Cherished Memories Recorded For Posterity

Anniversary year goes on at Molineux…..with no apologies from us for ensuring that the stars of 54 are posthumously celebrated in full for their outstanding deeds.  

And no publication has done more to keep alive the memory and magic of Wolves’ first League Championship triumph than the one brought out during the 2023-24 season by Steve Gordos.

We are delighted to play a further part here in promoting Golden Glory, determined as we also are to perpetuate the story of how Stan Cullis and his squad ignited the club’s halcyon era 70 years ago.

We will be dipping into this outstanding hard-back again in the coming months – so packed is it with detail in the style of all the author’s other books about Wolves.

But we content ourselves for now with some Gordos bullet points relating to the other 21 clubs that made up the 1953-54 First Division; unearthed by him as a result of the huge depth of research and knowledge that are the strengths of this essential keepsake.

*There were no foreign managers in that season’s top flight. The only one of the 22 to have been born outside the British Isles was Manchester City’s Les McDowall but he was brought up as a Scot after India provided him with his first few sights of the outside world.

*Champions Wolves and runners-up Albion had the two youngest bosses in the top flight. Stan Cullis, 36 when the season kicked off, was the ‘baby’ of the group and his Hawthorns counterpart, Vic Buckingham, was the only other top-flight manager aged below 40.

*Peter McParland, later to have a short spell in gold and black, came to prominence in senior football for the first time in 1953-54. His debut had been in a 1-0 home defeat against Wolves in 1952-53 and he faced the same opponents in his second appearance in first-team football, his first goal in that latter game helping his side to a 2-1 victory at Molineux.

*Blackpool were big-hitters in the 1950s but Joe Smith, the 64-year-old manager who led them to the winning of the FA Cup in the so-called Matthews final, was from Dudley Port, a few miles from Wolverhampton.

*Wolves, pipped to the title in 1938, 1947 and 1950, might conceivably have won it a year before they finally broke their duck. They were one of four clubs leading the way on 38 points at the end of February, 1953 – but none of them won the League. Preston, Burnley, Wolves and Albion were all overhauled by Arsenal, who finished as champions on goal average. Cullis’s men came in third.

*Cardiff were managed in 1953-54 by a former Wolves goalkeeper, Brummie Cyril Spiers having played eight games while at Molineux from 1933 to 1935.

*And Huddersfield’s boss was Andy Beattie – ‘The Flying Doctor’ as he was known by the time he was appointed as Stan Cullis’s successor in 1964. The Terriers also had Laurie Kelly (previously of Wolves) and Bill McGarry (Wolves’ manager from 1969 to 1976) as members of a defence who all, remarkably, were ever-presents.

We conclude this piece by strongly recommending Golden Glory: The Story Of Wolves’ Historic 1953-54 Season (Geoffrey Publications, £25) to our readers and will happily act as a go-between to anyone struggling to obtain a copy.