Keepers And Brothers – But Different Pathways

With Tom King and Lewys Benjamin in the Wolves squad who have been in America this last couple of weeks, there is no shortage of Welsh goalkeepers at the club. Charles Bamforth has dug deep into the archives with his usual enthusiasm and initiative to provide the fascinating story of two more men in the same position who had firm roots in South Wales.

February 24, 1934 was an auspicious day in the history of Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Making his very first appearance in a Wolves shirt was one Stanley Cullis, a 17-year-old from Ellesmere Port. It was a Birmingham Combination home fixture against Tamworth on the Bushbury Gas Works ground. The Wolves team, who won 7-1, read Reginald Parkin, Jack Taylor, George Gilchrist, Bill Coley, Andrew Young, Stan Cullis, Joe Gardiner (1), Harry Thompson, Meynell Burgin (2), Ronald Morgan (1), Leonard Astill (3).

Yes, that’s the Joe Gardiner who was in his second season at the club, strangely playing on the right wing. Years later, perhaps the two old friends had a role to play in giving a chance to a very young goalkeeper trying out at Molineux.

To understand why, we need to consider someone who would sign for Wolves just three weeks after the Tamworth game. Enter Arthur John Weare, generally referred to as Jack.

He was a 21-year-old goalkeeper from Newport, South Wales, who was playing for Lovells Athletic in the Western League. Lovells was the works team for a sweet factory in the town.

He was 6ft tall, weighed 12st 10lbs and, as a Wales amateur international trialist, attracted considerable competition for his signature.

Jack went straight into the second team in the Central League at Blackpool the next day. Doubtless this was not well received by Lancastrian Jack Ellis, who had played 21 games in the first team the previous season and who had started as first choice in 1933-34 before losing his place to Yorkshireman Frank Wildman. Ellis was dropped to the third team, taking the place of highly-rated 18-year-old Geordie Parkin.

The team in Weare’s first reserve team game, which ended 2-2, was: Jack Weare, Jack Dowen, Jack Preece, Tom Wildsmith, Reg Hollingworth, Les Heelbeck, Mark Crook, Irvine Harwood (1), Billy Hartill (1), Jimmy Deacon, John Hetherington.

Some legendary names appear in that list, not least ‘Artillery’ Hartill, a relentless scorer at Molineux, who would go on to play a few games for both Liverpool and Everton.

And of course there is Crook, in due course to be the recruiter of so much talent for Wolves as manager of Wath Wanderers, and Dowen, who would become part of Cullis’s backroom staff.

Weare acquitted himself well and was summoned for first-team duty on April 21, 1934, replacing Wildman in the game at Newcastle. Wolves crashed 5-1, with this side needing an own goal to get on the score-sheet: Jack Weare, Wilf Lowton, Cecil Shaw, Tom Smalley, Jack Nelson, Dai Richards, Charlie Phillips, Gordon Clayton, Billy Hartill, Bryn Jones, Bill Barraclough.

Clayton was another making his debut that day, in a game refereed by Stanley Rous. Another Welshman, Jones, signed for Arsenal four seasons later for a British record transfer fee.

Despite the mention in the Sunday Mercury that ‘but for his (Weare’s) brilliant work, Wanderers would have come a heavier cropper’, it was back to the second team for him the following week, with Witton-born Cyril Spiers, who had been a giant for Villa and Tottenham over several seasons before joining Wolves, stepping in.

Weare played for the Whites in the first of the two 1934-35 pre-season Colours v Whites public practice games, with Wildman in goal for the Colours. Spiers replaced Weare for the second match to illustrate his rapid progress, Cullis appearing for the Whites on both occasions.

Wildman duly started in the First Division side and it quickly became clear that Weare was third choice as he played regularly in the Birmingham Combination side.

When Wildman lost his place, it was Spiers who got the nod. But the two senior keepers, and presumably Jack Weare too, had a shock when Major Buckley forked out all of £750 to sign 19-year-old Gateshead-born Jimmy Utterson, from Glenavon.

