The FA Cup win in 1959 has always been special to me. My father was in the Army and we returned to England from 4 years in Egypt (we had a house in the desert near Port Fouad at the top of the Suez Canal) in late 1948. I was six and a half years old and had never been to school. Consequently I couldn't read and had never had any contact with sport. I went to Mapperley Plains Infants School and soon discovered sport. My first sporting visits were to Trent Bridge cricket ground and I just loved sitting on the big area of grass they had in front of the large Radcliffe Road score board watching the games and playing cricket with others during the intervals. We used to kick a ball about on the school playground and I was told there were two football grounds nearby the cricket ground. I went searching on my own (no floodlights to guide me in those days) and found Meadow Lane first, no sense of direction, and then the CG.
We were in Nottingham for three years before going off to Hamburg. In those three years I only went to a couple of games and cannot for the life of me remember who they were against or anything else about them. I must have gone with others, as I don't think my parents would let a young lad roam around on his own who could barely read and knew nothing much about the geography of Nottingham, but I can't remember anyone else being with me. Anyway, I was hooked on the excitement of the whole thing; the colour, the noise and the general drama of the games. And I was hooked on Nottingham Forest.
Contact with England in those days was not as simple as it is today and our only real contact in Hamburg with sport was 'Sports Report' presented by Eamonn Andrews which was re-broadcast by BFN (British Forces Network which subsequently became British Forces Broadcasting Service). Then in 1954 Dad was posted to Korea. I had been going to primary education at a British Forces school in Altona, a suburb of Hamburg. We used to go by bus every day down the Reeperbahn. In 1953 I should have moved up to secondary school, but I missed the whole of the first year due to Dad being posted to Paderborn for a short while before leaving for Korea. The decision was made that I should go to a local Norfolk school(I am from the county and my extended family lived there in a small village between Watton and Swaffham) which had a boarding house. Contact with Forest was still difficult (I didn't have a transistor radio) so I grabbed what news I could from newspapers. Since I had been following the club, things had got better and better; promotion from Div III (S) in 1950/1 which I had followed first hand (though we went to Hamburg in Feb 1951 Forest were so dominant in the League, I was sure we would win promotion), promotion to the First Division in 1956/7 and a comfortable mid-table finish the following season.
However, nothing much else was achieved in the years following the Cup win. True we had some memorable matches and occasions, one memorable season in 1966/7 in particular, but after that a decline began, culminating in relegation in 1971/2. Brian Clough arrived soon after and the club began to rise again. So during the first 30 years of my support of Nottingham Forest, the FA Cup Final of 1959 was the stand out occasion and one that has so many memories.
Nottingham Forest won the FA Cup in 1898, beating Derby County and winning the game 3-1. Long before Wembley Stadium was built, this game was played at Crystal Palace before a crowd of 62,017 and one of the players was Frank Forman, who was on the Forest committee when the club next won the FA Cup, in 1959. A very long association with the club.
Manager in 1959 was Billy Walker, another man with a long association with the club. The cup win was to be almost his swan song, sadly, as he resigned at the end of the next season after 21 seasons as manager, with the club finishing only one point above relegation. He, too, then joined the committee.
Billy Walker was the epitome of the football man. A fine player with Aston Villa, he appeared in two cup finals for them, winning once, and captained England whilst winning 18 caps for his country. After retirement he managed Sheffield Wednesday, leading them to an FA Cup win in 1935. After leaving them he had a short spell with a non-league club, Chelmsford, before being engaged by Nottingham Forest in 1939, just before the outbreak of War which of course, put paid to organised football for the duration. On the resumption of League action, Forest promptly were relegated to Division III (South). They stayed down for two seasons, waiting one season to see Notts County promoted before going up themselves at the end of season 1950/1 with a record number of points and goals, winning 30 of the 46 matches.
After this there was one one way, up, for Billy Walker and Nottingham Forest. Steady progress culminated in promotion to Division I in 1956/7, finishing second behind Leicester City. Two years later came the second Nottingham Forest FA Cup success.
