“Matthews on the edge of the Bolton penalty area, dribbling right in, past his man. Two yards out, squares it. Hit it, somebody! Yes! It’s there. It’s there. Perry has scored. Perry has scored number four; laid on by Stanley Matthews. Blackpool have scored number four.” – BBC radio commentator Raymond Glendenning.
BILL PERRY might not have spent his childhood nights in Johannesburg dreaming of being a Wembley hero, but the FA Cup Final had made a deep impression on him. “Everybody used to look forward to Cup Final day in South Africa,” he explained. “We used to listen to the match commentary on the radio.” Now it was his name that would be leaping out of transistors across the home of his birth.
Brought up playing rugby, football had only become a major part of Perry’s life when, at the age of 14, he moved to Queen’s Junior High School, where the round ball game was all that was offered. Facing the end of his aspirations as a loose forward, he quickly resolved to cement a place in the school team via the only vacant position, outside-left. Naturally right-footed, he was driven through fear of his sports master to work on his left in order to earn continued selection. His training tools were those favoured by so many schoolboy players in England; a tennis ball and a brick wall.
Having joined the Johannesburg Rangers club after he left school to take up an apprenticeship in a car parts factory, he played on either wing with sufficient expertise to earn a place in the Transvaal provincial team. He also came to the attention of Charlton Athletic manager Jimmy Seed, whose regular scouting trips to South Africa would, in the space of a few years, take players such as forwards Eddie Firmani and Stuart Leary, defender John Hewie and future South African Test cricketer Sid O’Linn to The Valley. Perry might have arrived in south London in 1948 had it not been for the far-reaching influence of Blackpool manager Joe Smith.
“It was a great opportunity for [South African] players because all we wanted as a guarantee was our return fare if we did not make the grade,” Perry explained. “It was like a working holiday.”
But on this occasion Rangers coach Billy Butler, a team-mate of Smith’s in the 1923 Bolton FA Cup Final side, cautioned him to wait for a better offer. Butler had already fired Perry’s imagination about the greatest occasion in English football. “He often told us what it was like to play at Wembley with the crowd and atmosphere, so the competition was something special to me,” he explained. Now, a few months later, Butler was reporting that Smith was interested in seeing if Perry’s speed and skill would be a good fit at Blackpool. “Charlton were not a bad team,” said Perry. “But Stan Matthews was at Blackpool and everyone knew what a great player he was. My fate was sealed.”
Labelled “Champagne Perry” by his manager and local press, he would become yet another Blackpool signee who fell in love with the town enough to settle there for the rest of his life, even though the harsh winter weather and the 4pm sunsets took some getting used to after the climate of his homeland. Homesickness was conquered quickly enough, however, for him to force his way into the first team against Manchester United in March 1950 – only three months after his arrival in England – following a handful of games in the A and reserve sides.
Coming from a place where games were postponed if it rained heavily, Perry had to work hard to maintain his speed on the heavy pitches he now encountered. His success in doing so, allied to his strength on the ball and his instinct for goal, made him the perfect foil for his famous counterpart on the right flank, even though Matthews recalled that “we carried him when he first came into the team”. Perry said: “Speed was my asset on the left wing. I was faster than Stan and played more of a direct game. Stan would get on the ball and then work his way slowly up the wing… I was looking for a lot of through balls from the inside-forwards and wing-halves.”
With not much more than a minute of normal time to play in the FA Cup Final of 1953, the fates of Matthews and Perry were about to become inextricably linked. “Now we have a chance,” Perry told himself after Mortensen’s equaliser, “providing the final whistle doesn’t go.” He would speak later of the “renewed enthusiasm” that the goal injected into his team-mates, especially in the knowledge that Bolton were suffering physically.
Having been lured to England partly by romantic tales of the FA Cup, it was apt that the tournament should be providing the defining moments of his career. His goal in the semi-final against Birmingham at Goodison Park in 1951 had convinced him that the decision to move to England had been the correct one. Yet the subsequent loss in the final against Newcastle had scarred him deeply: “There’s nothing worse than losing at Wembley, worse than a semi-final. I’ve never felt so bad.”
In Blackpool: The Glory Years Remembered he described the “demoralising feeling” at the end of that game. “The winning team are doing their lap of honour and we were standing there with our heads bowed, waiting for it to end. It was a depressing experience.” For the likes of Matthews, Mortensen and Johnston, he added, there was the added sense of a last opportunity having been missed.