It is said that Utterson could hoof the heavy case balls of the time virtually the full length of the pitch with his kicks. He had represented the Irish League against both the Football League and Scottish League and made his debut in mid-December.

But he himself was ousted by Weare on February 23, 1935, for the local derby at West Brom, who ran out 5-2 winners against this line-up: Jack Weare, Reg Hollingworth, Cecil Shaw, Stan Cullis, Bill Morris, Joe Gardiner, Jackie Brown, Bob Iverson (1), Dave ‘Boy’ Martin (1), Bryn Jones, Charlie Phillips.

This was Gardiner’s first-team debut. And it was only Cullis’s second senior game. Despite shipping five goals again in just his second first team game, Weare kept his place and Wildman and Spiers were competing for games in the third team, with Utterson in the Central League side.

And so to 1935-1936. Weare very clearly was first choice, with Utterson in reserve. Utterson, in fact, ousted Weare only once in the first 22 games of the season – on a fateful day at Ayresome Park. In the 4-2 defeat against Middlesbrough, he suffered a serious head injury and played only a few A team games after that, the last of them on November 30 against Market Harborough.

The next Saturday’s Sports Argus reported that Utterson had died from heart failure on December 6, having complained of feeling ill four days earlier. He was admitted to a nursing home on the Wednesday and died two days later.

On Tuesday, December 11, Utterson’s body was placed in the directors’ room at Molineux, where the funeral service was held prior to burial at Wolverhampton Cemetery. The coffin bearers, as captured in a moving photo in the Forever Wolves book of 2002, were Stan Cullis, Gardiner, Weare, Clayton and two other players, Fred Marsden and Norman Thacker.

The floral tribute from the club was in the shape of a football ground and it must have been very hard for Jack Weare when he played that Saturday in the first team at Stoke. He was the only one of the pallbearers on duty that day.

Before the match, a minute’s silence was held and the drums, pipes and bugles from the Fifth Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment beat the retreat. Stoke won 4-1.

Jack Weare was very much a man of God. The Birmingham Gazette reported that the scripture readings at the Walsall Road Methodist Church in Willenhall on February 10, 1935 had been given by he and Birmingham’s Harry Hibbs.

Hibbs was a goalkeeping legend at St Andrew’s and already an England international. Interestingly, The People reported on July 22 that Blues had their eyes on Weare, presumably to be groomed as his successor.

On December 21, Weare stepped aside injured for just one game, with young Jack Curnow, another Yorkshireman, making his debut. Indeed, the two of them were clearly in competition for the first team until February 8, when Wolves’ £1,250 signing from Burnley, Scouser Alex Scott, made his debut in a goalless Molineux draw with Derby.

Weare did get back for the last four games of the season. And Curnow had long since been confined to the third team. Wildman departed in February for Reading, where he replaced another former Molineux keeper, Percy Whittaker – yet another Yorkshireman.

Despite all the chopping and changing between the sticks, there must have been something about Jack Weare because he was Frank Buckley’s first choice the next season, featuring for the Colours in both the warm-up games, with Scott and Curnow respectively appearing for the Whites.

But after four League games, Scott was in and, on September 18, Jack Weare signed ‘for a substantial fee’ for West Ham.

A couple of months later, Scotsman Billy Gold signed for Wolves from Bournemouth as back-up to Scott, and both he and Curnow had lengthy first-team runs that season.

In the reserves and third team was another promising youngster by the name of George Heppell, a Geordie signed from Northern League side Trinborn Grange Colliery in September. By May, that 20-year-old was on his way to Port Vale, where he played 193 War-interrupted games up to 1951-52.

But the one-time baseball player, Scott, would be senior Wolves keeper for several years, and kept goal in the 1939 Cup Final.

The little-photographed Jack Weare was at West Ham for three seasons and, in the Second World War years, guested for Bournemouth, Bristol Rovers, Hibernian and St Mirren. He became a sergeant and PT instructor in the RAF. On serving in India, the Welshman even played for England against Scotland in New Delhi.

