Derby County: Era of canny signings but little success

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Anton Rippon reviews the Tim Ward management years at Derby County and considers some of the great signings he made in what were very lean times financially.

THERE were 52 applicants for the job of Derby County’s manager in the summer of 1962, but Harry Storer’s successor was not among them, although the new man was a name already steeped in Rams’ history.

When the Derby chairman, Fred Walters, approached newly-promoted Grimsby Town about their manager, former Derby and England wing-half Tim Ward, he was about to set in motion a new Ward era.

It would not be successful in terms of silverware, but the next five years would be remembered as some of the most pleasant and entertaining in the club’s long story.

And it would end with the signing of one of the greatest players in the history of the club.

Ward, who was not under contract at Blundell Park, accepted the Derby job on a five-year contract of £2,500 a year, plus a Vauxhall Victor car.

When he took a first look at the club, at the end of June, he said: “I realise that I’ve got a very hard job, but then all jobs are hard.”

Only 23 players had been retained and 11 of them had refused the terms offered of £20 per week, plus £5 first-team money and £1 per player for each 1,000 spectators over 18,000.

With the removal of the maximum wage the previous year, the players felt that they were in a stronger negotiating position, particularly the crowd’s hero, Bill Curry.

After protracted discussions, all the players re-signed, although Curry and Swallow went on the transfer list at their own request.

No sooner had the matter of the players’ wages been settled, on the surface at least, than Ward was trying to select a team for the first match of the season at Huddersfield.

Despite Storer’s eagerness to resign in May, “so that the new man may have some say in any players obtained during the close season”, Ward was relying on the existing staff.

Don Roby and Keith Havenhand were undergoing cartilage operations, so forwards, in particular, were in short supply, and Ray Swallow turned up at the Baseball Ground straight from playing cricket with Derbyshire.

On the morning of the match, goalkeeper Reg Matthews had a bad migraine and was replaced by Ken Oxford, who saved a penalty in the 3-3 draw.

Ward’s injury list grew quickly and he eventually spent £16,000 on three players. Full-back Bobby Ferguson signed from Newcastle for £4,000; former Scottish international inside-forward Mick Cullen came from Ward’s old club, Grimsby Town, for £5,000; and Scotland ‘B’ outside-left Johnny McCann, who had been with Ward at Barnsley, joined the Rams from Huddersfield for £6,000.

Despite these new signings, the Rams spent most of the season in the relegation zone as added pressures were caused by the big freeze-up of 1962-63.

There were no League games for five weeks and it took Derby several attempts to play their third-round FA Cup-tie against Peterborough, at the Baseball Ground.

Eventually, Barry Hutchinson’s goals gave the Rams a 2-0 win but, in the next round, Derby went out at Leyton Orient and the victory over Peterborough was Ward’s only FA Cup success in five years at the Baseball Ground. Eventually, the Curry-Hutchinson goal machine became well-oiled, and it was largely because of these two that relegation was avoided.

They shared 41 of the Rams’ 61 goals. The third-highest scorer was full-back Geoff Barrowcliffe, who took the penalties.

Before the 1963-64 season started, Ward spent £10,000 apiece on two forwards, winger Gordon Hughes, from Newcastle United, and inside-forward Alan Durban, a Welsh under-23 international from Cardiff City.

The signings were needed because the Rams lacked power in attack. Bill Curry failed to score in the first 10 matches and, just when he appeared to be returning to form, he dislocated a shoulder against Sunderland.

During the season, four players – Havenhand, Cullen, Bob Stephenson (son of the Rams’ pre-war international, George Stephenson) and Hutchinson – asked for transfers, but there were no immediate offers to help relieve the club’s £50,000 overdraft.

Thanks to some outstanding displays by Reg Matthews, the Rams reached a respectable position as Barrowcliffe. Young and Parry also provided experience in the defence.

The major defensive set-back was in the FA Cup at Liverpool, where a packed Kop sang She Loves You and chanted the name of Alf Arrowsmith, who scored four in Liverpool’s 5-0 win.

Liverpool progressed to the sixth round where they were beaten 2-1 by Swansea Town. The Welsh club’s goals were scored by Eddie Thomas, whom Tim Ward signed for £6,000 the following summer. Thomas was to prove a temporary answer to the Rams’ goal-scoring problems.

In 1964-65, there was a brief return to the immediate post-war fanaticism when unbeaten Coventry City came to Derby for the sixth match of the season and 32,803 spectators packed the Baseball Ground to see the Rams triumph 2-1 with goals from Johnny Bowers and Eddie Thomas.

Bowers, a part-time professional who worked in the advertising department of the Derby Evening Telegraph and was the son of the Rams’ pre-war scoring legend Jack Bowers, had been promised a 10-match run in the first team, but his agony was to suffer a serious ankle injury in front of a packed Baseball Ground.

On the following Saturday, at home to Charlton, his place was taken by a young left-winger from Cheltenham called Nigel Cleevely, whose father had been at school with Tim Ward.

Cleevely could not have had a more dramatic game for his debut and one which some spectators must have regretted walking away from, when Charlton led 3-0 at half-time.

Four goals in an 11-minute spell in the second half earned the Rams a point in a 4-4 thriller, and young Cleevely marked his debut with a goal.

He held his place for the following Wednesday when the Rams completed a double over Coventry, winning 2-0 before 38,278 at Highfield Road.