Surely it was going to be different this time? With their lead taken away from them, it was hard to see from where Bolton could pull enough resources to prevent the momentum taking the Cup to Blackpool, even if the game was forced into extra-time. “The whole thing felt like a whirlwind,” Perry would recall. “One minute we were down and out, 3-1 behind with barely any time left to play. The next we were level again and pressing back a Bolton smitten by injuries and reeling from the storm of attacks we’d subjected them to.”
As the game entered its final moments, Harold Hassall’s ball forward to the struggling Nat Lofthouse was cleared into touch, but Eric Bell’s throw was headed by Eddie Shimwell to Matthews just inside his own half. Faced by Ralph Banks and Hassall, he played the ball inside to Taylor, who helped it first time to Stan Mortensen. He needed only one touch to return it to Matthews, who was by now clear of the two men who had earlier barred his way. He shaped to cut inside Barrass, went instead to the outside with an effortless glide and sent over a cross that was diverted clumsily by Stan Hanson in the direction of Jackie Mudie at the far post. To Bolton’s relief, Mudie was unable to prevent the ball bouncing behind off his shins.
Kenneth Wolstenholme’s match summary was on the money. “Some people might say this hasn’t been the greatest final,” he offered, “but there can’t have been a more exciting one and a more terrific struggle against the odds than we’ve seen from Bolton.”
Hanson’s goal kick went directly out of play on Blackpool’s right, prompting the question of why on earth he was kicking towards the flank where Matthews was lurking and Bolton’s defences were depleted. Joe Smith grabbed the ball on the sideline and tossed it excitedly to Ewan Fenton.
Having been on the field for the first two of Bolton’s FA Cup triumphs in the 1920s, the Blackpool manager could not overcome the urge to become as involved as possible. “I was so excited that in the last three minutes I was fielding the ball when it went into touch,” he said. What was proving much easier was putting aside his love of the club he had skippered with such distinction. “I have a sentimental attachment to the Wanderers but I know the team I want to win and it wears the tangerine jersey,” he had said before the game. When he left Bolton in 1927, he had departed with a sincere letter to the club thanking them “most heartily for the splendid treatment I have received during my 19 years’ connection with the club, the consideration and many kindnesses that I have had”. He had, however, diplomatically declined his recent invitation to a dinner for all the Bolton players who had played in their previous finals.
Smith had begun Cup Final week by referring to Blackpool’s late winners in four of their earlier ties and saying: “If we win this time, nobody will be able to say we haven’t earned it – and earned it the hard way.”
Events at Wembley were certainly bearing that out. Receiving the ball from his manager, Fenton threw it down the line to Matthews. Taking possession in five yards of space, he decided not to run at Banks but played a diagonal cross to the far post, where the shaky Hanson caught the ball. The 90 minutes were up.
An additional minute had been played when Bolton, out of nowhere, mounted an attack. Bobby Langton squeezed inside Fenton and found Lofthouse on the left of the Blackpool box, but with Johnston closing him down the ball squirted away to George Farm. The keeper bowled out to Taylor, who drifted inside a tired challenge from Langton and played it right to Matthews on the halfway line. Again, Banks stood off, allowing Matthews to flick it inside to Fenton off the toe of his boot. Fenton was only half stopped by Johnny Wheeler, and Taylor played the loose ball first time back to the right, bisecting two white shirts.
The body language of the Bolton players screamed panic as Matthews advanced into the penalty area, his diagonal progress making it unclear if he intended to cut inside or make for the by-line. He opted to go outside the struggling Banks. “Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Barrass coming in quick for the kill,” Matthews would record. “As his footing gave way beneath him, I slid the ball back across goal. As I fell, my heart and hopes fell also.”
As he had tumbled, Matthews had pulled the ball back to the kind of central area where Mortensen had been lurking hundreds of times during the previous six years of their partnership. On this occasion, however, the England striker had advanced into the six-yard box in the direction of the far post, while Hanson waved at his defenders to cover him. “This is our last chance; what is he doing?” flashed through Matthews’s mind in a split-second of abstract thought.