The Third Round of the cup was scheduled to be played on Saturday,10 January 1959. The weather that January was appalling. Forest were drawn to play amateurs Tooting and Mitcham at their Sandy Lane ground in Tooting.I think it fair to say that Forest got away with one that Saturday, but to their credit they used that slice of luck to full advantage over the remainder of the cup run. The weather was so bad that the replay could not take place until the day chosen for the fourth round of the cup, Saturday 24 January.
On that day our eventual fifth round opponents Birmingham City were only then able to play their original third round tie, Birmingham 1-0 winners at Middlesbrough thanks to an own goal. Two other third round replays were played as well as our own, one of them seeing Grimsby Town win 2-1 away at Manchester City. Town were in the Second Division, but in danger of relegation, which they achieved later that season, whilst Man City were in Division I, but also in danger of relegation, which they survived by the skin of their teeth, finishing just one point above the drop.Because of the fixture congestion, we played our Fourth Round tie four days later, on Wednesday, 28 January, as if it was a replay. Grimsby were comfortably defeated by 4-1, Whitefoot, Wilson and Billy Gray with two(one a penalty) scored the goals. I have no report of that game.
Such were the weather conditions that, between the 10 January when we played Tooting to the semi final on the 14 March, we only played four league games. Every game seemed to be a cup tie! However fixture congestion was the inevitable consequence and today's pampered footballers would blanch at the demands placed on players in those days. When you factor in the testing grounds they had to play on and the soggy wet leather balls, it's a wonder that more didn't go down with serious physical problems. However, the fact remains that every round of that Cup run was played using the same eleven players, who never played together as an eleven again after the Cup Final.
In those days, the old system of listing the players was used, so it was always, goalkeeper, right back (2), left back (3), right half (4), centre half (5), left half (6), right wing (7), inside right (8), centre forward (9), inside left (10) and left wing (11) with no substitutes. Chic Thomson in goal, Bill Whare and Joe McDonald as full backs, Jeff Whitefoot, Bobby McKinlay and Jack Burkitt (the captain) the half backs and Roy Dwight, Billy Gray, Tommy Wilson, Johnny Quigley and Stuart Imlach as the forward line.
For instance, after the semi final and over the Easter weekend, Forest played league games on 27 March, then the 28th and Monday 31st and the following Saturday 4 April. And, with the Final on 2 May, they played league games on 9 April, then 11th, the 15th, 18th, 20th, 22nd and finally 25th! 7 games in 17 days only a week before the Final.
But I digress. After the Grimsby game Forest played two League games, away at West Ham on 31 January, losing 3-5 in a fine game and a week later, on Saturday 7 February, at home to Bolton Wanderers, winning 3-0. The West Ham game was the cup side less Jeff Whitefoot, with Bill Morley deputising, but the team versus Bolton was the full cup side. Interesting side note; most Forest statistical histories give Bill Morley's dates at Forest as 1946 to 1958, but quite clearly he played during 1959. Perhaps the statisticians meant the 1958/9 season. Similarly Roy Dwight's Forest debut is given in Pete Attaway's book "Forest: A Complete Record 1865-1991" as 23 August 1959. Obviously a typo, but I had to look it up to check, though, of course, he meant 1958.
Besides the way players lined up at the kick off and the tactics, many other things were different in those far off days. In fact, it was almost a different game, but things were changing. Don't forget, rationing had only ended finally in 1954 and for most ordinary people cars, telephones in the home and televisions (two channels in black and white using the fuzzy old 405 line system) were almost a luxury. In the 1958/9 season the two regional Third Divisions were replaced by the Third and Fourth Divisions and serious thought was being given to removing the maximum wage rule, which finally went in 1961. And the advent of the European Cup in 1955 (won by Real Madrid for the first five seasons) meant that different tactics were seen and increasingly used by British managers. At this time, no substitutes were allowed, though the 'Wembley Hoodoo' was giving much ammunition to those who wanted a sub to be used when a genuinely injured player had to leave the field. In fact, injured players had disrupted half of the Finals in the 50's, so it was no surprise that a substitute was allowed in the English Leagues from the 1965/6 season. Interestingly, Archie Gemmill(then playing for St Mirren) was the first player used as a sub in the Scottish Leagues. Indeed, if the 50's were seen as a time of austerity and drabness, the 60's were a time of great change and increasing colour.
