Forty five years ago, the Radio Times featured the League Cup Final as ‘Match of the Day from Wembley’. Martin Percival kindly lent me his copy and there on the inside cover, next to ‘Points from the Post’ Kenneth Wolstenholme wrote the following article:
‘The Football League Cup has now been given soccer’s supreme accolade – a Wembley appearance. It is a far cry from the days when everyone laughed at the competition and said that it would never succeed. Now it has not only succeeded, but has commanded a Wembley date and everyone will be shocked if the gate today does not top 70,000.
There could not be a finer menu for this first Wembley final. West Bromwich Albion will carry the standard of the First Division and they will be seeking to retain the trophy they won last season. Incidentally, Albion have yet to lose a League Cup-tie. They entered the competition for the first time last season and won it. Now they have reached the final again. But what opponents ! Queen’s Park Rangers, the first Third Division side ever to reach a Wembley final, the team which lives in the shadow of the BBC’s giant Television Centre.
This final is sure to be a game of character, just as it will be a game of characters. Both teams play all-out attacking football. To do this, both tend to leave themselves open in defence. The result should be a lot of goals, which is just what the customers like. Albion will want to keep up the Midlands’ proud record in the competition. This is the seventh competition since the very first in 1960-1, and of the six previous occasions the Cup has gone to the Midlands five times – to Villa in 1961, Norwich 1962, Birmingham City 1963, Leicester City 1964, and Albion last season. The only non-Midland team to have won the Cup is Chelsea, who won in 1965.
The personalities of the game are matched as in a game of snap. There is Clive Clark, Albion’s flying wingman who always plays with his stockings rolled down and his shins unprotected. They know all about him at Queen’s Park Rangers – they found him and later sold him to Albion. Clark plays an orthodox wingman’s game. So, too, does Mark Lazarus of Rangers. And Lazarus is just as big a goal scorer, just as big a character as Clark.
Talking of characters, they come no better than thirty-eight-year-old Jim Langley, now the Rangers’ full-back. He has previously played for Leeds, Brighton, Fulham and England and is a dead shot with penalty kicks.
If Albion mention their goal-scoring forwards like Astle and Kaye, two of the most dangerous men in the game, Rangers will counter with Roger Morgan and Marsh, for whom Newcastle United were willing to pay ¬£90,000 earlier in the season. Marsh, the former Fulham player, has been called many names – the El Cordobes of Soccer, the Clown Prince of Soccer. Call him what you like: the records show that he is top goal scorer this season.’
Prior to ‘Match of the Day’ at 10.05pm, Patrick Troughton was on screen as the latest Doctor Who, the Monkees filled the 6.15pm slot after Juke Box Jury and the News. We didn’t have BBC 2 at the time and the only programme that I might have watched occasionally on a Saturday evening before the football, would of been, ‘Adam Adamant Lives !’ Gerald Harper played Adam Adamant, an adventurer who had been born in 1867, vanished suddenly in 1902 and was then revived from hibernation in 1966. He wore Edwardian clothes and like John Steed in the iconic series, ‘The Avengers’, also carried a swordstick.
The match highlights were soon released commercially and could be viewed in the comfort of your own home with the aid of a screen and a projector. British Pathe News have some footage and many years later after an eventual video release, some cine film, in colour and taken by an R’s fan, surfaced and was transferred to video and circulated. The BBC material was re-launched onto DVD four years ago and included a short documentary, ‘Memories of ’67.’
Steve Russell
Thanks for posting this fascinating piece of period memoribilia, Steve. Wasn’t it so much better then, without all the hype that we have nowadays? Much prefer how things were so understated then. How arcane the language seems now! It has a real charm about it. ‘The Clown Prince Of Soccer’ tag applied to Rodney I can certainly recall: wasn’t the term originally applied to Len Shackleton?
(Before my time, but grew up on tales of him via ‘Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly’.) I love the ‘El Cordobes of Soccer’ reference! I can’t say I ever recall hearing Rodney described in those terms. It’s an appropriate epithet, though: there was much of the style of the matador about Rodney, in the manner in which he loved to tease and torment ‘bullish’ defenders. He certainly enjoyed turning things into a personal duel, especially when he was at the top of his game, as indeed does an unconstrained Adel. Also, love the term ‘dead shot’ for Jim Langley’s penalty kicks (another term you never hear now – funny enough, it prompts a recollection of Wimbledon’s Dickie Guy making his famous penalty save from Leeds’ ‘Dead Shot Peter Lorimer’, as Keith Macklin memorably described him in the commentary) Well,no doubt about, it Jim was very much a ‘dead shot’! I think he was the nonpareil of all our penalty takers. Did he ever miss one? I certainly can never recall him missing. Every one firmly planted right in the corner. What a wonderful character and absolute gentleman was Jim Langley.