The arrival of Eddie Thomas, who scored in each of his first six games for the Rams, and a wage bonus for goal-scoring coincided with a glut of goals, although Derby’s outside chances of promotion evaporated in the final few matches.

After beating Plymouth 3-2 in the 16th game, the Rams lay third in the table but some excellent home wins were not backed up with away successes.

The Rams ended the season with more goals than any other Second Division side. Thomas was well-supported by Alan Durban, whose knack for goals included a technique for making 20-yard free-kicks almost as dangerous as penalties.

A small section of the crowd began to anticipate events by singing the Dave Dee song Bend It.

After 10 games of the 1965-66 season, the Rams had only four points and were bottom of the table, but then Ward introduced three young defenders, John Richardson, Bobby Saxton and Peter Daniel, to play alongside Ron Webster and Frank Upton, who had rejoined the club after helping Chelsea to promotion from Division Two in 1962-63.

For the Rams, there was only one defeat in the next 16 games.

In November, came their first away win. It was against League leaders Huddersfield and gave Ward a rare opportunity to exercise confidence. Asked what he thought about Huddersfield’s promotion chances, he replied: “Well, they must be a good side to hold us to 3-1.”

But, in the end, it was another ordinary middle-of-the-table season.

There was the attractive sight of George Best, Denis Law and David Herd scoring for Manchester United at the Baseball Ground in the FA Cup.

And 29-year-old outside-left Billy Hodgson, signed from Leicester City to play in a more withdrawn role in midfield, chipped in with a hat-trick in the 5-0 win over Middlesbrough.

The bulk of the scoring power, however, came from Durban, Thomas and centre-forward Ian Buxton, the Derbyshire cricketer.

Just around the corner, however, was a player who would go on to become the greatest goal-scorer in the club’s history after the legendary Steve Bloomer.

“They cheered him off the pitch, then they waited half an hour and cheered him out of the ground, jostling to pat him on the back.

“And, no wonder, for nobody could have asked more of a player on his debut than £34,000 Kevin Hector provided at the Baseball Ground on Saturday.”

That was how George Edwards of the Derby Evening Telegraph saw the first game of “King” Kevin Hector. Despite twice being behind in the game on September 24, 1966, the Rams beat Huddersfield 4-3. Durban scored three but it was Hector’s goal which fired the imagination of the Rams’ fans, starved of a hero for so long.

It had taken a bad start, one point from the first six games, before the Derby board agreed to let Ward spend that kind of money on the player he had been watching for six months on the recommendation of chief scout Sammy Crooks. Hector’s record of 113 goals in 176 League games for Bradford Park Avenue, albeit in the Fourth Division, should have been recommendation enough for the Rams’ directors but they took some persuading to pay out the reported £34,000 for the player who would light up season after season at the Baseball Ground.

Gradually, the lost ground was made up, the Rams twice hitting five goals in home games, before a jaw injury to Matthews and illness to the rampant Hector, who scored 16 goals in 30 League games, caused consternation by the end of the season.

In May, it was announced that Tim Ward’s contract would not be renewed and the directors selected the team for the last match of the season, against Plymouth Argyle, at the Baseball Ground.

They asked the veteran Jack Parry if he would turn out. Parry’s previous first-team appearance had been as a substitute at Ipswich some 19 months earlier and he declined.

Instead, the board gave a League debut to young Ronnie Metcalfe, from South Shields, and a 1-1 draw against Plymouth – Derby’s goal was scored by Welsh Under-23 international Derek Draper – brought the curtain down on a largely unhappy season in which the Rams finished 17th in Division Two.

Tim Ward, meanwhile, was left to reflect on the difficulties he had experienced with a board that had changed its chairman twice during his five years in the job.

In turn, the board had difficulties with finances, matters that were always discussed in Ward’s absence while the manager waited in his office until he was called.

Crooks and trainer Ralph Hann were also summarily sacked and the treatment of Hann was particularly shabby. Approached in the corridor, and expecting to be asked to look after things until a new manager was appointed, the loyal Hann was, instead, told curtly by chairman Sam Longson that the club “no longer requires your services”.

Longson then turned, went into the boardroom, closed the door and left Hann standing in the corridor, virtually in tears.

Ward rebounded his own years of frustration with an uncharacteristic outburst: “The board wouldn’t allow me to stick a twopenny-halfpenny stamp on a letter without consulting them first.”

Ward told how the signing of Eddie Thomas had worked against him. Thomas, who cost only £10,000, was a success and the board then expected equally successful cheap signings.

Occasional comments from certain directors also angered Ward. When Hector was out of the team through illness, Ward was asked: “Do we still have to pay his wages?”

A small but vociferous “Sack the board, bring back Ward” campaign gained little ground, but the directors did now recognise the need to abandon their penny-pinching policy.

The Derby fans would not be happy until frugal measures were replaced with investment.

Money was to be made available. There was an untapped wealth of interest in Derby County Football Club, an interest which had been allowed to lie dormant since the 1940s.

All it needed was for the incoming staff to take advantage of such an opportunity.

“Soccer is a young man’s game,” declared chairman Sam Longson. “We want virility and new ideas.” And that is exactly what they got. Brian Clough was on his way.

Adapted from The Derby County Story by Anton Rippon and Andrew Ward.

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