Back to our Cup progress. The Fifth Round was due to be played on Valentine's Day, Saturday February 14 1959. Forest had drawn Birmingham City away at St Andrews, Birmingham where they had not lost in ten years. That record looked likely to go until the last minute, when Tommy Smith scored a priceless equaliser.
There was to be one game between the 6th Round and the FA Cup Semi-final and that was played on the next Saturday, 7 March, against Birmingham City at the City Ground. Forest made four changes for this match from the team that had beaten Birmingham 5-0 only 12 days previously. Peter Watson came in for Bobby McKinlay and another of the half backs, Jack Burkitt, made way for Bill Morley, playing the 300th game of a Forest career spanning 12 seasons which was to last only one more game as he retired at the end of the season after 301 League and Cup games (he did play in a Friendly match at the end of the season during an Iberian tour, against Athletico Bilbao) . Two others players made their Forest debuts in this game against Birmingham City, Bill Fraser deputised for Chic Thomson in goal and Bill Younger came in for Johnny Quigley. The match was a disaster, the team going down by 7 goals to one! And all that after Roy Dwight had scored the opening goal. Bill Fraser only played one more match for the club.
One week later, on the 14th of March 1959, Nottingham Forest played their FA Cup Semi-final against Aston Villa at Hillsborough in front of 65,000 spectators. The usual cup team was restored and all was set for a tense and absorbing battle. And that is what we got. The fine, free-flowing football which had marked many of Forest's games during this cup run was absent. However the required result was obtained by Johnny Quigley, who scored the only goal 19 minutes into the second half of a match of forgettable quality.
Because of the poor Winter weather and the replayed cup matches, the club had a heavy backlog of matches to complete before the Cup Final, which in those days was traditionally the last game of the season. In 6 weeks before the FA Cup Final, Forest played 13 matches, mostly with the regular team which turned out for all the cup matches. Occasional changes were made, but the core of the team played on. One notable change was in goal for the League game against Luton Town, our final opponents. Bill Fraser again came in for Chic Thomson and again let in a hatful! Forest going down 1-5. This was to be Fraser's second and final appearance for Nottingham Forest with an appearance record of Played 2, Lost 2. Goals against 12.
So to the seventh week since the Semi-final. Few games were televised in those days, but the cup final was one such game and the BBC made a bit of an effort for it. Coverage started in the morning, as I remember and carried on through the singing of Abide With Me conducted by Arthur Caiger, as usual, to the presentation of the players and the match itself. I was aged 17 in those days, boarding at a school in King's Lynn, Norfolk and mad on sports. Our school played football as the main sport in the winter term, hockey in the spring term and cricket in the summer. I represented the school in all these sports, though only football was for the first eleven. On FA Cup Final day, I was 'injured' and unable to turn out for the second eleven cricket team; instead I cycled 5 miles to my Aunt Ada's house in East Winch to see the the final on her small black and white television set. She was the only person I knew who had a TV. Indeed, TV reception in her village had only been possible since ITV came on the scene in 1955. Previously, in Norfolk, very poor reception was obtained by a small number of people in the West of the county from the transmitter at Sutton Coldfield.
On the 2nd May 1959, Nottingham Forest gloriously beat Luton Town 2 goals to one to win the FA Cup Final after playing from the 33rd minute with only ten men. On a lovely sunny day, Roy Dwight scored the first goal and Tom Wilson headed a second in the 14th minute and it looked as if Forest would score every time they attacked. However, a collision between Brendan McNally and Dwight resulted in the Forest man suffering a broken leg. Substitutes were not allowed in those days and in no final to that date had a team lost a man and carried on to win. However, Forest were playing so well when they went down to ten men and also had a 2 goal lead, that one young man, at least, was fervently hoping and believing that they could hang on and record a famous win. And my dream came true.
Note that the Jack Burkitt column was on the back of the Joe Hulme report, so those clippings are scruffier than usual so that I could get both in.