However, the ball was delivered – intentionally or otherwise – perfectly into the space behind Mortensen, where Perry ran in to fire a right-footed shot into the goal, with none of the five Bolton bodies in the six-yard area able to keep it out of the net.
“It’s there! Perry! Perry!” exclaimed Wolstenholme as most of the Blackpool team, after a cursory acknowledgement of the scorer, went to embrace the goal’s creator. “I was rather lucky in getting that ball across for Bill Perry to score,” said Matthews. “A split second after I made my pass I slipped over. Had I fallen a moment sooner the pass would have gone wrong.”
Perry explained: “Stan slipped slightly as he centred it, so Morty over-ran it and it was left to me to bang it sweetly in through a scrum of Bolton players. It was a marvellous moment.” Relieved that his shot had not been deflected by the crowd of defenders, Perry’s pleasure was heightened further by the feeling that he’d been struggling to contribute against the tough opposition of Ball.
Robinson added: “I have got to laugh about the last one. Matthews crossed it and Morty says: ‘I could have got that but I knew Bill was behind me.’ I thought: ‘Morty, you liar.’ Can you imagine him leaving it to someone else? He got ribbed about that quite a bit.”
Matthews, meanwhile, was only vaguely aware of the detail of what had happened. He was conscious of the explosion of excitement among his team-mates, yet all he could hear was a “low droning buzz” that muffled the detonation of noise on the terraces. Later, he attributed his temporary deafness to the act of swallowing hard to get some saliva into his dry mouth because when he swallowed a second time his ears were assaulted by “the loudest and most resounding roar I’d ever experienced in a football stadium”.
Players converged on him, Perry swinging his head manically from side to side and Taylor punching the air. So overwhelming was the excitement in the stadium that the scoreboard operators in charge of each team’s goal tally both put up the figure 4. BBC cameras focused on Matthews making his way back to the centre line for the kick-off. There was no doubting what the story was on this day – never mind Bolton’s injury-hit heroics, Mortensen’s goals or Perry’s winner.
On the Blackpool bench, preparations for extra-time were swiftly being abandoned. “After the equaliser I went to get some lemons,” said Jackie Wright. “But shortly after returning we got the winner so I threw them up in the air.”
In the press box, reporters gave up on any pretence of neutrality when the winning goal went in. Geoffrey Green, covering the game for The Times recalled: “Pens, pencils, notebooks, writing paper and even typewriters went flying. Journalists were standing on their chairs cheering, some even with tears in their eyes.”
Around the country, scenes described by Nella Last were being replicated in the vicinity of television and radio sets everywhere. “I laughed aloud at sober working men who had been listening in, and near parked cars, doing a kind of little jig,” she recorded.
Matthews had created his fairytale ending, although the detail of the winning goal would soon become the subject of myth and mis-recollection. Only a couple of years later, Harry Johnston’s account in his autobiography would have Matthews beating Hassall and Banks, racing down the touchline and breezing past Barrass before he “casually almost, flicked the ball neatly back”. Matthews got it wrong too, describing in print how Taylor got a long throw from Farm and beat Langton before laying the ball to him to run at goal. Perry would say of Taylor: “He didn’t get the credit, but he was the main man.” Everyone seems to have forgotten the intricate pass inside that Matthews himself played to set things in motion, not to mention Fenton’s important role in the move.
From the kick-off, Holden chased the ball through the middle of the Blackpool defence and into the penalty area but Farm was quick off his line and sure-handed enough to snuff out any brief hint of danger, despite an excited shriek from Wolstenholme, for which he apologised. “Peter Dimmock and I are going as mad as everyone else in the stadium,” he said in mitigation.
Moir took a throw-in on the right, hurling it towards the advanced figure of Barrass, but the ball was cleared deep into the Bolton half. Referee Griffiths had seen enough. As Banks gathered the ball and launched it forward, the final whistle signalled the end of the game – and the beginning of a legend.
Blackpool arms went up in the air, mirrored by the hats and scarves in the stands and on the terraces. Mayor Peter Fairhurst was among the first to leap up, although he was fearful that by throwing his hat in the air he had breached the etiquette of the Royal Box. “I could not restrain myself,” he explained. “I just stood up and shouted: ‘We’ve won!’ Princess Margaret turned round when she heard me and gave me a wonderful smile.”
