchester United were relegated.
LES – My feeling was, ‘I’ve succeeded’. As a footballer, your ambition as you start on that long road is to play at the very top, and to go as far as you possibly can. It means I can now say to my grandkids when they’re watching the Premier League, ‘I played there’. And they might play it down, but I know they’re proud, because I’ve heard them talking to their mates, ‘He used to play for Carlisle, my grandad…’
ROSS – I remember Hunter Davies wrote that “the most glamorous events in Carlisle as a city were promotion to the First Division and the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie”. And in that order. But he said unfortunately both would ultimately end in tears…
LES – That night, my wife, Anne, had to leave early, because she’d just had our baby, Lisa. She insisted I came back out to meet the lads, and we went into the nightclub on Cecil Street, and two or three other places.
DAVID – I went straight back home afterwards, and put the baby to bed. Back down to earth with a bang! It was mad just after that, the next day or two. The telephone never stopped ringing, people wanting to know how they’d get tickets…
ROSS – I was supposed to be on holiday, but I came back to work for a week, then went away. And then pre-season started to kick in. It was so exciting. I’d been used to scratching around like a hen in some of the press boxes even in the Second Division, where some of them weren’t very up to date – you’d have wires everywhere and the telephone was ringing non-stop. Then it got more sophisticated when you went to teams in the top division. You’d also suddenly be rubbing shoulders with reporters like Brian Glanville, who’d come over asking you about Carlisle. It was surreal.
HOW DO YOU RATE THE ACHIEVEMENT, LOOKING BACK?
ROSS – At the time we had no comparison. We’d had a good Second Division side, and had beaten Roma in the Olympic Stadium – that was a great highlight in its way. But this was something rather different. Now, 50 years on, you look back and put it in its proper perspective. In the end, it’s my club, I’d started watching when I was at school, sneaking off early, coming to watch the reserves play. So for me it will always be the greatest achievement.
DAVID – At the time, very few clubs of Carlisle’s level had ever been able to do that before. It will stay there in history and be regarded as what Bill Shankly said – as one of the greatest achievements the game had seen. As a Cumbrian, and having been in football all my working life, the fact I was here and helped my local club do something they’d never done before…it will go down as the proudest moment of my career.
LES – I’m so proud of what we did – proud of myself, the club, the Carlisle fans. I’m a very proud Geordie, but I’m that close to being a Cumbrian. I played here, settled here, my kids look on Carlisle and Cumbria as their home…and I’m so proud I helped Carlisle achieve what we did. And then to go top of the First Division after three games was amazing…and I was the top scorer in the league at that point with three goals! As I said – it’s still unbelievable, 50 years on.
Thanks to Carlisle United for allowing the News & Star the use of Brunton Park’s Legends Lounge for this special feature.