After the war, Weare served Bristol Rovers for six years before winding down with Barry Town. He emigrated to South Africa and then Rhodesia, dying in Harare in what was then known as Zimbabwe in 1994.

Time to turn to the young triallist keeper I referred to earlier. This was another young man born in Newport, Monmouthshire in July, 1934, some 22 years after Jack.

I assume the arrival came as a bit of a surprise to the family in question, for I now speak of Leonard Nicholas Weare.

So, I wonder: In 1950, did Jack (still at Bristol Rovers, then) get on the blower to old pals Cullis, Gardiner, Dowen, perhaps even Mark Crook, and ask if his kid brother could have a chance?

Bert Williams was undisputed top dog at Molineux, with Dennis Parsons in reserve, Nigel Sims jockeying for position, Derek Parton trying to make his way and a gaggle of other young hopefuls, including Philip Mason, Albert Brown, Benjamin Cole, and Doug Taylor were trying to get noticed.

But, on December 9, 1950, Len Weare played in a Worcestershire Combination fixture at Handsworth Wood, in a 4-1 victory. The team read: Len Weare, George Showell, Malcolm Spencer, Windsor Davies, Ivan Cartwright, Alder, Jesse Gaden (1), William Price, Denzil Flanagan, Derek Ford (1), William Hodgkiss (2).

Which brings us to December 23, 1950 at the Baseball Ground. Len Weare became the youngest player to appear for the club in the Central League, aged 16 years, five months. They lost 4-2 to Derby, with this side: Len Weare, Angus McLean, Bill Guttridge, Alf Crook, Bill Russell, Bill Baxter, Trevor Long, Sammy Smyth, Ken Whitfield (2), Jesse Pye, Jimmy Mullen.

What an experience that must have been for one so raw to play alongside so many legends. On Christmas Day, though, he was replaced by Mason for the home defeat by Sheffield United. Indeed, he played just one other game for Wolves, on March 10 at Herman Smith in the Worcestershire Combination, a 4-0 win.

Unlike big brother, it was to his hometown patch that Len elected to continue his football journey.

He went on to make a record 525 Football League appearances for Newport (where he started as an amateur after demob) between 1955 and 1970.

All told, he featured in 607 first-team games and played throughout his career as a part-time professional. He was selected twice for Wales squads but never won a cap. The first occasion was the World Cup in 1958, when he was chosen as reserve to Arsenal’s Jack Kelsey, but wasn’t required to travel to Sweden.

Weare’s performances successively in Division Three (South), Division Three and Division Four, with our old friend Joe Wilson as a team-mate in the later years, attracted huge attention.

In December, 1958, Leicester were prepared to invest £7,500 in him as back-up to Dave Maclaren. It didn’t happen, and The Filberts went instead for a certain Gordon Banks.

Arsenal and Southend were also after Len at the time. And Swansea Town (as they then were) tried for him in May, 1959, to no avail. Instead, in October, 1960, it was Luton who landed him, when their England man, Ron Baynham, was injured.

Two months earlier, though, the most intriguing move of all was mooted in the Sports Argus, who wrote: “Wolves are in the market for a new goalkeeper. Two young Scots have recently been under review but Molineux officials have been mightily impressed by Newport County’s Len Weare. Welshman Weare is one of the best goalkeepers in the country, and West Bromwich Albion are one of the other clubs interested in him.”

It’s curious that Stan Cullis felt he needed a new keeper, with Malcolm Finlayson at the helm, ably understudied by Geoff Sidebottom and with Fred Davies on the fringes. Irishman John Cullen was still on the books, and youngsters Dave Beebee and Tony Fleming were showing promise.

Maybe Weare was approached, stressed his commitment to being a part-timer, and turned Cullis off after he famously became frustrated with Dennis Wilshaw and Bill Slater during their parallel careers in education.

Weare was content with his lot in South Wales. On the day he got married, he played against Millwall at Somerton Park and his bride, Joyce, held her bouquet as she watched from the sidelines.

Weare was about to be inducted into Newport’s Hall of Fame on October 27, 2012, but sadly died six days earlier.