Journalist and author David Miller offered this description of the scenes at the end of a game he had attended as a young fan: “The stadium is in pandemonium. People lose hats, scarves, umbrellas, and probably some of their children, in an ecstasy of celebration. Thousands are in tears, tens of thousands are limp with emotional exhaustion. Such an event could not have been achieved by design for Coronation Year.”
On the field, two Bolton players were the first to congratulate Matthews, who was then quickly surrounded by five team-mates. “There’s the man, Matthews. At long last he’s done it,” said Wolstenholme as the cameras remained fixed on the drama’s leading character. The suited figure of Smith appeared at his right shoulder, turning him towards him and grabbing him. “I just jumped out of my seat and ran across to Stanley Matthews to shake his hand,” said Smith, before adding: “The players did a grand job.”
As if worried that by relinquishing contact with his talisman he would break whatever magic spell had made this moment possible, Smith was reluctant to let go as he ushered Matthews towards the sideline for the presentations. Intent on keeping him at his side, Smith seemed happy to ignore almost every other player. When he finally shook the hand of his captain Johnston, it appeared a mere afterthought. Matthews was happy to share his moment with his manager and saw the symbolism of Smith’s attachment to him. It was he, Matthews acknowledged, who had continued to believe in a player in his late 30s and who had “persuaded me to stay and live out his dream”.
The line to go and collect the Cup formed with such speed that Johnston was almost caught in what, for him, would have been an embarrassing situation. As he looked into the stands in the hope of seeing his wife and father he suddenly remembered he had not reclaimed his false teeth. “Quick, Johnny,” he called to John Crosland. “My teeth, my teeth. I’ve got to meet the Queen.”
Johnston and Farm finally squeezed ahead of Shimwell at the front of the procession as they trotted towards the steps leading up into the stands. Behind that trio came Matthews. As the players neared the Royal Box, FA secretary Stanley Rous leaned across the Duke of Edinburgh to his right and reminded the Queen of her duties. She shuffled past her husband, exchanging places just in time to greet the winning team.
There was a brief awkward pause as the new monarch worked out the best way to hand over the trophy, telling Johnston: “Well done. It was a tremendous game,” as she did so. Clutching the famous piece of silverware designed and made for the FA by a Bradford jeweller and in use since 1911, Johnston took his medal in his right hand and moved quickly towards the end of the presentation row. As if suddenly remembering the script, he raised the Cup briefly in the direction of the Blackpool fans opposite the tunnel end of the stadium before disappearing down the stairs. Perhaps he just wanted to vacate the stage for Matthews.
The cheer when the crowd saw the back of the number seven jersey accepting his box from the Queen was bigger than that when Johnston had offered the Cup to them. “Well done, Mr Matthews,” she told him. “It was very exciting.”
Matthews gave a brief wave to either end of the ground and was swiftly down the steps. The rest of his team followed in a brisk manner, eager not to miss out on any of the celebrations below. Perry opened his precious box to snatch a glance at his medal almost as soon as he had it in his hands. Matthews did likewise as he descended the steps, giving a quiet word of thanks as his eyes feasted upon the small piece of gold that had held such huge significance for him and millions of others. As he reached the field, he took it in his hand and held it up to the sky. “There it is, Dad,” he said with quiet pride.
Behind the Blackpool players, the cheerful features and unruly hair of Moir led the Bolton team through their presentation procession. Once the last player had departed, the Queen picked up her handbag, her afternoon’s work done. Directed to look down to the field, she saw Johnston standing behind an upright microphone and being introduced to the crowd. Reading from a piece of card held in front of him, the FA Cup under his right arm, he ventured: “Your Royal Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the players of both teams I call for three cheers for Her Majesty the Queen.”
Matthews would later write about Johnston having stunned the authorities by impulsively grabbing a microphone and instigating the show of appreciation for Elizabeth. This was nonsense. A more formal, less spontaneous scene would have been hard to imagine. Johnston seemed relieved to have got through it without fluffing his lines.
As photographers swarmed around the winning team, Johnston was lifted up on the shoulders of team-mates. Then Mudie and Mortensen similarly hoisted Matthews, a generous gesture that demonstrated their awareness of the game’s most powerful storyline and their lack of resentment at the fact. Even the Bolton players and fans were quick to realise the significance of the moment. One Wanderers fan would be quoted as saying: “If it had been another side I might have been more upset. We still went back and celebrated and when we opened the champagne we toasted Stanley Matthews.”