Great article about a never to be forgotten day. I have given my two penneth on the subject in the forum.
I would add that we must remember that the penalty kick accuracy was achieved with ploughed fields for pitches and heavier balls a far cry from the billiard table conditions of today.
In respect of the great Rodneee I think I can remember in one home league game ‘the matador’ dribbled the ball past the defence and goalkeeper, stopped in front of the goal and backheeled it in. Didn’t go down well with the visitors but appreciated by the Rs supporters!
Great piece, I can remember some of the press coverage but hadn’t seen this before. I didn’t get to see my first game until 1970 5-2 win over Birmingham and Rodney was incredible a hat-trick and two of them nominated for ITV’s goal of the season. What a great voice of ‘soccer’ Kenneth Wolstenholme was.
‘some cine film, in colour and taken by an R’s fan surfaced and was transferred to video’.
I believe this could be the footage filmed by the late Steve Edwards’ father. Only eight minutes long and in full colour, its the best film I’ve ever seen of the day.Starts with a ten year old Steve leaving home resplendent in blue and hoops hat and scarf and shows the winning goal and the celebrations in the ground after the final whistle.
Yes,his dad. Do you still have a copy Chris ? I lost mine unfortunately.
I had read about that in AKUTR’s and eventually got a video copy. And I was very surprised to see a fan run onto the pitch and pick the ball out of the net and leg it upfield, something I never remembered even though I was there. Then by an amazing coincidence it turned out that fan was sitting next to me one evening at my son’s school in South Harrow as we watched the boys playing football. I asked him if he was a football fan and he said that he was but didn’t go any more. “Who did you follow ?” He replied: “The R’s.” He was older than me so I said: “Well, you must of been at Wembley in ’67” I was astonished when he said: “Yes I was and you’ll never guess what I did !”
I think his name was Sean and he was from Kilburn. I also surprised him by revealing that it was included in the footage. We kept in touch for a while and eventually I introduced him to Steve’s dad at the end of season do at Yeading when he presented him with a copy.
Well the 97,952 attendance was one hell of a surprise I’m sure for Ken Wolstenholme!
My first viewing of the game would have been in the autumn of 1974. My Dad’s cousin Peter and his son Greville came round to our house armed with their super 8 film of the game and their projector. Greville was working for Mars in Slough at the time so he had a load of free “product” and Peter brought some old Rs memorabilia that he no longer wanted. My brother and I were delighted to discover this Rs supporting branch of the family. It was the first time we’d met them, but my Dad had taken Peter to his first game c.1936 together with 2 Percivals who were Rs fans.
The super 8 rolled into action. Grainy as hell, no commentary but boy it was good viewing the game that we’d heard so much about but had never seen. In this day and age of YouTube etc it’s hard to recall just how damned hard it was to see this type of footage 35 plus years ago!
I’d love to see that colour super 8 film sometime. I think I have only ever seen a couple of colour stills of the ’67 final, let alone any colour film footage.
There must have been 40,000 inside the ground supporting the R’s that day…and previously not a single one of those people(including me) ever thought the day would come when they would see the Queens Park Rangers Football Club in a Cup Final at Wembley…let alone win it!
Jumpers for goalposts…Black and White TV..Orange Ball..Kenneth Wolstenholme..Hmmm Marvellous wasn’t it?
PS for the younger folks..Clive Clark was the nearest thing to George Best that you will ever see wearing a QPR shirt. IMO he still has the honour of scoring THE greatest QPR individual goal at Loftus Rd that I have ever seen in 54 years of supporting the Club(v Tranmere won 9-2 Dec 1960)…Gordon Macey does not do it justice enough I can tell you!
I’ve not seen the colour footage either and like Martin have only ever seen some colour photos of the final. Co-incidentally, Finney mentions the colour footage on the current ‘Open All R’s’ podcast.
I do love the illustration to the Wolstenholme article.
It’s has a very iconic look and seems to do a better job than any photo could’ve done. Interesting to note that both teams are featured in their home strip in the cartoon but they both wore their alternate strip in the final.