In their home town, Blackpool fans were busy celebrating on their own behalf, not just for their hero. Happy to leave the confined and increasingly sweaty living rooms into which they had squeezed and strained as they watched the television coverage, they ran into the streets and congratulated each other as though each had played their part in the victory. Tom Begley had jumped out of the cab of his colourful number 9A bus to dance in front of its giant rosette. Some wondered how he had managed to discover the result so quickly, but one glance at the happy waves of humanity hitting the streets was all the evidence it required.
Such was the excitement of the occasion, especially for those of a more fragile disposition – which in the media’s eyes usually meant women – that one Evening Gazette writer noted that he “heard of several cases” of female fans passing out in front of the television, with one even needing “a nip of brandy” to ensure her revival.
No one was staying by their screen in expectation of seeing their team parade the trophy around the pitch because that tradition was only just about to be launched by the happy Blackpool players. From his position on his team-mates’ shoulders, Matthews noticed the shattered Bolton players treading despondently towards the tunnel. Malcolm Barrass even tossed his loser’s medal away as he left the stadium. “I had just got back in,” said his wife Joyce, “and I remember seeing Malcolm throw the box with his medal up in the air and it flying open. They were all on the floor looking for it and they eventually found it in the sand behind the goalmouth.”
Matthews hopped down to the ground and joined his colleagues as they lifted their trophy towards the masses. His ears might have cleared since setting up the winning goal but his head and his senses were still being assailed by the surreal quality of the moment. “I still did not fully realise, as in the heat of the moment one never does, the true enormity and magnitude of our victory.”
Once the players had waved their final farewells to the fans and returned to the corridors leading back to the dressing room, the relative quiet struck them almost as much as that first blast of noise had done a couple of hours earlier. These were the days before invasive television cameras lurked in corners or a PR man arrived to drag off players and managers to stand in front of a sponsor board. The occasional favoured photographer or club director were the only intruders as the players enjoyed what Matthews called a “haven from the tumultuous noise”. The silence between the dressing room walls was filled by the shouts and cheers of every player as he entered, before each sat and enjoyed a moment of quiet reflection.
Bottles of champagne appeared and were quickly emptied into Blackpool’s prized trophy. The foaming mixture was passed around the room, although Matthews, slumped on the bench above which his street clothes hung, preferred to sip tea. He was content to sit and watch the antics of his colleagues as he attempted to “bring some tranquillity to my fuddled brain”.
Remembering their opponents, Blackpool’s players drifted across the corridor in ones and twos and entered the Bolton dressing room, where Banks described the mood as “terrible”. Barrass added: “We had it won. It was so disappointing. All my family were there to see us win the Cup.” For the Bolton centre-half, that last statement carried extra poignancy. It was to be the last time he saw his father alive.
Seeing some of his players in tears, manager Bill Ridding had been unable to find words with which to ease their pain. It was almost a relief when Mortensen appeared and broke the silence with his commiserations. “We know how you’re feeling,” he told the Wanderers players. As further Blackpool players entered, Matthews made a point of shaking the hand of Banks, the man he had tormented and whom he would praise in interviews for not resorting to attempts to kick him off the field.
Willie Moir responded on behalf of his team to Blackpool’s gestures of sympathy: “If we had to lose there’s no team we would have preferred to lose to. It was a terrific effort.”
At the distance of six decades, it all seems somewhat twee and disingenuous. Yet it was nothing of the sort. There was no false, or forced, graciousness in Moir’s words. When Johnston said that “in a way, the Bolton boys were glad to see the maestro get his Cup medal” he wasn’t guilty of over-sentimentalising.
The camaraderie that existed among men with a shared background, the same lifestyle, commonly held dreams – and who, in many cases, had together experienced the hardships of more meaningful conflict less than a decade earlier – was genuine. For all its injustice, football’s maximum wage created a bond between its professionals. For all their horror, the years of warfare had forged a spirit of benevolence among the people of Britain that was yet to be eroded by the passing of time and the arrival of new social disruption; a mood that was reflected on its playing fields and in its dressing rooms.
Besides, there was no one at Wembley who could fail to realise the history in which they had participated.